When does executive insight become critical to your company's future?
For growing B2B companies, an early sign of success is having several high-revenue accounts that you just can't afford to lose--and that could exponentially take your business to the next level.
It's a nice problem to have.
Commonly referred to as key--or strategic--accounts, the retention and growth of these customers is critical to your company's future. With this in mind, management typically will pull top sales pros out of a territory position selling into hundreds of businesses, and instead ask them to manage a handful of these “can’t lose”, “must grow” accounts.
This represents a major shift in sales mindset and approach. In the early stages of a company, sales success is predicated on hustle, a great product, and volume. At the key account stage however, the sales pro has to consistently align to the company's executive priorities.
So knowing the executives' priorities and how to engage them is more important than ever.
Every day we speak with small to mid-size companies that are in the process of carving out a key account sales model. They're investing in dedicated field marketers, more rigorous annual account planning, business-relevant sales training, account based marketing programs and executive sponsorship programs.
Of course, this is nothing new for the big players like Oracle, SAP and HP. Which is why if you are a small or mid-size player competing against the big guys, it's a good idea to double down on executive intelligence. A direct line into what the C-suite cares about--and your ability to better address their specific business initiatives--could be just the secret weapon you need to beat your industry's Goliath.
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