Thursday 7 June 2012

Global Account Management for Systems Vendors

Global Account Management, including reference to  challenger sales, consultative sales, solution sales, collaboration and technology vendor marketplace.

Sales people have the greatest direct influence on the success or failure of most business to business commercial organisations and many of us have spent uncomfortable hours agonising over what it is that really makes our revenue grow and how best to organise in order to make optimum use of what may be the most significant single line in the expense budget.

Having worked in sales and sales management for over 25 years in systems and services providers to the financial markets industry I feel able to give well considered opinions on this subject and have prepared a presentation which sets up a potentially valuable dialogue for a CEO or COO considering the pros and cons of a global account management function.  This is intended to rationalise and crystallize the thinking which emerged from direct experience of successes and failures and to ‘showcase’ my own ability to develop and run a global account function as part of the senior management team of your company.  To that end the points I make are ‘stubs’ for potentially longer conversations and while my general view is that a well integrated global account management function will add huge value to many organisations, it has to be implemented properly otherwise a lot of money may be wasted.

Some of this is subtle and specific to your company’s situation.  For instance, what happens if you say that you want feedback from your top customers to influence the direction of your company but don’t do anything formally to link the top account managers to the product management or to the board?  In this example the impact will depend upon the weight of importance you really lay on that piece of the jigsaw and also a number of softer factors such as what type of people you have in the global account management role and the way they are incentivised: they may make it happen anyway.
In its best form a global account management function could be thought of as an extension of the CEO’s office.  The CEO represents the whole company, without prejudice or allegiance to certain product lines, thinks globally and more strategically than most of his/her employees, has real empathy with the priority list of the larger customer senior management, is more likely to be focussed on defending trust and longer term relationship development and is inherently more entrepreneurial.  The good news is that there are inherent synergies in a global account management function because the upgrading of the level of individual on both sides of the customer conversation leads to various types of payback, in addition to the benefits which are specific to global account coverage.  In other words, going for global account management comes with the side benefit of having more senior sales people, who act like they are an extension of the CEO.

The presentation is typically an hour of conversation walking thought a deck broken down into the following agenda items: 1) What is global account management; 2) Payback; 3) Goals; 4) Issues; 5) Best approach; 6) Timescales; 7) Practical first steps.

Among the points I cover are the following.

-          Goals of the global account management function include innovation with customers, synergies across products lines, finding economies of scale, locking out competitors, more senior access / engagement, countering the perception that the company is just a portfolio.

-          Best approach includes building it into the culture early, the right compensation plans, authority, senior management sponsorship / participation, right geographical coverage, people who can cope with the entrepreneurial opportunities with customers.

-          It is a formalisation of a much more strategic form of sales and everyone else is doing it in some form: it’s easier to build it in early than retro-fit it.

-          Issues include perception of a ‘tax’ on the business lines, cost of adapting the reality of the company to meet the vision the customers demand, dealing with customers’ increased price leverage, making sure the GAMs can add value while being jacks of all trades, handling the entrepreneurial opportunities that arise without upward delegation of everything to the CEO (who is probably already pushing the boundaries of the 24 hour limitation on the working day). 

-          Growth is net: 5% erosion saved, plus 5% new business gained is 10% of the relevant revenue, which could be 10% of half your annual turnover.  Even very conservative numbers usually still make sense.

-          Innovation and disruptive ideas need to be qualified and managed at the lowest possible level in the company.

Greg Caldwell

Online Marketing
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