Company Expert - Account Management Playbook

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Account Management
Playbook
PLAYBOOK
Sales
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Table of Contents
Positioning and Messaging
Vision and How You Fit In
Playbook Overview
Awareness Stage
Consideration Stage
Decision Stage
Retention Stage
Advocacy Stage
Metrics and Expectations
Our Clients
Benefits of an Account Management Playbook
Key Responsibilities and Expectations Example
Template
Advocacy Advancement Play
Awareness Stage Example
Consideration Stage Example
Decision Stage Example
Retention Advancement Play Focusing Your
Resources on Your Most Important Clients
Competitive Differentiators
Healthcare SVP HR Talent Management
Leadership Development
Your Vision
Adding Value to Your Clients
Awareness Advancement Play
Consideration Advancement Play
Decision Advancement Play
Proposed Brand Pillars
Aligning to a Common Definition of the Buyers
Journey
Best Practices - Account Management Meetings
and Cadence
Product Summary
Client 1
Ideas for Proof Statements Competitive Battle
Card Korn Ferry International Opportunity Prep
Sheet Handling Objections in all Phases of the
Journey
Adding Value
Key Account Segments
What is a Playbook and How to Use it
Account Management Team Meeting Account
Management Quarterly Performance Review
Adding Value Examples Adding Value to
Your Clients
Client 2
Growth Account Plan
Client 3
Definitions
Key Account Plan
Account Management, Sales Finance Review
Price Objections Not a Good fit Objections
Pages 3 - 6
Pages 7 - 12
Pages 13 - 17
Pages 18 - 21
Pages 63 - 80
Pages 81 - 87
Pages 22 - 25
Pages 26 - 29
Pages 30 - 52
Pages 53 - 62
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Account Management
Vision and How You Fit In
Vision and How You Fit In
Your Vision Aligning to a Common Definition
of the Buyers Journey
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Vision and How You Fit In
Playbook Overview
Awareness Stage
Consideration Stage
Retention Stage
Advocacy Stage
Positioning and Messaging
Metrics and Expectations
Our Clients
Decision Stage
EXAMPLE Your Vision
To provide insights and data to inform important
decisions related to human capital, everywhere
people work

• Be the leading provider of assessments in North
  America, known as a trusted partner and thought
  leader
• Data accuracy and quality
• We strive to earn the trust of our clients
• Always act with integrity and in the best
  interest of our clients
• Open and honest communication
• Treat one another with dignity and respect and
  appreciate one another contributions
• We make a difference in peoples lives by
  investing in our employees, our company, and our
  clients
• Collegiate, collaborative, and fun environment
• Position CLIENT as the trusted assessment experts
• Shift from being reactive to proactive lead
  nurturing
• Scale the business
• De-Risk your business
• Mature the organization
• Punch above our weight

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Playbook Overview
Awareness Stage
Consideration Stage
Retention Stage
Advocacy Stage
Positioning and Messaging
Metrics and Expectations
Vision and How You Fit In
Our Clients
Decision Stage
Your Vision
Text
Text

• Text

• Text

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Playbook Overview
Awareness Stage
Consideration Stage
Retention Stage
Advocacy Stage
Positioning and Messaging
Metrics and Expectations
Vision and How You Fit In
Our Clients
Decision Stage
Aligning to a Common Definition of the Buyers
Journey
Awareness Stage
Consideration Stage
Decision Stage
Retention Stage
Advocacy Stage
Goal Get engagement
Goal Get leads
Goal Get sales
Goal Retain and get referrals
Goal Leverage advocacy to get more sales
Action Becomes aware of pain
Action Evaluates specific services
Action Commits to a specific solution
Action Benefits from your services
Action Actively promotes your business
Brand Advocate
Retention
Consideration
Decision
Advocacy
Awareness
After the buyer has become a customer, they will
then move to the retention stage. Your efforts
here should focus on retaining these customers
by reminding them of the value that your
solution or recurring services you provide.
Once buyers are in the consideration phase of
the buyers journey, they have already clearly
defined their goal or challenge and decided that
addressing this issue is a priority. This is
when they will start to evaluate the different
solutions or approaches to addressing their
problem or challenge.
In the decision stage of the customer journey,
buyers have decided on a type of solution and
are now ready to make a decision about which
specific solution they will purchase. After
comparing different products, services, and
different approaches, the customer will choose
the solution that best meets their needs.
In the advocacy stage, your brand should be
focused on communicating with your brand
advocates and evangelists. These are the people
who use and love your product or service, and
they are the ones who are most likely to
recommend it to others.
The Awareness stage is when buyers start to
identify the challenges they have or recognize
important opportunities that exist. This is the
point when they are also deciding whether this
challenge or opportunity should take priority.
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Account Management
Playbook Overview
Benefits of an Account Management
Playbook Product Summary What is a Playbook
and How to Use it Definitions
Playbook Overview
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Vision and How You Fit In
Playbook Overview
Awareness Stage
Consideration Stage
Retention Stage
Advocacy Stage
Positioning and Messaging
Metrics and Expectations
Our Clients
Decision Stage
Benefits of an Account Management Playbook
Shifting everyone doing their own thing to
everyone doing the best thing
The purpose of a playbook is to capture, codify,
and institutionalize the best practice behaviors
of top performers. Simply put, an Account
Management Playbook defines and illustrates the
best way to nurture, develop, and grow your most
important clients. Some of the additional
benefits include

• Deepen relationships and client tenure
• Generate leads and drive revenue
• Reduce risk of employee turnover at both your
  firm and the clients
• Increased productivity of the account management
  team
• Standardized messaging and approach
• Consolidate disparate and decentralized sales,
  marketing, and account management information in
  one place
• Share best practices from key account managers
  and communicate them to your entire team.
• Concisely describe what your account managers
  should do in different situations they
• may encounter
• Provide a resource that account managers can
  leverage to recall best practices
• Accelerate new-hire time to productivity

Leading To
An Account Management System that uses a
repeatable and scalable process to drive
predictable revenue and stronger relationships
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Vision and How You Fit In
Playbook Overview
Awareness Stage
Consideration Stage
Retention Stage
Advocacy Stage
Positioning and Messaging
Metrics and Expectations
Our Clients
Decision Stage
Playbook Overview GROWTH ACCELERATOR SYSTEM (GAS)
Product Category
GROWTH ACCELERATOR
3
? Insights
Online Presence
Planning
Marketing
Sales

• Products

Planning
Salesgt Account Management
Insights Products
Marketing Insights Products
The above four building blocks of growth are the
foundational elements of our Growth Accelerator
system. They allow us to systematically assess
and optimize various components of growth.
Within each of the four blocks there are 18
different enablers of growth. Each of these
blocks are part of an interconnected ecosystem
that Company Expert leverages with these
Playbooks to inject speed, alignment and
accelerated growth into the DNA of your firm
Our Growth AcceleratorTM
3 Online Presence

• Insights
• Products

? Insights

• Products

Sales
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Vision and How You Fit In
Playbook Overview
Awareness Stage
Consideration Stage
Retention Stage
Advocacy Stage
Positioning and Messaging
Metrics and Expectations
Our Clients
Decision Stage
Playbook Overview
Time to Complete 4 Weeks
Impact/Effort Scoring
Product Summary
1 2 3 4 5
Highest Value Activities
This playbook provides the framework to develop a
standardized Account Management strategy for
your Professional Services firm.
Effort
Building Block of Growth Sales
As you go through this playbook you will capture,
codify, and institutionalize the best practice
behaviors of top performers. Having an Account
Management strategy will enable you to create
repeatable and scalable processes to drive
predictable revenue and build stronger
relationships. Account management can also
reduce the risk of employee turnover, increase
your team productivity and help consolidate
disparate and decentralized sales, marketing,
and account management information in one place.
1 2 3 4 5 Impact
Other Related Enablers of Growth
Tool Score
Key 1 Low 5 High

• Sales Tools
• Messaging Frameworks
• Marketing Collateral Content

Score Summary An Account Management strategy
requires a significant amount of resources from
both a time and commitment perspective. This
score is based on the positive impact that
Account Management can have on your business,
and the modest, cross- functional effort that is
needed to do it.
Format PowerPoint
This Account Management Playbook defines and
illustrates the best way to nurture, develop, and
grow your most important clients. The result of
completing this playbook will be a thorough
Account Management strategy that you can
implement immediately.
Number of Pages 87
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Playbook Overview
Awareness Stage
Consideration Stage
Retention Stage
Advocacy Stage
Positioning and Messaging
Metrics and Expectations
Vision and How You Fit In
Our Clients
Decision Stage
What is a Playbook and How to Use it
WHAT A PLAYBOOK IS
WHAT A PLAYBOOK IS NOT
HOW TO USE THIS PLAYBOOK

• A systematic approach of how to cultivate and
  grow relationships with your most important
  clients
• A collection of best practices and strategies
  for successful and high performing account
  managers
• A living breathing working document that is
• designed to be continually updated

• A substitute for training and coaching
• A playbook only for Account Management reps that
  are not meeting their quotas our experience is
  that the highest performing reps are the biggest
  consumers of the information and continue to
  add to and develop it
• Something that is put on a shelf and not looked
  at again

• Use it to prepare for important calls
• If you are having challenges moving someone
  through the sales funnel, look for tips and
  strategies in the relevant stage of the funnel
• Continue to add to it, take notes and share
• them with your colleagues

It is expected our firm, that you know the
contents and strategies in the playbook. Not only
will the playbook help you become more efficient
and effective this playbook also contains
certain policies we expect you to follow.
Tips and strategies Warning, be careful Help
TIP
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Playbook Overview
Awareness Stage
Consideration Stage
Retention Stage
Advocacy Stage
Positioning and Messaging
Metrics and Expectations
Vision and How You Fit In
Our Clients
Decision Stage
Definitions
Account Management Plan Battle Card Key
Accounts MTD and YTD sales
Summaries of your overall client relationship and detailed action plans on how to nurture and grow the relationship.
Battle cards contain concise information about your competitors solutions, and your strengths against the competitor. They guide you how to win against your competitor.
The most important clients that you have. These will often be segmented into different tiers and different levels of service.
Month-to-Date and Year-to-Date sales are certain time periods starting from beginning of month or beginning of a year until the current date.
Points of differentiation
.Points of differentiation are the features of
one product or service with another which gives
it a competitive edge over other.
Positioning
Positioning is your firms place in the minds of
your customer against your competitors in a
particular market place.
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APPENDIX
Page 91
License
You Will Be In Good Company With Company Expert
Page 92
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License
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possible. However, there may be mistakes in
typography or content. Also, this document
provides information only up to the publishing
date. Therefore, this document should be used as
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You Will Be In Good Company With Company Expert
Our proprietary suite of solutions and
technologies are designed to inject speed,
knowledge, and accelerated growth into the DNA of
B2B Financial Services, Technology, and
Professional Service Firms
The Company Expert Difference
Our Focus
Our Experience
Our Proprietary Solution
Our Execution Capabilities
We have been helping firms grow since 1997 and
each of our Partners has at least 25 years of
experience creating sustainable growth for
businesses like yours
Proven success by leveraging our proprietary
playbooks, research, and technology. We
systematically fuel growth through our proven
Growth Accelerator SystemTM (GAS)
Unlike typical consulting firms, we stay
actively involved with you by providing
resources and management to effectively
implement our recommendation
We specialize in helping small and mid-sized B2B
Financial Services, IT, and Professional Service
Firms with breakout growth strategies
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real results for your firm we will not accept
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