Writing Strategic Account Plans
Boulden Management Consultants
One Day Course
With markets becoming ever more complex and organisations’ growing ever more concerned about ‘added value’, many companies are now involved in selling ‘solutions’ to their customers rather than products or systems. ‘Strategic account planning’ is the name given to the discipline of developing the business relationships with very large customers where this type of ‘solution’ or ‘consultative’ selling is key to success. The course uses the Boulden aPt Strategic Account Planning System™ to guide participants through the seven stages of developing excellent Strategic Account Plans.
By attending this highly interactive and practical course you will:
Sales people and other interested parties who have to deal with strategic account customers.
The emphasis of the course is on writing an account plan based on actual customer information. This will involve selecting one major customer and then working through the seven steps of the BMC aPt Strategic Account Planning System™ in order to produce a ‘live’ account plan. In order to maximise the time available to do this participants need to prepare key account information and conduct some initial analysis in advance of the course. To help guide them in their preparation, participants will be sent a Boulden strategic account-planning guide before the training workshop to help structure their information gathering and data analysis.
We can define strategic accounts in two ways:
The phrase the ‘inner game’ is a term borrowed from sports psychology. It is a reference to the fact that what is going on inside a person’s head (their state of mind) is crucial to good performance. Here we consider the role perception and beliefs of expert strategists.
For each ‘Strategic Account’ capture key pieces of background information e.g. markets, business strategy etc.
Capture the salient points from the analysis carried out so far.
Identify products and services that we could offer the Strategic Account.
Write down our ‘vision’ for how we will work with the Strategic Account and specify a three-year financial target and then setting specific goals for the year in respect of relationship building, sales and service targets.
Identifying what steps need to be taken to achieve the SMART goals and assigning the completion of those steps to nominated individuals.
Monitoring the progress that is being made against sales and service targets by capturing them in a single document (called a scorecard). Understanding how to share progress, report results and broadcast significant information between key employees as the account plans are implemented.
When working with a Strategic Account we may be offered the opportunity to bid or quote for a piece of business. ‘Bid assessment’ is about (i) determining how much resource to commit to any one quote and (ii) assessing the pattern of quotes that we are offered over time.
Feedback is based upon peer review using Boulden assessment checklists. Completing the assessment checklists is not only valuable to the people involved in a given role play or case study, it also helps those completing them to gain an in-depth understanding of the building blocks for writing excellent strategic account plans.
All of our workshops can be delivered as Remote Training via e-learning modules plus Zoom based virtual workshops. Please see our Virtual Training page for more information.
To talk to us about our range of courses contact
Boulden Management Consultants:
via our Contact form
Tel: 0844 394 8877
© Boulden Management Consultants Limited. All rights reserved. Reproduction or copying of any material without written permission is prohibited.
International House, 36-38 Cornhill, London, EC3V 3NG - Tel: 0844 394 8877 - VAT 715 0101 95 - Company number 03564303
Privacy Policy - Environmental Policy - Social Responsibility Policy