Last Updated on March 30, 2024 by Ali Hamza
In order to effectively build relationships with your business customers, it’s important that you figure out what they want and how to meet their needs. After all, if you’re not in alignment with your customer’s wants and needs, you won’t be able to create a good relationship with them or determine if they’re the right fit for your business. This is where Key Account management comes in!
Key account management in Amazon is what you do when you’re in charge of a relationship between your company and a client, and that client has been deemed “key” to your business. If you’re doing key account management for Amazon, it means that you are in charge of the relationship between Amazon and one of Amazon’s key clients, such as a big-box retailer or a major record label.
Importance
Key Account Management in Amazon or Amazon Account management is an important part of business, especially for larger corporations. It involves maintaining and growing relationships with various accounts, customers, or businesses—not only to make a sale but also to ensure that the customer stays satisfied with the product or service they’ve purchased and continues to do business with the company.
It is one of the most important steps in the Customer Relationship Management (CRM) process because it focuses on building long-lasting relationships. This can be done by communicating regularly with clients, providing them with necessary product updates or information regarding services, and proactively solving any problems that may arise.
Steps of Key Account Management
Your sales team’s main focus is to acquire new business, but your account management team is responsible for maintaining and growing your current relationships. The goal is to keep your current customers happy, so they’ll stick with you.
When it comes to account management, every organization has a different approach. Some rely on spreadsheets, and others use a CRM platform. Whatever the case may be, here are the five key steps to successful account management:
Identify the Key Accounts
Before you begin to optimize your key account management process, the first step is to define what key accounts are and which ones you want to focus on.
Key accounts are the customers that bring the most revenue to your business. This group makes up roughly 20% of your customers but generates 80% of your sales—which means that it’s in your best business interest to keep them satisfied and happy.
You can acquire services from an ecommerce consulting agency in this regard, but one common method is to focus on accounts that meet some or all of the following criteria:
They can be difficult to replace (for example, they represent a significant portion of your overall revenue).
They have a high potential for future growth (for example, you may see them expanding into new markets or acquiring other companies).
You want to expand your relationship with them beyond just selling products and services.
You want them as references for future customers or partners.
Identify Decision Makers and Their Needs
Key Account Management is a whole-company effort. To accomplish this, you should identify the people involved and get their buy-in (we’ll be going into more depth on this later in the article).
You must also be clear about your customers’ needs. It’s important to not only know what those needs are but also why they have them. You should understand who has decision-making power within your customer organization–have they changed recently? How and why? These questions will help you stay aligned with your customer’s goals as they evolve over time.
Gather all relevant data
They say knowledge is power, and that holds true when it comes to key accounts.
Using data to prioritize accounts is one of the key account management steps, and for a good reason. Pulling data from a variety of sources can help you get an accurate picture of which customers are worth directing your attention toward, leading to increased ROI.
By analyzing data such as purchase history, demographics, personality type, and the amount of time they’ve been a customer, you can uncover insights into each account’s potential and use those insights to determine how much time or effort to devote to each relationship.
The more you know about your clients and their businesses, the better your chances are of understanding their needs and serving them well.
Talk to sales reps and other stakeholders who interact with key accounts regularly. You can also leverage data from your CRM system to gain insights into customer activities.
Once you’ve identified who should be included in this small yet crucial group, gather all relevant data points (sales figures and customer feedback are two good places to start) so that you can identify pain points as well as opportunities for improvement that will make each customer feel valued.
Develop a plan for engagement
Develop an action plan that consists of short-term tasks which will help achieve those goals within their given timeframe. It’s important not only for this document to be shared amongst all stakeholders involved but also for everyone involved in the project itself.
Create a communication plan for each account with the type of communications, frequency, and goals. Have a plan for how you will communicate with each decision-maker in your accounts. This can be as simple as knowing who is responsible for what decisions at the account level.
In addition, it’s important to have a plan of action if you don’t hear back from clients or prospects. Make sure you clearly communicate your expectations on response time and next steps in any outreach activity.
This plan should be tailored to the customer’s requirements and goals and should take into consideration the customer’s long-term future plans as well as their current needs. It should also include information about your company’s offerings, including pricing and delivery methods.
Implement the plan and review the progress regularly
The plan must be implemented to work! Depending on how much time you have, meetings can be scheduled weekly or monthly to review progress with your team or the customer and adjust accordingly if needed.
Once a plan has been implemented, you should review the progress regularly—this will ensure it is still relevant. The review will also allow you to identify additional risks and opportunities, as well as assess whether it is performing as anticipated. For example, if customers aren’t buying a product, you hope they would try changing other aspects of the marketing strategy or offering different incentives for buying that product.
Bottom Line
Not all of this advice is necessarily new. But by placing it all in a list, it makes it easier for designers to manage the ins and outs of the accounts they manage. If you don’t use those 5 steps listed above, you probably have an understanding of what your company is and how it operates. You have a sense of teamwork in the workplace and you live life with integrity in both your personal and professional spheres. If that isn’t the case and these steps aren’t part of your daily routine, there is something wrong.
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