Better Information Will Lead to Better Account Management

by Miller Heiman

Good account strategies aren’t set in a vacuum. They are by definition the effective management of information. The better the information, the better the strategy. Therefore, when you’re ready to improve account management, it’s time to gather account data.

We realize that when you hear the phrase "gather data," your eyes immediately glaze over. You've probably done your share of annual account plans that weigh half as much as the Manhattan phone book. That’s not what we’re getting at. We at Miller Heiman recognize the uselessness of most account data. We’re urging you to put the "More is Better" philosophy in the shredder where it belongs, and concentrate on gathering information you can use.

To help you focus your efforts, we propose two guidelines:

Look for information that relates to what you sell customers.
• Look for information regarding trends in customer business.

The first tip is mere common sense–although you wouldn’t know that from the heft of those phonebook account plans. Your planners can tally up the most sophisticated customer-and industry-data in the world, but if it doesn’t relate to the specific relationship you want to establish with the customer, it’s like what the politician once said about his polyglot opponent: "He knows six languages and has nothing to say."

The second tip is less obvious. Look for information that tells you where your customers are going– and where they think they could be going, given current trends. The key to usability here is that word trends. Any information you can pull together about changes in your account’s business environment, about threats to their position from their competitors, about the direction their business is taking, about their mission–all these things can help you devise a strategy that ties in with, and perhaps complements, their strategic concerns.

Here’s an example from our own business. A couple of years ago, while doing research on one of our clients, we discovered two critical facts. One, their profits were down. Two, their anticipated growth was offshore.

We found plenty more facts, of course. But to the Miller Heiman team that was setting strategies for this large account, we emphasized the importance of these two. Both told us something about change in the customer’s environment: Clearly, profits and international expansion were trend issues. At the same time, both related to our business. Our programs could help increase the customer’s sales productivity and thus profits, and we saw a new market opening for us in the firm’s international group. Two perfectly usable bits of account data. Where do you find such information? Here’s where we advise you to look:

• Your own sales data.This includes both "past" and "future" data.
• The account’s reports. This means, minimally, its latest annual report. It could also include the firm’s 10K report, annual reports from the past two or three years, recent quarterly reports, promotional brochures and product and service literature.
• Investment opinions. If you’re dealing with a public company, assessments of its stock’s viability can provide a useful "health check." Such opinions can come from television commentators, from newspaper reports, and from investment firms’ literature.
• The print media. We recommend that your team assign one person to scour the Internet, reading recently published articles on your account and on its industry, then print out four or five articles that focus on industry changes and trends.
• People in the account. Insiders again. Ask them about what you find in the press. Add to your knowledge of the account, and get a fix on where they think they are, by asking the people you’re selling to directly.

We recommend that the information you pull together be made available to each team member before you begin setting strategy. This doesn’t mean everybody should memorize every line in the account’s financial report. It does mean that everybody on your account team should know how the account is currently positioned in the business environment, and what issues and trends are likely to affect the way you and this customer work together.