It’s common to discover that a large or key account’s growth stalls, or that the account has become at-risk.
To mitigate these situations, we recommend adding account cadence, or an account governance plan to your account plans. Account cadence are a series of ongoing prescheduled meetings with stakeholder groups across both companies.
The purpose of an account cadence is to proactively develop the required relationships between both companies before something goes wrong. Regular, pre-scheduled meetings build mutual understanding of the value of the relationship and rapport at levels above the day-to-day operations and sales teams. In other words, these regular meetings need to take place outside of traditional Quarterly Business Reviews (QBRs), and their purpose and agenda need to be artfully structured and communicated.
Orchestrating resources once an account relationship becomes stressed consumes more time and internal resources than proactive stakeholder engagement.
Key account growth contributes as much as eighty percent of sales growth for some companies. That growth often depends on relationships, collaboration and being well-positioned across multiple key account’s stakeholders. Ensuring that this happens requires a robust, broad, complete account cadence as part of the account plan.