Key account managers have a HARD job: Members of the customer buying team are… HIDDEN (the person saying “no” may be completely unknown), ABUNDANT (on average, 5.4 people are involved in B2B buying decisions), RELUCTANT (stakeholders believe they’re “too busy to meet with a salesperson”), and DISAGREEING (they have different perspectives on what is needed). To overcome this, try Key Account Blueprinting… New Product Blueprinting applied to one large account at a time.
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To optimize your efficiency, innovate for the entire market segment. Usually. But some clever Blueprinting users have applied the same interview methods to one large account at a time to reap three benefits: 1) Retention: They work so closely with the key account that this customer doesn’t want to use competing alternatives. 2) Expanded business: Customers naturally want more of their focused help. 3) Pricing: They learn how to modify their products precisely in the ways the customer values most, leading to higher pricing.
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According to the authors of The Challenger Customer, “The limiting factor is rarely the salesperson’s inability to get an individual stakeholder to agree to a solution. More often it’s that the stakeholders inside the company can’t even agree with one another about what the problem is.” To overcome this, try Key Account Blueprinting… New Product Blueprinting applied to one large account at a time. This forces stakeholder agreement.
More in white paper, Key Account Blueprinting