If I were to summarize the essence of key account managementOpens a new window , it would be ‘value creation’ for the customer.
To create value for the customer, a key account manager must the understand customer’s business well to figure out what challenges they may face. Then, create solutions to address those challenges using his own products, services, people, technology or even process.
Let’s say this is done. What’s next?
The key account manager must now communicate this solution to the right people in the customer organization and that hope they believe in him and the solutions he proposes.
But in order to do so, there are some questions that must be answered:
- Who are the right people to touch base with?
- Where do they lie in the formal hierarchy of their organization?Â
- What are the informal influences between those people?
- Who are our supporters and detractors today?
- Who controls what budgets?
- With whom have we won/lost opportunities in the past?
- Who are pursuing active opportunities today?
- Who is that champion who can introduce him to that ‘unaware’ contact with a big budget?
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Most of the answers to these questions are what we sometimes call ‘tribal knowledge’. It is in the heads of multiple people in our company. In Salesforce, all that can be seen is a list of the contacts in a very unappealing way.
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Consolidating all this knowledge into an interactive and visual heat map is integral. This is generally called an Org Chart and is critical to not only building relationships but also in communicating their value to all key account managers who may need to leverage it. With an Org Chart Software, it becomes a lot easier to build interactive org charts that can be accessed by the entire key account management team.
One such Org Chart Software is the DemandFarm’s Org ChartOpens a new window  in Salesforce which makes it easier to build such interactive and visual org charts using all the contacts in Salesforce.
With this Org Chart Software, you can simply drag and drop contacts from Salesforce to build Org Charts quickly. The visual heat maps can allow key account managers to look at client relationships from multiple views and leverage this information to mine existing accounts.