In our series of blog posts covering the B2B account planning stages, so far we’ve researched our accounts, grouped them, and decided which ones to target for further work. Then we’ve strategised on them to create projects that would work best for both us and them, before embarking on the fifth stage, in our previous post, which was to build and execute our plan.

This is where the rubber meets the road. Where all the hard work starts to pay off, or not if we don’t follow through.

The sixth B2B account planning stage is to monitor our progress against the plan. Don’t forget that a plan is a living document. You’ll never get your plan totally right, or even mostly right, so it’s important to monitor as you go, checking actual performance agains planned targets, and adjusting where necessary.

Regular communication is the key here, since it’s a team effort and everyone needs to make sure they’re fulfilling their part of the tasks, or taking action if they’re not. If you don’t communicate regularly, the plan will stagnate, you’ll lose momentum and you won’t monetise all of your great work to date.

Keep going! Keep focused on those specific tasks that help you nibble away at the grand prize, which is securing the go ahead on those high value opportunities.

We’re half way there. We’ve completed the first four stages of the B2B account planning process. We’ve researched, grouped our accounts, targeted the ones we’ll go after. Then, in the crucial fourth B2B account planning stage, we strategised on the accounts and came up with projects that we could work on with our accounts to help them solve problems that we’ve identified for them.

Now we’re onto the fifth B2B account planning stage, which is to build and execute our plan. Building the plan involves being selective about which projects and opportunities you’re going to pursue. In the previous stage you brainstormed lots of potential projects. You can’t do them all – if you can you didn’t create enough of them. Now you need to select the best ones. These are the ones that are in the happy place of offering the most value for you together with the most impact – and hence value – for your accounts.

Once you’ve selected the opportunities you’re going to pursue, you need to make a plan for how you’re going to win the business. This involves understanding how the accounts work and who the movers and shakers are within each account. It also involves breaking the big task of winning the business into a series of smaller tasks where you assign a specific member of your team to secure something definite from a particular member of the account team. Breaking it down this way means that you should only consider smaller tasks that will actually help you towards the big task. Forget all the other smaller tasks that don’t help; they’re a distraction.

Smaller tasks shouldn’t be woolly, like ‘get a meeting with the CEO.’ They should be specific, like ‘get a meeting with the CTO by the end of the month to secure her sponsorship of our project.’ By all means use a more detailed framework for your tasks, like SMART – Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, Timely – because you need to be able to monitor your performance against plan.

When you’ve built your plan, go execute it!

So far our account planning process has seen us do the research, group our accounts, and then, in our previous post, target the accounts we will pursue with more vigour.

Now we come to the fourth B2B account planning stage. It’s arguably the most important stage of the 8 stages, because within it lies the real power of account planning: the power of creation.

The fourth B2B account planning stage is to strategise on your accounts. It works like this.

• What are these accounts’ objectives? What do you think or know each account is trying to accomplish?
• What’s stopping them from achieving their objectives? What problems do they have?
• What will happen if they don’t do something to fix the problem?
• Crucially, how can you help them fix their problems? What projects with you should your accounts invest in to get to where they want to be?

In a nutshell, you’re doing the work for your customer, but from your expert perspective. What initiatives should they take on? What does success look like for these initiatives?

It’s about your accounts’ initiatives first, your products or services second. Once you’ve brainstormed a whole bunch of initiatives or projects for your target accounts, you can map these to a range of possible opportunities for you to develop the account.

I talked about power earlier in this post. The power of this strategising process is that, rather than wait for your accounts to come to you with projects where you’re on the back foot, you’re getting on the front foot and devising projects and solutions to bring to your customers that they may not have thought of – yet. Companies that make a good job of account planning have been able to multiply the amount of opportunities they have in play by 3, 4 sometimes 5 or more times. That’s powerful.

In our previous post, the second B2B account planning stage, we grouped our major accounts into those with combinations of current value to us, together with future value to us. Now it’s time to choose.

The third B2B account planning stage is to target accounts that are going to get more thinking time and more love from you. You’re able to choose because you’ve done some great work to identify those accounts with potential. Congratulations, your homework is about to pay off.

Naturally, you want to focus your efforts on the accounts with a good future potential. After all, you’re already servicing the current work, and planning is about looking to the future. The natural candidates are the top-right quadrant of accounts with good current work and good future potential. Make sure not to overlook those accounts that aren’t doing much right now but whom you’ve identified as your future bankers.

You haven’t finished yet, not by a long chalk, but you’ve got a good foundation to build from. Now it’s time to apply some real attention to your future stars, and how you can help them grow their business.

In the first B2B account planning stage, we covered the research you need to do to update the picture on all your important accounts.

The second B2B account planning stage is grouping.

You’ve profiled your key accounts, now you need to put them in the right groups. To do this, plot how much they mean to your business, now and in the future. Draw a 2-by-2 matrix on a whiteboard. The bottom side represents the relative level of current work you get from the account. The left side is the relative level of future work you can see coming from that account. This future work is a judgement call for where you see the relationship going, and based on your work in the first stage.

Where current work meets future work for a particular account is the place where that account sits on your 2-by-2 matrix. When you’ve done all the accounts, you’ll have 4 groups of accounts. Bottom left is your low current work, low future work grouping (hopefully not too many in there, especially if you’re looking at your main accounts…). The top right quadrant houses your jewels, accounts with a great current supply of work and great potential. The next most attractive group is the top-left section of accounts with lower current work but good potential, leaving your bottom right accounts which give you good work right now but where you see not much coming thereafter.

Two B2B account planning stages down, a bunch to go, but you’re making progress. Now it’s time to narrow your focus and place your bets.

Where to start with theB2B account planning process? Well, at the beginning of course.

The first B2B account planning stage is the research. You need to do the homework on your accounts. You don’t want to do this kind of work on all your accounts. You need to pick the accounts which are strategically important, either because they are large, or because they could get large, or because their name carries weight and helps you market your business.

Once you have got your account list together, you need to update your knowledge in a number of areas:

• Who are the key people in the account, and what are the reporting lines and lines of influence among them?
• What have been their high level activities in the past year? Which industries, products, and do they have leadership or follower positions in those categories?
• What revenue and profit figures have they done over the last 12 months? How are they faring as a business?

It takes time and effort to do your homework, but there’s no substitute for doing it. You have to get it done and it will pay dividends for you.

Don’t do all this yourself. Account planning is all about the team effort, so make sure you mine the information of all the people who work the account, both those in front of the customer and behind the scenes. This is where the whole is greater than the sum of the individual parts.