What’s your key account marketing plan? Kunde & Co on Marketing Strategy June 2014

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Summary

B2B marketing is no longer a matter of delivering support tools and services to the sales organisation. The challenge for marketing is to take more of an independent role in B2B as a positioning driver. The loss of an extremely close, direct connection between sales and marketing also causes a loss in the alignment of sales and marketing investments for driving business. There isn’t necessarily sufficient marketing focus on generating revenue streams, as sales often ignores what will drive future revenue. B2B sales and marketing needs to re-align its objectives and priorities.

The sales focus in B2B

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The 80:20 rule Sales behaviour is often characterised by differentiated prioritisation of the customer base – not every client gets or needs the same focus. This prioritisation re#ects the scope of the business relationship, in that customers with high priority and focus generate the biggest revenue. This prioritisation rarely equals the business potential, but more often is of importance to the company’s existing turn-over. Selling is connecting The selling in B2B is a long process of building relationships, removing concerns and developing solutions which match the customer’s demands. Establishing and developing these connections is the critical challenge for the sales organisation.

The question is: does marketing facilitate

creating and sustaining connections to the most relevant customers?

A

B

C

Marketing typically focuses on target groups

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The stakeholder focus Marketing professionals typically focus on the target groups and stakeholders – Engineers, Installers, Doctors, Accountants, etc. Or on segments with similar responsibilities – CSR, Production, R&D and IT. The marketing challenge is to develop and optimise communication towards the entire value chain around the core target group, and to develop sales tools with the same target group in mind. This approach makes sense from a “total market” perspective and allows focus on the full market opportunity. But rarely does it include consideration of the individual customer’s business potential.

Even though the target group focus makes a lot of sense from a marketing strategy and

positioning perspective, the actual implementation and marketing planning might

need to include a detailed business potential consideration.

The sales – marketing clash

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Talking different languages It’s no surprise that sales often perceive marketing as money wasted on nice pictures and smashing headlines. While marketing feels that sales reduce the marketing task to a matter of making tools, only supporting the direct sales process, and not driving the entire business. Rethinking the planning The challenge is for marketing to rethink the marketing plan. Marketing must engage in the discussion of how to broaden the perspective of the customer’s decision-making process, and address the need for in#uencing preference and opinions beyond the actual sales meeting. Include the must-win battles Of course it’s impossible to reallocate all marketing resources according to the business potential of each individual customer. But almost every business has a set of high priority customers or projects. And these should be included in the marketing planning considerations.

The key account relationship

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Broaden customer engagement It’s evident that the sales relationship to key decision-makers is crucial for success. The direct contact drives the understanding of needs and ensures solutions are designed to meet core demands. But in larger projects or framework agreements, the decision-making process is paved with hidden agendas. The solutions must be feasible in multiple dimensions – $nancial, risk management, sustainability, quality and many more. This decision-making criteria re#ects the stakeholder system within the organisation. The challenge is to get the right arguments across to the right stakeholders. It’s mission impossible for the key account manager to handle that task alone.

In other words the sales performance can surely be improved and optimised through a close

integration of the sales and marketing approach.

KAM marketing touch-points

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Apply segmentation according to accessibility The $rst step is to apply a segmented approach and agree that key account sales can not establish and maintain the same level of engagement among all stakeholders. Some stakeholders are very hard to approach directly. Either they might be too high or too low in the organisation, or their actual responsibilities make a face-to-face engagement difficult to create. Still, it’s crucial that they are in#uenced. This is where all relevant touch-points must be segmented according to accessibility level. The “direct access” points are the usual key account touch points. The “limited access” points are the touch points that might possibly yield some access, but don’t create close relationships. Finally there are the “no access” stakeholders. These are often a large group of people who form opinions in the organisation and in#uence the general preference for solutions in regards to speci$c questions. They often don’t have line functions, but are specialists who strongly in#uence decisions in regards to these speci$c questions, for example – IT, Finance, CSR, or Legal.

The KAM marketing framework

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The KAM marketing framework Based on the segmentation, it’s possible to de$ne a marketing framework and consider communication channels to all stakeholders. This approach includes an additional target group – the internal staff. There might be a range of people in your own organisation who need to be informed and support the approach – this might be the local sales set-up, service people or specialists with direct customer contact. It’s possible to build an intelligent marketing approach where the stakeholders are segmented in a speci$c organisation according to their professional “authority”. Intelligent usage of behavioural and pro$le data enables a very targeted marketing approach, which can be multiplied and implemented across a larger number of key accounts.

This approach will level up key account marketing to be a lot more than just a support function of the

key account managers. It will drive opening business opportunities from entirely new places.

But it demands a very deep integration of sales and marketing skills – integration which the B2B

marketers need to face soon.

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About us

Søren Poulsen, Managing Partner, Kunde & Co   Søren (sp@kunde.dk) focuses on developing brand and marketing strategies for international companies. His key ambition is to make brand and marketing activities a driver for business opportunities – too often marketing is focused on areas which don't truly add value to the business. He believes there is a need in many companies to create stronger integration between marketing and sales. In that regard the marketing strategy process is a vital part of the solution. This is where he sees the biggest opportunities in making a difference and creating results.

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About us

Kunde & Co is an international full-service branding and advertising agency We are highly experienced in every facet of marketing. The agency specialises in creating overall marketing strategies, branding and strengthening companies’ market positions. Our approach is holistic and focuses on integrated solutions. Headquartered in Copenhagen, the agency also has offices in Switzerland and Germany. 

Contact us: Kunde & Co Østerfælled Torv 4, 2100, Copenhagen Ø, Denmark Phone: + 45 35 44 12 00 info@kunde.dk www.kunde-co.com