If you’re relying on Salesforce to run your key account management (KAM) program, you’re not alone—and you’re probably frustrated. That’s because while Salesforce is a solid CRM for tracking deals, it’s not built to handle the strategic, collaborative, and long-term nature of KAM. Trying to manage strategic account planning with traditional CRM tools often leads to scattered workflows, inefficient prep, and missed opportunities to grow your most important customer relationships.
Here’s the reality: CRM tools don’t offer dedicated account planning modules designed for the complex needs of KAM teams. Instead, most organizations struggle with a “spaghetti mess” of disconnected activities. They end up duct-taping their processes together with spreadsheets, SharePoint, or custom-built workarounds.
This leads to:
- Lack of visibility
- Poor coordination between teams
- Inconsistent execution
- Administrative burdens
But you have options to clean up the “mess” and find a more stable solution. Purpose-built for KAM, Valkre integrates seamlessly with your CRM and equips your team with the tools, structure, and insights they need to deepen partnerships, streamline workflows, and actually drive growth—not just track it.
In this post, we’ll break down where Salesforce falls short, the four levels of KAM maturity, and how Valkre makes account planning effective, collaborative, and scalable.
Sales Force New Account Planning Module: Step Forward or Missed Opportunity?
Salesforce recently announced a new Account Planning module as part of its Winter ‘25 release—an upgrade to its legacy Quip solution. While this signals a nod to the growing importance of account planning and KAM, the new feature still leaves a lot to be desired.
Salesforce’s move helps validate the growing KAM tech category. But when you dig into the functionality, it’s clear this release is more checkbox than game-changer.
Here’s where the new Salesforce module falls short:
- Still Manual. Still Burdensome.
The new module still leans heavily on reps to enter and maintain data manually. There’s minimal automation and zero context-sensitive insights that guide users through complex account strategies. That’s a problem when reps are juggling dozens of strategic accounts and opportunities. - No AI-First Innovation.
Competing platforms in the key account management software space are already leveraging AI to analyze whitespace, recommend next-best actions, and surface opportunities for upselling or cross-selling. Salesforce? Still stuck on static fields and form fills. - Lackluster Support for Adoption.
Rolling out a robust KAM program in an enterprise setting is no small feat. Without dedicated implementation support, training, and user onboarding, even the best features fall flat. Unfortunately, Salesforce’s support is limited to technical assistance—not change management.
Over the last decade, key account management has evolved into a mature, tech-enabled strategy focused on long-term customer growth. Modern solutions integrate methodology, data, and AI to make adoption scalable and impactful across teams.
If you’re leading a strategic sales or key account management team, Salesforce’s new module might seem promising—but it’s not built for the complexity or velocity of modern KAM programs.
Today’s leading account planning platforms go far beyond CRM upgrades. Through four levels of KAM maturity, they embed best practices, enable smart automation, and actually help your team drive customer growth—not just track it.
The Four Levels of Key Account Management Maturity: Where Does Your Team Stand?
Not all key account management programs are created equal. Many organizations are still operating in sales mode with their largest customers—leaving massive growth potential on the table.
At Valkre, we’ve identified four distinct stages of KAM maturity, from basic opportunity tracking to full-on customer co-creation. Understanding where you fall on this spectrum can help you pinpoint what’s holding your team back—and what capabilities you need to advance your team.
Level 1: Account-Based Sales
This is the foundational stage, where most teams start. At this level, engagement is transactional and focused on chasing individual deals. The goal is execution.
Key activities include:
- Building account profiles
- Defining objectives
- Mapping key stakeholders
- Outlining tactics
- Scheduling meetings
- Executing closed-loop marketing
- Managing contracts
Think of this as your CRM comfort zone—organized, but not strategic.
How Valkre Supports Account-Based Sales
At this base level, which focuses on tracking and executing opportunity-focused engagements, Valkre provides core features that replace fragmented tools like spreadsheets, PowerPoint, and Word documents.
Valkre supports this through:
- Account profile
Valkre offers a “one tool for every KAM activity” approach, centralizing customer insights and goals. It includes comprehensive account overview dashboards and allows for custom field creation to capture specific account information. - Objectives, key stakeholders, tactics, meetings, contracts
Valkre provides features for setting and tracking account objectives, managing key stakeholders with interactive mapping tools and profiles, and tracking actions and key meetings. It can also integrate with existing CRM systems to leverage core datasets, like accounts, contacts, opportunities, and tasks. Contracts can be tracked within the platform. - Closed-loop marketing
While more advanced, Valkre facilitates the integration of marketing efforts with account plans.
Level 2: Foundational
Now we’re getting serious. At this stage, organizations begin aligning around tailored strategies that require cross-functional collaboration and account-level visibility.
Core components:
- Capturing account insights
- Creating cross-functional visibility
- Setting account goals
- Aligning teams around execution
- Establishing strategic goals
- Formalizing the account team
- Automating presentations
- Assessing account potential
This is the level where sales, marketing, and service start working in sync—not in silos.
How Valkre Supports Foundational KAM
At the foundational level, Valkre focuses on tailored messaging, strategy, and cross-functional collaboration.
Valkre supports this through:
- Account insights
Valkre’s platform centralizes all data, both internal and external, into one place to provide visibility and enable data-driven decision-making. - Cross-functional team visibility & collaboration
Valkre is designed for teams to work in a unified place, connecting different business units and regions to a single source of truth. It offers role-based visibility and security for cross-functional collaboration, along with task alerts and email notifications to keep team members aligned and informed. - Account goals & strategic goals
The platform helps connect customer goals to internal objectives, creating action plans for mutual value creation. It helps organizations identify, analyze, and map out a strategic key account plan. - Account team & automated presentations
Valkre supports managing account teams and their activities. It features automatic PowerPoint generation for faster account reviews, reducing administrative burden. - Account potential
Valkre helps uncover untapped revenue opportunities within existing accounts through whitespace analysis.
Level 3: Advanced
Welcome to real partnership. At this maturity stage, the focus shifts from selling to your customer to solving problems with them.
Advanced capabilities include:
- Mapping the account’s strategic positioning
- Coaching around account plans
- Instituting plan governance
- Using GenAI agents for account support
- Tracking leading indicators of success
- Launching account-based marketing
- Delivering account-based solutions
- Driving customer-facing collaboration
This is where strategic account managers become trusted advisors—and growth becomes mutual.
How Valkre Supports Advanced KAM
At this level, Valkre’s goal is to achieve true partnership through custom solutions that support customer goals.
Valkre supports this through:
- Account’s strategic positioning
Valkre’s strategic planning features help define a strategic narrative on a single page, mapping priorities, objectives, and tactics. - Account plan coaching & governance
Valkre supports real-time management and coaching through interactive dashboards and configurable reports. It can be configured to reinforce specific processes and track engagement. Valkre also offers automated coaching tools that provide AI-driven insights and real-time feedback. - Account-based GenAI agents
Valkre has integrated GenAI capabilities, with specialized AI agents like “KAM Research Assistant” (for customer research), “KAM Process Expert” (for suggestions), and “KAM Trends Analyst” (for insights and summarization), which aid in decision-making and content creation. - Leading indicators of success
Valkre’s platform allows personalized KPIs and provides account diagnostics and KPI dashboards to track account health. It focuses on leading indicators to assess account health beyond lagging revenue metrics. - Account-based marketing/launch
Valkre orchestrates marketing tactics through playbooks, allowing for the deployment and tracking of marketing campaigns linked to customer initiatives. - Account-based solutions
Valkre’s provides mutual value plans to ensure alignment between customer goals and business objectives, fostering joint success plans. - Customer-facing collaboration
Valkre facilitates customer-facing collaboration through dedicated views and portals, promoting joint account planning.
Level 4: Strategic
This is the pinnacle of KAM maturity. At this level, organizations are not just delivering value—they’re co-creating it with customers in a shared journey of innovation and impact.
Key strategic features:
- Measuring customer impact
- Co-developing new solutions
- Building solution business cases
- Capturing success stories
- Reviewing customer profit & loss data
- Making internal investments
- Offering a branded customer portal
- Delivering ROI measurement
At this stage, your accounts see you as essential to their success—not just another vendor.
How Valkre Supports Strategic KAM
This highest level involves co-creation for ultimate partnership.
Valkre supports this through:
- Customer impact measurement & ROI measurement
Valkre offers features dedicated to measuring value, allowing for the quantification of customer-expected value and delivered value, as well as ROI. - New solutions for account & solution business cases
The platform supports provoking and innovative solutions while blueprinting value propositions. - Success stories
Valkre’s ability to track and quantify value helps generate measurable success stories, reinforcing mutually beneficial partnerships. - Customer profit and loss & internal investments
Valkre can integrate financial data, allowing for financial analysis, including multi-year financial planning and tracking internal investments. - Customer portal
Valkre is designed for the customer to use and access, emphasizing that the account plan is jointly owned through a customer-facing interface and portal. - Continuous innovation and co-creation
Valkre offers regular upgrades and co-creation opportunities with customers, ensuring the solution evolves with their needs and incorporates new best practices from the SAMA community.
Why This Maturity Model Matters
Every team wants to grow revenue, deepen customer partnerships, and retain strategic accounts. But without a clear KAM roadmap—and the right technology to support it—you’re stuck spinning your wheels in Level 1.
Valkre’s platform is designed to help you move up the maturity curve with purpose-built tools, AI-powered automation, and real-time collaboration that make strategic account management scalable, repeatable, and impactful.
Take Your KAM To The Next Level With Valkre
By choosing Valkre, you can overcome fragmentation and inconsistency, transform your organization’s account management into a strategic, data-driven, and collaborative function, and ultimately drive long-term customer value and sustained growth.
Valkre offers:
- A fusion of thought leadership and technology. Thought leadership combined with modern technology, Valkre builds platforms to support KAM best practices, giving you a turn-key pathway to success and customer growth.
- Easy implementation and customization. Tailor your internal key account management process with a user-friendly drag-and-drop interface. Support your unique processes and teams without developer tools or access.
- Continuous improvement and hands-on support. Receive platform updates on a 6-8 week cycle, keeping your team up-to-date with best practices and processes. The Valkre team is always available to help with training and momentum.
- Platform integration flexibility. Use as an agnostic, standalone platform or seamlessly integrate with your existing tech stack. You won’t be bound by technical limitations or restricted by API or CRM capabilities.
If you’re leading a strategic sales or key account management team, Salesforce’s new module might seem promising—but it’s not built for the complexity or velocity of modern ABS programs. When your team is ready to take KAM to the next level, contact Valkre to book a demo to see how strategic key account management can align your strategy, teams, and goals.
