Today’s enterprise sales teams are facing higher levels of competitive pressure and complexity. Now more than ever, it’s important to capitalize on competitive advantages and get your sales team equipped with the right tools and market intelligence to drive deal flow. Right now, with existing accounts responsible for 70-80% of an enterprise’s total revenue, many sales leaders are getting more interested in the concept of Key Account Management (KAM).
Often, the biggest growth lever for a B2B sales team is to drive an expanded partnership with top priority accounts. Key Account Management can be the path to that lucrative and cost-effective growth. And Valkre KAM software can be the most essential tool to help your organization realize the value of KAM.
But how do you know if KAM software is really “worth it” for your organization? The answer to “who should use Valkre?” depends on a few key factors, and might be different for each company based on your team’s maturity level on the KAM journey.
Let’s take a closer look at how to know who needs KAM software, and how to decide if Valkre is right for your sales organization.
Who Should Use Valkre: Companies Ready for a Deep KAM Approach
The first piece in the discussion around who needs KAM software often centers on the size of the enterprise. Companies with $250 million or more in revenue are often “big enough” to use KAM software. But the real decision is more complex than just the size of the enterprise.
One of the biggest factors in whether or not a company needs KAM software is whether the company has already segmented and identified its top accounts, such as its top 10 or top 100 clients by revenue. Companies that should start considering purpose-driven KAM software have already started their journey toward using Key Account Management with this first step. They’re already thinking strategically about those top 10, top 100, or top 200 accounts. They already have sales teams and account planners who are focusing on conversations around “We’re going to grow mutual value with these top-priority accounts in a different way.”
So, how do you know if your company should use Valkre as your KAM software of choice? The biggest difference here happens with the maturity level of your company’s journey toward KAM. If your team is still in the earliest stages of identifying and prioritizing key accounts, you might not be ready for Valkre KAM software yet. If your team is talking about Key Account Management in a more advanced, complex way, then you might be closer to being ready for Valkre KAM software.
But ultimately, we find that companies that are the best fit for Valkre have embraced a Key Account Management mindset. They’re starting to reshape their sales culture around the concept of “We’re not just selling to these large companies, we’re trying to build partnerships.” They want to actually manage their most important customers with the attention to detail and opportunity-identifying mindset they deserve.
What Makes Valkre Different Among KAM Software Options
Companies that want to use Key Account Management to build partnerships, unlock mutual value, and grow faster (in a lower-risk, cost-effective way) tend to be a good fit for KAM software and are operationally ready to sign up with Valkre. Key Account Management is different from tracking transactions and closed deals. It’s different from Customer Relationship Management (but Valkre integrates with CRM platforms). And it’s different from being a superstar seller.
Instead, Key Account Management helps sales teams achieve bigger ROI by becoming strategic partners to their most important customers. Instead of just closing deals, KAM helps sales teams collaborate with customers, expand opportunities, and create mutual long-term value.
Valkre speaks to that higher degree of complexity of KAM. Your sales organization might be doing some things already that are related to Key Account Management. You might have a desire to move in that direction. You might be hearing some top-down questions from the C-Suite asking about “what are our Key Account Managers doing? Are they just selling, or can we create more opportunity for these high-priority customers without expending more time?”
Some sales teams admire the idea of Key Account Management and want to implement it, but haven’t managed to be successful at it yet. Some companies have tried, but end up having to rebuild their sales planning programs every 2 years because they haven’t had the right structure. Or some companies get to a point where they realize that their competitors are doing KAM, their competitors are having higher-value conversations and building strategic partnerships with customers, while they’re missing out on competitive advantage.
Valkre is the solution for companies ready to approach KAM correctly. Every company of a certain size has someone managing the top 20 clients, whether or not they call it “KAM.” When the Valkre team starts to talk with a prospective customer, we want to hear from you about what kind of work your sales planning team is doing, and what outcome you desire most – is it a deeper partnership or is it just more deals?
Part of the journey of finding the right KAM software is the process of finding out if your company is really ready to do Key Account Management the right way. Valkre isn’t just a KAM software vendor – we see ourselves as a strategic partner to support our customers’ journey through Key Account Management.
Here are a few signs that your company should use Valkre KAM software:
- Your company’s sales process involves complex deals, multiple stakeholders, multiple locations, and long sales cycles
- You have already identified and segmented your top 10, top 50, top 100, or top 200 customer accounts
- Your sales organization is already deploying cross-functional account teams (Field Sales, Marketing, Medical, Market Access, Customer Success, Operations, Leadership etc.) to create and support good opportunities for growth with your key customers
- Your enterprise is already investing in Key Account Management or Strategic Account Management, but execution is inconsistent
If you’re trying to grow and advance your current KAM program and focus on creating mutual value within long-term partnerships, your company is ready to benefit from using KAM software. Valkre can help you take the next step. If your company is still in the early stages of thinking about or identifying your strategic accounts, you may not be ready for Valkre.
Overcoming Obstacles to Key Account Management
A few common obstacles often hold companies back from being successful with Key Account Management. Valkre helps you beat them.
These include:
- Lack of Sponsorship: Your KAM team needs aircover and buy-in from senior leadership. Senior leadership needs to understand what you’re seeing – and what you’re achieving. When senior leaders give their buy-in on Key Account Management, with clear KPIs and expectations, this can help sales organizations adopt KAM more effectively.
- Lack of Skills and Structure: Sales teams often need training, coaching, and guidance on how to implement KAM. Without a programmatic approach, aligned with KAM’s best practices, you KAM can devolve into simple B2B sales motions. That’s why Valkre partners with SAMA to provide your KAM team with both best-in-class technology and comprehensive training.
- Lack of Alignment, Weak Governance: When account plans are isolated and siloed, this can make it harder to get sales teams focused on the right customers and priorities. Valkre helps you keep the whole team on the same page: ditch the spreadsheets, presentation decks, and Word docs. Valkre unifies your team with an integrated, all-in-one account planning platform.
- Lack of Enablement: Speaking of loose data sources: too often, sales teams have disparate tools, misaligned CRM systems, and manual processes that keep Key Account Management from becoming reality. When sales data is stranded on spreadsheets and slide decks, the sales organization loses visibility. Valkre integrates with any system with an API to pull every piece of data into one system for full context on your most important accounts.
Valkre KAM software is built to beat these blockers. We give our customers access to a proven KAM Workflow, KAM Accelerators to drive adoption, and KAM Expertise to help sales teams launch and guide their Key Account Management programs over time.
Is KAM Software Worth It? Understanding ROI
When your company is ready for an operationally mature approach to Key Account Management, you can start to realize the ROI of KAM software. If you’re serious about Key Account Management, you can’t afford not to invest in KAM software.
Valkre KAM software helps solve those key problems that often cause KAM programs to fail. It gets your sales data out of siloes and off of manual processes like form fills, PowerPoint, and Excel. It gives you consistent workflows and alignment across sales and account planning teams. It gives clear, one-source-of-truth visibility to sales leadership. And it helps sales organizations create accountability and follow-through for implementing KAM effectively.
What’s the ROI of KAM software? It can be significant. Research from the Strategic Account Management Association shows that KAM programs can drive 2x+ growth when done well.
So the real question isn’t “is KAM software worth it?” It’s: “Is your sales organization willing to leave that 2x growth on the table?” If not, investing in Valkre KAM software can give you the necessary infrastructure, visibility and organizational alignment to execute Key Account Management successfully.
Are you ready to do Key Account Management the right way, with a mature approach to building partnerships with your most important customers? We can create a custom demo environment for you that shows how Valkre can align with your organization’s key sales priorities.
Start the conversation by booking your demo today: https://valkre.com/demo/
