Strategic account managers (and their bosses) deserve better decision-making tools

By William Trail, Co-Founder, Opportunity State

If you have experienced the pain, humiliation and fear of having to tell your manager that you are not going to hit your “blood number,” your commit for the quarter, then I have news for you: It’s not your fault. You don’t have the technology to predict 90 days in advance which deals will be finalized in time.

But assigning blame doesn’t really matter, does it?  In the end, if you fail to meet your commitment, you fail to meet your commitment.  To be sure, a sales leader or SAM manager will have responsibilities beyond revenue. But typically, 30 to 40 percent of a SAM’s compensation will be tied to revenue. This being the case, then he or she should have significant input into which opportunities are pursued, since it is the SAM who has the account/political knowledge of his or her account. And yet several trends are converging to make decisions over deployment or resources more difficult. To name a few:

• The average size of buying groups consists of 11 active members (plus additional occasional ones), per Gartner.
• Only around 60 percent of account managers are making quota, per HBR.
• Senior management needs to see fast results, especially in a recession.
• Average tenure for sales execs has dropped from 26 months to just 19. 
• Gartner reports that 58 percent of sales executives struggle to complete assigned tasks . 
• Assessing account opportunities has become that much more difficult during a pandemic, when face-to-face interaction is limited or non-existent.
• Only 36 percent of a sales executives’ time is spent selling or coaching, and remote coaching is much more difficult.

The challenge becomes how to decide which opportunities that account managers bring forward should be pursued. 

If you’re a SAM and want to quickly lose credibility, just go into your CRM and add up all the factored opportunities and submit that as your “Commit.” Two quarters of that, and you’ll be looking for a new job. Why? Because most sales professionals hate their CRM system. Today, a SAM must wade through data stored in the corporate CRM to try to understand the status of an opportunity. Often this data is out of date or inaccurate because, once it’s been input, it’s rarely updated. 

The bottom line: Better SAMs and SAM leaders need better technology – technology to enable them to make informed decisions regarding deployment of scarce pre-sales resources.

The solution

Since SAM managers are tasked with annual and/or multi-year revenue growth, they should have significant input as to which opportunities should be pursued within their assigned account(s). Better decision-making technology would have a major impact on win rates and cost of sales. When a decision needs to be made regarding deployment of additional resources, invariably it’s time dependent. The head of strategic accounts and his or her account managers would benefit from being able to view a real-time map of each and every opportunity. Sales professionals in general are very visual. 

This map would show: 

• Members of the buying committee – with pictures and status of relationship with each committee member 
• Changes in title or position of buying committee members
• New members added to buying committee late in buying cycle 
• Data on how responsive members of the committee have been to supplier emails, calls and texts
• Relationship between different members of the account team and members of the buying committee
• Historical data about wins/losses based on the committee member designated “Champion”

With this in hand, decisions on resource allocation would be based on current data, and less on anecdotal evidence. Account managers can be very good at selling their “deals” internally. If enterprise sales had a tool that tracked the evolution of the individual buying teams, scarce pre-sales resources would be applied more effectively, resulting in better use of resources and more accurate forecasting by sales executives.

With this in hand, decisions on resource allocation would be based on current data, and less on anecdotal evidence. Account managers can be very good at selling their “deals” internally. If enterprise sales had a tool that tracked the evolution of the individual buying teams, scarce pre-sales resources would be applied more effectively, resulting in better use of resources and more accurate forecasting by sales executives. 

NFL broadcasts give “managers” (and fans) a win/loss percentage after every play!  Don’t salespeople and account managers deserve the same?  Their careers are on the line as well as their companies’ results.

To learn more or continue the conversation, contact the author at wtrail@opportunitystate.com.