World class sales organizations leverage the best practice of vendor or key account score card utilization. No I’m not referring to the sales rep score card. No, this is not simply the Service Level Agreement (SLA’s) you may have in place. This is a score card you sit down with your key account and walk through the responsibilities and performance each party is being measured against and discuss any gaps.
Example #1 below is a traditional accountabilities section for a sales rep score card. Example #2 below represents an excerpt from a vendor score card. You’ll notice some similarities in structure, after all this is your supplier-client score card. The key is measuring those performance requirements defined by the Key Account Agreement so both parties continuously understand the performance and value being provided. Part of your job as Key Account Manager is to continue to remind the client of the value being received by opting into the Key Account Program.
Example # 1: Sales Rep Accountabilities Score Card Section
Example # 2: Partial Score Card for Key Account Review
I believe Peter Drucker said it best: “What’s Measured Gets Managed”. In this case, if you can’t continuously quantify the value you provide the Key Account and measure it, it doesn’t exist for the client. In many cases the value proposition is discussed once during the sales process, perhaps a benefit analysis is performed during the course of the program but when maintaining an up-sell cross-sell approach; value needs to be constantly reinforced and the score card review is the opportunity to do that.
What is the recommended frequency of the Key Account Score Card review? The best practice is to perform the review on a monthly basis. Some might say that’s too frequent, let’s not forget these are your “Key” accounts which means they fall under the 80-20 rule as the subset of accounts that generate 80% of your revenue. Is a monthly score card review too frequent, no.
We’ve developed our key account score card and created the ability to express and reinforce the value being provided. In my next post, I’ll discuss how we’ll determine which clients should be part of the our Key Account Management program.
