No Plan, No Value Proposition = No Key Account!

Welcome to 2010! - Happy New Year.

After enjoying the Christmas break I was eager to return and start work on the plans and goals I set for 2010, building momentum from the start of the year.
During the last few weeks of 2009 I took the opportunity to build a much more robust business plan for the coming year and beyond. Although I do believe this year needs to be approached with a healthy dose of both cautious optimism and realism I am very much looking forward to the challenges and opportunities that it will bring.

Part of my business plan includes an operational plan broken down into the various parts I see making up my business. After setting the outcome, performance and process goals I want to achieve the natural progression was to look in detail at the How?

In terms of growing our level of client interventions, and therefore increasing the number of projects with each client, I decided to develop specific plans for each of our key clients where further development has been identified and, most importantly based on my last posting, there is an intention on both parties to develop our relationship. It was a really useful process. It made me think about how often I have seen Key Account plans written, and the answer is - rarely! I feel this is a major shortcoming when you consider the size and potential value that could be delivered for both us and our clients.

So I thought I would consider the purpose of a 'client development plan' so that we may be able to derive more mutual value for us and our clients.

First question is usually "How big should the plan be?". The answer must have something to do with the following uses:

1. Collect all the data and information on the client
2. Get your thoughts together

I don't think these are valid reasons. Yes, we have to collect all relevant data and information. And, yes, we should get our thoughts together but these shouldn't be the focus of the plan.
The plan needs to be the outcome of these.

In my mind the client development plan should be about communicating objectives and actions, providing a way to track progress and ensuring we are offering the right value proposition.

If this is the purpose then the answer to "How long?" must be: "as short as we can make it!"
Plans that run to dozens of pages with endless analysis and background data are not very helpful (and rarely read!!), and in my experience plans that are this size are usually written to prove how much expertise and importance the CRM has!!!!

So, the ideal plan should be focused on objectives and the actions required to achieve those objectives, which may even have you shrinking it down to one or two pages.

Of course we shouldn't try to limit the scope of a client development plan, and we should remember that it is more than just a sales plan, differentiating itself by the breadth of the objectives, which goes well beyond just the figures. This may run to more than one page and it is the sign of an effective CRM when this balance is just right for everyones needs.

In completing this process for myself I have found that, in fact, each client will have differing content based on our mutual strategic intent and that by producing something that I can refer back to I have a working document that provides the "How" to my goals and milestones. And given that we really don't know if this year will be all uphill or not having this at least means I can drive my business forward in a planned, foucused manner!