Strategic key account planning: How to do it

If you’ve never written a strategic key account plan before – or even if you have – it can seem like a formidable task. If you don’t believe in its value, you’ll question whether it’s worth the effort. But you really need a plan to show your key account and your own company where you are planning to take this business, because you won’t obtain the necessary resources and co-operation of either if you don’t. 

Your plan should be the blueprint for your activity and that of your key account team on a daily basis. It’s easy to get blown off course by ‘noise’ in the environment, but the plan can be your guide to making sure you are moving forward purposefully. If you have properly researched your customer and your own organisation and built your plan on those foundations, it will stay relevant and compelling from one year to the next – with annual reviews – and ensure that you deliver on your customer commitments.   

The objectives of this track through relevant items in AKAM’s Member Resources are to:

1. Demonstrate the value and importance of building a strategic key account plan
2. Identify the barriers to planning in yourself and your organisation and help you deal with them
3. Clarify what a good plan looks like 
4. Makes you aware of some of the analyses, tools and approaches you can use to create the plan
5. Provides a plan format and worksheets that capture your analysis and thinking

If you follow the track you’ll produce a much more valuable and effective plan than starting from a deadline and a blank sheet of paper. But then you must go and do it! Great KAM requires excellent planning AND implementation. You will also be able to gain valuable CPD points if you want them.

The materials will take about five hours to complete, if you sample the plan worksheets and format.  This is worth 5 CPD points. (To produce a comprehensive, business-ready plan will take considerably longer, spending on how much information you start with.) 

You can access all the material without completing the quizzes, but you won’t gain CPD points if you don’t complete these quizzes, scoring at least 60% on each. 

If you fall short, yet wish to gain the CPD points, don’t worry, you can easily go through the material again and retake the quiz.

Structure of strategic key account planning materials:

• Key account plans – What are they and why do we have them? Podcast with Richard Ilsley and Olivier Rivière. Estimated time to complete: 30 minutes, links to objective a

• What’s the problem with strategic plans? Paper identifying issues to consider and avoid from AKAM’s Programme Directors Forum. Estimated time to complete: 30 minutes, links to objective b

• Strategic key account plans in practice: Webinar with Pfizer’s Geoff Quinn on how to overcome the barriers and produce better plans. Estimated time to complete: 45 minutes, links to objectives a and b

• Essential elements of strategic account plans: Paper with Professor Malcolm McDonald and Dr Diana Woodburn laying out their purpose, content and production process. Estimated time to complete: 45 minutes, links to objectives c and d

• Strategic key account plans and planning: Workshop (Diana Woodburn at AKAM Technical 2023) with a structured process for developing strategies and producing the plan. Estimated time to complete: 1 hour, links to objectives c, d and e

• Strategic key account plans – worksheets: Blank tools and tables to guide and capture your analysis and thinking, to be appended to the plan. Estimated time to complete: 1 hour, links to objectives d and e

• Strategic key account plans – format: Blank Word document (optimum format) to summarise the analysis and capture strategies and objectives. Estimated time to complete: 1 hour, links to objectives c, d and e