Street Smarts

Sales Account Planning 101 by Barry MacKechnie

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Is your sales process structured in a way that ensures that you retain and gain large clients? If not, you should consider developing a sales account plan to focus your sales team on profitable clients, products and services. Developing and executing a sales account plan can bring significant revenue rewards. To develop your process, follow these nine steps:

Identify your sales channels, divisions, and types: Review your past two years of sales, sorting by areas and distinct sales group.  Distinct sales groups could include:

• Product line or product category
• Geographic sales area or sales region or country
• Customer type such as commercial, government, retail, etc.
• Divisions such as manufactured goods, distributed goods, etc.

Identify the top 20 to 25 percent of your current clients for each channel: Sort each distinct sales groups by total sales and identify your top clients in terms of profit margin and revenue.

Create a sales account plan for each large client: Create a unique sales account plan for each of your top clients, based on their sales history. A basic plan should: 

• Identify the sales team responsible for your client.
• Show historical sales information for that client.
• Estimate next year’s revenues for that client.
• Identify business development opportunities within the client.
• Create strategies to preserve current sales and generate new revenue from the client.
• Detail the steps and timing of your plan to realize the revenue goals for that client.

Identify target clients that you want to win in the current year: Every business needs to add new clients to thrive.  Create a profile for your ideal client.  Identify target clients for each sales area that you want to win in the current year.

Create sales account plans for each target client: After you identify target clients, create a sales account plan for each of them. A new business sales account plan should:

• Identify the sales team responsible for the targeted client.
• Estimate historical purchasing the target client makes from your competitors.
• Call the client’s purchasing department.
• Find out how they make buying decisions.
• Find out who makes the buying decisions and who influences the buying decisions.
• Create a “buying decision” organization chart of the target client.

Identify any sales opportunities by asking the target client if you can do it cheaper, better or faster, etc. Detail the steps and timing of your planned actions. Coordinate your sales efforts with your marketing department and website team to maximize your presentation.

Calculate your sales goals: One of the final tests of your sales plan is to add up all of the revenues from your current client and target client sales account plans.  Do the collective sales account plan goals meet your sales goals?  If yes, then you can execute the plans.  If not, then review the plans again and make revisions to your strategies to get more sales or revise the sales goals to match the account plans.

Execute the sales account plans: Review your plan weekly and confirm that your team is completing the action items on a timely basis and getting the expected results.

Revise your compensation programs to match your sales account plans: Many companies start a sales account planning process to correct antiquated incentive compensation systems.  Think about resetting your incentive, bonus or commission programs to coincide with team and/or individual achievements.

Mitigate the single point of failure in your plan: A good sales account plan is a well thought out strategy that is client-focused and creative. Some of the most successful sales account plans involve discussions and planning sessions with the client and also brainstorming with your staff by presenting questions such as “What would you do to steal your client if they belonged to your competitor?”

Sales account planning requires time, dedication and focus. But the rewards are increased market share, revenue and profits.


Barry MacKechnie, Founder and Owner of MacKechnie Consulting, Inc and has been advising CEOs and providing executive level services to clients and organizations for over 40 years. To see a sample account plan template, click here. You can contact Barry at barry@ceo-services.com

Bloomberg: U.S. Economy Grew at 5.7% Pace, Most in Six Years

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The economy in the U.S. expanded at the fastest pace in six years as factories cranked up assemble lines and companies increased investment in equipment and software, Bloomberg reports.

The 5.7% increase in GDP, which exceeded the median forecast of economists polled by Bloomberg News, marked the best performance since the third quarter of 2003, figures from the Commerce Department showed today.

"The economy is still healing and improving," said John Silva, chief economist at Well Fargo Securities, who projected a 5.6% gain in GDP. "I think this is a sustainable recovery."

Click here to read this story in its entirety at Bloomberg.com.

CEO Confidence Index Jumps Unprecedented 15 Points

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SAN DIEGO--(Business Wire)--

There is a new surge of optimism among Main Street CEOs, according to the
Vistage CEO Confidence Index. The Q3 Index recorded the highest quarterly gain
in economic confidence since 2003. The quarterly CEO Confidence Index rose to
84.9, up from 69.0 in the 2nd quarter of this year and 48.7 percent in the last
quarter of 2008. 

"Half of the CEOs in our survey believe the economic recovery has begun," says
Rafael Pastor, Chairman of the Board and CEO of Vistage International. "More
than 80 percent see their company revenues and profits increasing in the next 12
months. While Main Street CEOs do not expect the recovery to be easy, they are
adopting new strategies for the new economic landscape." 

CEOs cited targeting new types of customers and developing new lines of products
and services, as well as using social media and online marketing more, as their
top three strategies to adapt to the new economic landscape. Also, 43 percent of
the CEOs are currently doing or plan to do business internationally in the next
12 months, with Europe and China being the principal places to expand. 

Despite the renewed optimism, economic uncertainty and financial issues were
cited as the top two concerns of the Vistage CEOs. Only 11 percent find it
easier today than six months ago to obtain credit; 46 percent find it no easier;
and the rest don`t require credit. 

Health Care Hot Topic Among CEOs

The Vistage CEOs are essentially split on whether there should be federal
legislation to change the healthcare system, with 45 percent saying it`s
necessary and 49 percent saying it`s not. However, when asked about the
healthcare legislation currently being proposed, only 10 percent of the CEOs
said it would be good for their business, while 66 percent said it would be bad.


Employment Plans Remain Cautious

Although 39 percent of firms expect to expand their workforce in the next twelve
months, the most common expectation is that firms will keep employment at its
current level during the year ahead. Even among those firms that anticipate
hiring, most of the new jobs are expected to be filled after the start of 2010. 

Inflation Not Likely

Only 20 percent of the CEOs expect to increase prices during the next twelve
months; 63 percent expect to keep prices the same; and 16 percent expect prices
to decrease. This may be an indication that fears of inflation in the coming
year should be tempered. 

Confidence Varies By Industry

Among the industries surveyed, CEOs in the real estate and construction
industries have the lowest overall confidence in the current economy, with CEOs
in the services industry having the most positive outlook. CEOs in the wholesale
trade and manufacturing industries expect their firms` profitability to be, on
average, seven percent higher than the national average. Similarly, CEOs in the
services industry expect their sales to be seven percent higher than the
national average. 

The Q3 2009 Vistage CEO Confidence Index is a compilation of responses from
1,789 CEOs of small- to mid-sized companies in the United States, surveyed
between September 14-24, 2009, with a margin of error of 1.8 percentage points.
The quarterly Vistage CEO Confidence Index, established in 2003, is the nation`s
largest and only comprehensive report of their opinions and projections. 

about Vistage International 

Vistage is a CEO peer organization in 16 countries with nearly 14,500 members.
Collectively, Vistage members run companies with an estimated $300 billion in
revenues and employ two million people. In addition to their peer groups,
Vistage CEO members have access to expert resources speakers and receive monthly
one-to-one coaching from a mentor called a Vistage Chair. The sharing of
information in a Vistage group is completely confidential, allowing for the open
exchange of issues, ideas and solutions. For more information, please visit
www.vistage.com. 

Successful companies in social media

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Successful companies in social media act more like party planners, aggregators, and content providers than traditional advertiser….

Stats from Social Media Video (sources listed below by corresponding #)

1. By 2010 Gen Y will outnumber Baby Boomers….96% of them have joined a social network
2. Social Media has overtaken porn as the #1 activity on the Web
3. 1 out of 8 couples married in the U.S. last year met via social media
4. Years to Reach 50 millions Users:  Radio (38 Years), TV (13 Years), Internet (4 Years), iPod (3 Years)…Facebook added 100 million users in less than 9 months…iPhone applications hit 1 billion in 9 months.
5. If Facebook were a country it would be the world’s 4th largest between the United States and Indonesia (note that Facebook is now creeping up – recently announced 300 million users)
6. Yet, some sources say China’s QZone is larger with over 300 million using their services (Facebook’s ban in China plays into this)
7. comScore indicates that Russia has the most engage social media audience with visitors spending 6.6 hours and viewing 1,307 pages per visitor per month – Vkontakte.ru is the #1 social network
8. 2009 US Department of Education study revealed that on average, online students out performed those receiving face-to-face instruction
9. 1 in 6 higher education students are enrolled in online curriculum
10. % of companies using LinkedIn as a primary tool to find employees….80%
11. The fastest growing segment on Facebook is 55-65 year-old females
12. Ashton Kutcher and Ellen Degeneres (combined) have more Twitter followers than the  population of Ireland, Norway, or Panama.  Note I have adjusted the language here after someone pointed out the way it is phrased in the video was difficult to determine if it was combined.
13. 80% of Twitter usage is outside of Twitter…people update anywhere, anytime…imagine what that means for bad customer experiences?
14. Generation Y and Z consider e-mail passé…In 2009 Boston College stopped distributing e-mail addresses to incoming freshmen
15. What happens in Vegas stays on YouTube, Flickr, Twitter, Facebook…
16. The #2 largest search engine in the world is YouTube
17. Wikipedia has over 13 million articles…some studies show it’s more accurate than Encyclopedia Britannica…78% of these articles are non-English
18. There are over 200,000,000 Blogs
19. 54% = Number of bloggers who post content or tweet daily
20. Because of the speed in which social media enables communication, word of mouth now becomes world of mouth
21. If you were paid a $1 for every time an article was posted on Wikipedia you would earn $156.23 per hour
22. Facebook USERS translated the site from English to Spanish via a Wiki in less than 4 weeks and cost Facebook $0
23. 25% of search results for the World’s Top 20 largest brands are links to user-generated content
24. 34% of bloggers post opinions about products & brands
25. People care more about how their social graph ranks products and services  than how Google ranks them
26. 78% of consumers trust peer recommendations
27. Only 14% trust advertisements
28. Only 18% of traditional TV campaigns generate a positive ROI
29. 90% of people that can TiVo ads do
30. Hulu has grown from 63 million total streams in April 2008 to 373 million in April 2009
31. 25% of Americans in the past month said they watched a short video…on their phone
32. According to Jeff Bezos 35% of book sales on Amazon are for the Kindle when available
33. 24 of the 25 largest newspapers are experiencing record declines in circulation because we no longer search for the news, the news finds us.
34. In the near future we will no longer search for  products and services they will find us via social media
35. More than 1.5 million pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photos, etc.) are shared on Facebook…daily.
36. Successful companies in social media act more like Dale Carnegie and less like David Ogilvy Listening first, selling second