Its strange isn't it. You take some of the biggest Clients you are dealing with, you put your best people on them, you have great products and services that you know they should be buying......and yet all this love and attention seems to result in mediocre growth and often lower margins than your standard accounts.
What's happening - I've heard all sorts of excuses. "The market is really tough - the big boys expect lower prices" "You have to live with their procurement processes - they kill us" "We were blind-sided by the opposition - they came in much cheaper than us" "the project got killed off - we would definitely have won it!" "working across our Global team was much tougher than expected - our cost of sales was way higher than we planned" - and worst of all "they didn't like our proposal"
But in my experience these are generally simply excuses for a lack of quality relationship with Clients.
As you think about your strategy planning for your Major accounts - how much of it is planning and how much guessing?
Too much of the time I spend in these meetings is discussing a view of the Client's world that starts from our beliefs, our needs, our hopes, our revenue goals, and then we build insight and strategies that support our view. It's an 'us' focused plan, not a 'Client' focused plan. We either haven't had the discussions that would turn this into fact or we don't know how to have the discussions.
How like your own experience is this?
Great fun though it may be to have an Account Planning away day, and valuable to create innovation and insight, I question any team who can't find a way of checking this out with Clients before committing huge resources to any pursuit. Imagine the difference if you could share and agree a plan with your Client.
Maybe they could tell you the value they see in your current and future relationship - or perhaps they don't see value in it.
Maybe they could give you insight into their strategy, what's driving it and the areas where they see they need help
Maybe they could take on board some of your insight and innovation.
Maybe they could tell you what you need to do to succeed
Maybe they could start to build a trusting relationship with you so you don't waste money and you win a far greater proportion of your bids at better prices
Maybe, maybe, maybe.
Turning maybe into results takes the right intent, skills, and process - the potential in terms of results in Major Accounts is endless.

Kevin Vaughan-Smith