Opportunity-Account Management; Virtuous or Vicious Cycle?
Posted by Ron Snyder in Account planning, Key Account Strategy, Opportunity Management, Sales Management | 0 comments
By Ron Snyder of Plan2Win Software and Jim Naro of The Naro Group
According to Gartner Group, “65% of a company’s business comes from existing customers and it
costs 5 times as much to attract a new customer than to keep an existing one satisfied.”
This indicates the importance of not only doing a good job of managing opportunities during
customer acquisition, but also following up with purposeful customer engagement to grow
relationships and drive revenue growth on an ongoing basis.
When do you actually cross the finish line? Is it when you win the first deal?
The gap between opportunity management and account planning is not new and it’s typically
driven by several misconceptions, such as:
- Opportunity management is a “won and done” achievement
- Account planning is just a once-a-year effort
- Account planning and opportunity management are independent efforts that require mutually exclusive skills, processes and vernacular
- Building your relationships and sphere of influence is part of account planning only; it’s not part of opportunity management
- It’s OK to implement these processes in silos within the organization
