To develop meaningful profiles for clients and prospects, you can use Sandler's proprietary KARE Account Planning Tool, which adds clarity to planning and decision making. It delivers tremendous value to all enterprise selling teams.
Here are the four categories of the tool:
A Tough Question
What system are you using right now to categorize your enterprise prospects and clients? Do you use revenue? Vertical market designations? Geographical location? Company size?
Most of the teams Sandler trains have no formal system of categorization in place. When they are asked this question, they sometimes try to camouflage that lack by saying things such as "Every account is unique."
Whenever people say, "We don't have an account categorization system because we treat each account as a unique relationship," the answer is, "That might sound good, but there's a problem. If every account is unique, you can't create a territory management plan. There has to be some overarching strategy, some kind of categorization, if you're going to manage the whole territory effectively."
What are some of the categories you might use to distinguish different accounts? Consider the following.
- Current clients you want to keep.
- Accounts you don't have, but wish you could attain.
- Customers you used to have, and now would like to recapture.
- Current accounts where you wish your "wallet share" could expand.
Put is all together, and it spells KARE!
Keep, Attain, Recapture, Expand
KARE is a powerful profile development tool that takes into account these differences. KARE profiling is an effective strategy component in territory management that tags each of your prospects and clients with a single designation: keep, attain, recapture or expand.
There's a famous British saying: "Horses for courses. It means different people are suited for different situations. The same is true of our prospects and accounts. They're not all alike.
One to a Customer
The KARE acronym tags each of your prospects and clients with a simple designation. This should be done for each of your active or potential accounts. No account can be in two KARE categories--you will have to pick one.
KARE presents an invaluable opportunity to prioritize your accounts. It also provides clarity and a common vocabulary for account identification. This is a major advantage in enterprise team selling, where co-organization collaboration is essential to winning and serving business.
In the next section, you will find some of the most common attributes arising from a KARE profiling sessions. The actual attributes relevant to your market must arise from your own evaluation of your selling organization's business model.
NOTE: It's possible that you have a prospect who does not align with your business objectives or a current client you have concluded, for whatever reason, you do not want to continue serving. Your decision to end the relationship professionally represents an action that must be undertaken separately from the KARE process.
Again, the KARE attributes are helpful, but they're just a starting point. They need to be customized to the world of the clients with whom you're dealing. Customizing KARE to your world allows you to make the system your own. Once you do that, you can segment and prioritize based on your own criteria. That's how you create a shared base of understanding and inquiry in the team selling environment. Fortunately, this is very easy to do. It's also an indispensable learning experience for the team.
The KARE tool provides an invaluable sales management benefit, playing an integral role in territory and portfolio management and planning.
One strategy might be to focus certain sales reps or teams on particular profiles, such as gearing hunters toward A (attain) accounts, and farmers toward E (expand) accounts. Or, the focus might be to blend into each team and/or territory a mix of all account profiles, in order to keep reps and teams nimble and capable of serving different account types. It all depends on your strategy.
Without KARE, you're in the dark. It's like the famous duck test. If it waddles like a duck, swims like a duck and quacks like a duck, it's likely a duck. But until you know that the waddling, swimming, and quacking are all attributes of a duck, you have no enabling information.
KARE is your prime asset when it comes to territory and account planning. We can hep you create a customized set of KARE designations and categorize prospects and clients. Call or text (949) 355-6013 for more information on how we can help you.
