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Are You Meeting Your Customers' Needs?
FORM, December 1995
How to Conduct Major Account Reviews
By Susan Keen
"Account reviews are the most positive thing you can do in an account. You're reselling the reason the customer chose you in the first place."
Mike King, CFC
Sales Manager
Single Source Inc.
Wichita, Kan.Just because a client does a lot of business with your company doesn't mean you should assume all is well. According to Sid Chadwick, formerly with Gorelick & Associates, a consulting firm in West Chester, Pa., and now vice president of marketing for Specialized Printed Forms Inc., a manufacturer in Caledonia, N.Y., you should conduct periodic major account reviews. In an NBFA seminar, Chadwick discussed the importance of meeting with top customers and evaluating the status of accounts. Account reviews are a pro-active way to keep in touch with clients and head off problems, he says.
Mike King, CFC, sales manager for Single Source Inc., a distributorship in Wichita, Kan., has been conducting major account reviews with about 10 accounts a year for the past eight years. "They are the most positive thing you can do in an account," he says. "You're reselling the reason the customer chose you in the first place."
Chadwick recommends starting the reviews with a recap of recent activity. Cover these topics:
- Problems the client may be having.
- New products and services your company offers.
- Technologies the client may be able to adopt.
- Changes in the customer's usage of business printing.
- Trends in the marketplace, such as paper price increases.
- Trends in the customer's industry.
- Opportunities for the customer to cut costs and any recent cost savings.
Hold the first few reviews at your clients' offices, where they will probably be more comfortable. Include any people from your company involved in the account, such as the sales rep, the customer service rep, the president, the warehouse supervisor and the bookkeeper. Representatives from the client's company may include the buyer, a supervisor, a representative from the MIS department, the CFO and the people who use the products you supply.
Send those involved a letter stating the date and time of the review session, about how long it will take and an agenda. Chadwick says review sessions often take a few hours. Since you don't want the meeting to get off track, he recommends a brief rehearsal with members of your company. Try to anticipate questions that may arise and prepare necessary handouts, such as a graph showing cost savings or product usage during the last six months.
"It takes a lot more time to prepare an account review than it does to do one," says King. "The preparation is ongoing." While most of Single Source's review sessions take between a half hour and 21/2 hours, King and the distributorship's sales reps constantly track account information. For instance, the company does a cost analysis for every order so it can document cost savings. King learned the hard way to prepare early for sessions. "My first account review was done by the seat of my pants," says King. "I had to scramble to recreate documentation on things such as cost savings."
At the end of the account review, ask your client if the meeting was productive. If it was, establish a date for the next review. Some accounts may warrant more frequent reviews than others. If the client wasn't satisfied with the review, briefly discuss how you could improve it. Afterwards, members from your staff should participate in a debriefing and decide what you learned from the session, what you should do to improve and how you will implement ideas learned during the session. The sales rep responsible for the account should write a brief report on the meeting, including ideas discussed and decisions made, and send a copy to customer representatives present at the meeting.
Many companies are apprehensive about doing major account reviews. Some forms pros feel they are "opening a can of worms" by asking customers to analyze their vendor relationship. "If you feel a sense of risk conducting a major account review," says Chadwick, "don't go to your largest customer. Go to your 10th largest customer and work your way up to your best customer."
King says the review sessions have cut back on problems within accounts and strengthened relationships. "Our company's single largest account probably wouldn't be in the shape it's in without account reviews," says King. "It's often the only time you can get in front of the movers and shakers." Since it started reviews with a financial institution that is a $700,000 account, Single Source has begun supplying new product lines, such as ad specialties, and is working on electronic forms.
King says the staff is motivated to serve accounts with which it performs reviews. "The sessions keep the pressure on you to perform. You cannot become lackadaisical because you know that once a quarter you'll be in front of these people," he says.
Susan Keen is assistant editor of FORM magazine.