Strategic Customer Engagement

Key Account Management

Helping KAM teams in Pharma make the shift from tactical selling to strategic value and impact.

At Clarity, we help companies mean more to their customers by working with them and addressing the major components of shifting to strategic account management.

Developing capabilities that enable you to mean more to your customers.

So, what’s standing in your way?

This is what the future of Strategic Customer Engagement looks like.

With more than 15 years of experience working with customer-facing teams in some of the world’s largest companies, Clarity has applied that knowledge into devising three core pillars that help make the shift to strategic customer engagement as simple as:

Empty hidden tab- do not remove or edit

Insights and Intelligence

Insights & Intelligence:

Commercial organizations often confuse product-based data and analytics for “customer insights.”
The truth of account and stakeholder needs is far deeper and more complex, driven largely by changes in the account’s ecosystem.
SFE/Sales Operations and marketing have been built to supply data to commercial teams.
The obtainment and subsequent use of deeper, more meaningful insights to create solutions of impact, is left up to customer-facing teams.
Without the right intervention, CF teams either cannot recognize this level of insight and intelligence or are unsure what to do with it.

Tell-tale signs it might be an issue

Over emphasis on product data, same intelligence as competition
Lack of stakeholder access, repetitive product messaging pushed through multiple channels

What does the road to success look like:

First, the case for change in what insights customer-facing teams acquire and how they can be used to co-create innovative, partnership-building relationships, must be made.
Second, a scalable process for engaging with accounts, stakeholders, internal peers and others for identifying and gathering this intelligence should be put in place.
Third, a repeatable model for working with brand teams is needed to translate and present solution value aligned with areas of time-sensitive impact that mean more to customers.

Empty hidden tab- do not remove or edit

Skills and Competencies

L & D organizations are well-versed in delivering product and compliance training. When it comes to Key Account Management however, there is often a lack of institutional knowledge for use in building KAM content and learning development solutions.
Career-pathing efforts originating from HR and not from field KAM knowledge often result in skills & competencies matrixes that are aspirational in description with little internal strategy or expertise for execution.

Tell-tale signs it might be an issue

Calling only on those stakeholders with historical familiarity and ignoring new/other stakeholders and influencers. Skill set to call on senior-level is weak or non-existent.
Over-emphasis/reliance on product-centric, tactical selling competencies.

What does the road to success look like:

First, the case for change needs to be made in what skills and competencies will lead to customer-facing teams meaning more to their customers.
Second, a learning pathway needs to be created that pulls through industry best practices and brings teams along a spaced set of learning interventions, closing gaps in a contemporary skills & competencies matrix.
Third, a scalable model for just-in-time manager and self-paced coaching should be implemented to ensure pull-through and retention of new skills & competencies.

Empty hidden tab- do not remove or edit

Planning and Execution

“KAM” refers to both the individual and the organizational, team-wide effort to create value-based partnerships and mean more to customers.
Yet most commercial organizations, are not set up to implement a common, repeatable framework of customer/account engagement best practices for planning and execution.
This results in individual experimentation of strategies which default to mostly tactical selling techniques and behaviors untethered to the strategic nature of large account management.
Many CRM/SFE platforms are set up to capture and report on transactional, data-driven customer interactions and are not tailored to key account management, account planning environments.
Leadership can often reinforce old behaviors with demand for short-term performance and analytics that offer little visibility into progress on building more strategic customer relationships.

Tell-tale signs it might be an issue

Form-driven, data-entry CRM/SFE functionality that offers little in the way of strategy & planning for account teams.
Lack of visibility for leadership to understand what’s happening in more strategic accounts.

What does the road to success look like:

First, organizations need to be shown “what great looks like” in the way of CRM/SFE functionality that helps customer-facing teams define a new purpose for their customer engagements.
Second, leadership needs to abandon a one-size-fits all approach in providing CRM/SFE solutions. Better functionality tailored specifically for account teams leads to better visibility for leadership to understand progress in strategic accounts.

Our pillars are designed to achieve the best results for you.

So what’s standing in your way? Start your Strategic Customer Engagement Strategy.

It’s Easy, With Clarity.

Key Account Management

At Clarity, we help companies mean more to their customers by working with them and addressing the major components of shifting to strategic account management.

Developing capabilities that enable you to mean more to your customers.

So, what’s standing in your way?

This is what the future of Strategic Customer Engagement looks like.

With more than 15 years of experience working with customer-facing teams in some of the world’s largest companies, Clarity has applied that knowledge into devising three core pillars that help make the shift to strategic customer engagement as simple as:

Empty hidden tab- do not remove or edit

Insights and Intelligence

Insights & Intelligence:

Commercial organizations often confuse product-based data and analytics for “customer insights.”

The truth of account and stakeholder needs is far deeper and more complex, driven largely by changes in the account’s ecosystem.

SFE/Sales Operations and marketing have been built to supply data to commercial teams.

The obtainment and subsequent use of deeper, more meaningful insights to create solutions of impact, is left up to customer-facing teams.

Without the right intervention, CF teams either cannot recognize this level of insight and intelligence or are unsure what to do with it.

Tell-tale signs it might be an issue

Over emphasis on product data, same intelligence as competition

Lack of stakeholder access, repetitive product messaging pushed through multiple channels

What does the road to success look like:

First, the case for change in what insights customer-facing teams acquire and how they can be used to co-create innovative, partnership-building relationships, must be made.

Second, a scalable process for engaging with accounts, stakeholders, internal peers and others for identifying and gathering this intelligence should be put in place.

Third, a repeatable model for working with brand teams is needed to translate and present solution value aligned with areas of time-sensitive impact that mean more to customers.

Empty hidden tab- do not remove or edit

Skills and Competencies

Skills and Competencies

L & D organizations are well-versed in delivering product and compliance training. When it comes to Key Account Management however, there is often a lack of institutional knowledge for use in building KAM content and learning development solutions.

Career-pathing efforts originating from HR and not from field KAM knowledge often result in skills & competencies matrixes that are aspirational in description with little internal strategy or expertise for execution.

Tell-tale signs it might be an issue

Calling only on those stakeholders with historical familiarity and ignoring new/other stakeholders and influencers. Skill set to call on senior-level is weak or non-existent.

Over-emphasis/reliance on product-centric, tactical selling competencies.

What does the road to success look like:

First, the case for change needs to be made in what skills and competencies will lead to customer-facing teams meaning more to their customers.

Second, a learning pathway needs to be created that pulls through industry best practices and brings teams along a spaced set of learning interventions, closing gaps in a contemporary skills & competencies matrix.

Third, a scalable model for just-in-time manager and self-paced coaching should be implemented to ensure pull-through and retention of new skills & competencies.

Empty hidden tab- do not remove or edit

Planning and Execution

Planning and Execution

“KAM” refers to both the individual and the organizational, team-wide effort to create value-based partnerships and mean more to customers.

Yet most commercial organizations, are not set up to implement a common, repeatable framework of customer/account engagement best practices for planning and execution.

This results in individual experimentation of strategies which default to mostly tactical selling techniques and behaviors untethered to the strategic nature of large account management.

Many CRM/SFE platforms are set up to capture and report on transactional, data-driven customer interactions and are not tailored to key account management, account planning environments.

Leadership can often reinforce old behaviors with demand for short-term performance and analytics that offer little visibility into progress on building more strategic customer relationships.

Tell-tale signs it might be an issue

Form-driven, data-entry CRM/SFE functionality that offers little in the way of strategy & planning for account teams.

Lack of visibility for leadership to understand what’s happening in more strategic accounts.

What does the road to success look like:

First, organizations need to be shown “what great looks like” in the way of CRM/SFE functionality that helps customer-facing teams define a new purpose for their customer engagements.

Second, leadership needs to abandon a one-size-fits all approach in providing CRM/SFE solutions. Better functionality tailored specifically for account teams leads to better visibility for leadership to understand progress in strategic accounts.

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