#7 What Is Account Management

What is account management? Well, a question which any business person is going to ask after closing that first sale is: How can I keep that customerCustomer Customer is an individual or an organization that purchases a product or signs up for a service offered by a business. now that I have them?

Retaining and selling to an existing customer costs far less than pursuing and selling to a new customer.

The answers to that question add up to account management. It is the set of activities needed to keep your customers once you have sold them. You want to retain them with your brand, keep them coming back to your store, have them buy different products from your productProduct Product refers to anything (an idea, item, service, process or information) that meets a need or a desire and is offered to a market, usually but not always at a price. line, and the like. Account management is critical because, as we all know, retaining and selling to an existing customer costs far less than pursuing and selling to a new customer.

Since the beginning of business itself, there have existed principles for account management that have always held true. You need to establish a strong relationship. You have to build trust. You have to provide great service. We’re not going to explore of all these here, as much has been written about them already by us and by many others. But just know that such principles still hold very true and must never be violated. The dataData Data is a set of quantitative and qualitative facts that can be used as reference or inputs for computations, analyses, descriptions, predictions, reasoning and planning. we’re going to cover here is simply in addition to these principles.

In the same way as the last article, I want to stick with the industry which I am in, along with many of my prospects and customers: Software as a Service (SaaSSaaS SaaS is an acronym for Software as a Service.). In SaaS, account management means keeping your customers subscribed.

In SaaS, customer retention begins with a full set of metricsMetrics Metrics  are quantities that are measured and used to: designed to allow you to track your customers, predict any changes and, most importantly, predict your revenueRevenue Revenue is the amount of money a business generates during a specific period such as a year or a quarter; also called sales.. To start with, you need to know the number of your current customers, how many licenses each of them have, your churnChurn Churn is a term that describes the percentage of customers that leave or cancel a service or product within a given period of time. rate—the percentage of your customers that you lose—and the Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR), which is the regular revenue coming in from your subscriptions. Other metrics might be average sales price and average total sale.

You need as many indicators as it will take to show you the whole picture, and allow you to know as soon as possible when any changes, positive or negative, take place in your customer base so action can be taken. We employ close to 50 metrics for this purpose.

@PipelinerCRM is extremely customizable to your account management process and allows you to set up multiple separate processes! #CRM #sCRM

Today at my company as well as with a growing number of others, account management is handled by the Customer Success Manager. The total job of the Customer Success Manager is, as the name implies, to keep customers happy and succeeding with our product. (Traditionally, an account manager has been in charge of a set of accounts, whether they have purchased or not. The job description of a Customer Success Manager would certainly apply to an account manager as regards existing accounts that have already purchased.)

The main guide for the Customer Success Manager is this set of account management metrics. The Customer Success Manager uses these to be alert to any customer that is a risk factor. The risk factor is, of course, the customer not renewing.

For ourselves, we have our indicators arranged so that we can spot such risk factors right away. For example, has the customer purchased more licenses than they are using? Those unassigned licenses will most likely not be renewed. Or, is the customer actually using Pipeliner, creating contacts, accounts, leads, and opportunities? If they’re not using it, they’re also not likely to renew. We have an alert system set up that shows when someone has stopped using our software. At that moment we call that customer and inquire into the issue.

It is a fact of life that you will lose some customers, if for no other reason than some companies fail. For example, we had a customer that was a fracking company, but the cost of the oil obtained through fracking was substantially lower than the cost of fracking itself, and the company went out of business. So you will have a churn rate—the idea is to keep it as low as possible. Our Customer Service Manager is charged with that duty and has a dashboard that provides him alerts. He handles them as they come up.

Your choice of CRM playsPlays Plays is an engagement strategy, set of actions, series of tactical steps, or an agreed upon selling approach developed to be repeatable and customized to deliver the highest likelihood of closing a deal with a specific group of prospective customers during a set period. a big part in account management. Many companies, for example, have a whole different process for existing customers than they do for regular sales. This process would include stages and tasks designed to consistently keep the customer happy, and where applicable to move that customer up to the point of being ready another of your products or services.

Many companies have a whole different process for existing customers than they do for regular sales.

Not only is Pipeliner CRM extremely customizable to your account management process, but allows for multiple processes so you can have as many separate processes as you need for handling different types of prospects or customers. All of these processes rely on a single database, so that you can move accounts intact from one process to another, when required.

The way this figure is analyzed by investors is that they utilize a benchmark of 4. If a company averages 4x as much added MRR as lost MRR, that company is strongly considered for investment. The higher the number, the better.

However you do it, remember that effective account management is more important than ever in today’s networked society. A happy customer spreads the word far and wide, and can be viewed the world over through the internet. The same is true for an unhappy customer. So make sure you make great account management a top priority.

Pipeliner is the perfect CRM for tracking account management.