In his Foreword to Account-Based Growth, Stephen Kelly sets out the challenges currently facing organisations and describes how the new thinking in this book, by Bev Burgess and Tim Shercliff, will enable long-term transformation and sustainable growth.
We are facing a perfect storm post-pandemic. The business community is dealing with some critical pinch points including a skills crisis, economic and political uncertainty, and anxiety from a war in Ukraine. I think companies are struggling with the way this new world looks.
Prestigious brands have been disrupted as customers base their buying decisions on different values. And companies need help, not just in meeting their customers’ expectations, but in tackling challenges like recruiting the best talent, embedding quality and diversity and with broader social issues like climate change.
We should grasp this time as an opportunity to make a transformational shift in our business models. We have to become obsessed about building strong customer relationships based firmly on trust and built around a single view of our most valuable assets: those customers who will help us grow.
Future success emphatically won’t be about individually ‘fixing’ sales, marketing or customer success. It will be about mobilising our entire company to ensure that the customers who give us the license to exist derive maximum value from our products and services. Build your approach based on a clear-eyed view of each customer’s importance and make sure every single employee is well aware that you only exist if your customers are successful. Integrate and align all functions, but especially marketing, sales and customer success for the benefit of your customers.
In order to move to a new model, you will have to change. So, read the best-in-class case studies and viewpoints in this book to see how others have done it. Learn how they got ahead of the game by segmenting their customers according to a careful analysis of current value and potential growth, and then used this intelligence to take a radical view of resource allocation across their different tiers of accounts. Create a programme of quick wins and celebrate successes – this will build the internal drumbeat of customer obsession.
This timely book is an essential guide to navigating what will be a daunting yet exciting period of business transformation and growth. It is written by experienced practitioners with the scars and learning punctuated with powerful case studies. Take advantage of its wisdom and the pragmatic approaches it offers to have a chance of joining the band of leading organisations set to thrive in this new world.
Account-Based Growth by Bev Burgess and Tim Shercliff, published by Kogan Page.
