The strength of an account team is directly aligned to how much of the time they’re working towards a mutually agreed upon goal where each member understands their role in attaining that goal.

When your account manager, consultant, or any other stakeholder doesn’t clearly understand the goal and effectively communicates back with updates on their progress and blockers, the team performs poorly.

I spoke on this topic at Drift’s sales kickoff with my colleague Steph, a consultant I worked closely with on key accounts—we were called to speak since multiple times our VP of Customer Success received effusive comments about our leadership of accounts from customers.

The foundation of a coordinated account team

A strong account team is led by an account plan. An evergreen plan that contains an overview of the account, the account’s goals, and the account team’s goals for the account, and clearly maps who is accountable for the actions associated with attaining those goals. And, for longer-term goals, you should leverage the RACI model: responsible, accountable, consulted, and informed.

An account plan isn’t anything special. It’s the execution of it that makes it impactful. What this means is when you set an account plan, it should be done—from the beginning—with the entire account team, and it should be a collaborative session. Then, as an output of this session, set a frequency in which the entire team will regroup to review progress on the account plan and work through any blockers or propose additional targets we should consider appending to the plan.

Although a recurring meeting to talk through the account is a significant component of the foundation of a coordinated account team, there’s still more that must happen in the background. Account teams must effectively communicate and share updates in a timely and organized manner. The most powerful account team is one where all members know what’s happening with the account. The best way I’ve found to do this is using a Slack channel where each team member is responsible for posting updates on things they’re working on within the account. This includes sharing recaps from calls.

Additionally, when communicating regarding decisions respective to the account, they should be done through a channel that all members of the account team have access to; this was, if something is happening that may impact another team member’s initiatives, they can voice any concerns or proposed alterations to prevent disparate account work from clashing and delivering a potentially poor customer experience.

Delivering an incredible customer experience

When your account team is coordinated, it delivers a great experience. Staying coordinated requires pre-work for some conversations.

Before larger meetings such as executive business reviews where you’re proposing future-looking recommendations to the customer, the meeting should be preceded by the account team meeting to align on the content that will be delivered during that meeting and align on recommendations.

And that meeting should be carried with multiple speaking roles from the account team—your counterparts should have a voice and showcase their executive presence to the customer. Doing this develops further trust from the customer as it highlights the clear level of thought that goes into their account outside of shared meetings.

Poke holes often

When you've been working on an account for a while, it's easy to become too invested and overlook any potential weaknesses in your plans. I suggest seeking feedback on your account plans from individuals not on the account team to avoid this pitfall. This could include your manager, colleagues, or leadership. By doing so, you can ensure that your plans are comprehensive and don't contain any hidden weaknesses or gaps.

How coordinated account teams drive upsells

When all members of an account team have relevant context and are aligned, the account manager gains greater visibility into potential upsells. This provides a second perspective to the customer success manager in identifying potential account expansion.

The account team then has a thoughtful discussion to determine if the account is a good fit for expansion and whether it is the right time.

If so, the account team partners to present the expansion as an opportunity and shares the collective perspective of how it will positively impact the customer’s organization.

Driving sales engagement

In many accounts I’ve worked within, the sales counterpart is mainly focused on, well, sales. This can sometimes create a gap between the non-sales individuals on the account and the sales individual on the account.

As a customer success manager, you should drive action through persuasion and highlight how an action or ownership of a goal aligns with the stakeholder’s extrinsic motivations. Take that activity that you’re doing with customers and apply it to how you’re managing your account teams. This way, you’re not simply assigning out tasks but more so motivating counterparts to take ownership of tasks they would be a good fit to.

A good rule of thumb to follow here is to ensure that when you’re asking for the time or actions of sales team members, frame those actions using the WIIFM (what’s in it for me) format so you are highlighting upfront the positive impact owning that action will have for them.