Continuously review, optimize your P&L

• Have a Plan
• Try to renegotiate the deal, terms
• Review P&L, Annotations Report and ask for a Model (from Finance Team) that reflects true invoice amounts and true Loaded Costs and Contribution, Account Margins for EACH MEMBER on the team
• Annual Rate increases, COLA language, understand when and how you can invoke those contractually
• MSA – renegotiate on terms e.g. payment terms, termination, cost of living, rate increases
• Rotate, Rebalance team seniority e.g. rotate senior folks out who’ve matured, but don’t jeopardize delivery, balance the model to make it “diamond” shape e.g. Seniors, more Mid-Level, less Juniors
• Remove shadows and non-billable resources, or make those valuable resources billable
• Bill for non-billable resources (e.g. PMs, DMs), etc.
• Move to lower cost delivery locations
• Switch to Monthly Rates
• Validate EVERY invoice EVERY month, EVERY line item
• Validate EVERY Rate for resources
• Remove unnecessary ISP, DSP flags in CRM and UPSA, they drive up bench and BU cost
• Level Up resource after promotion, don’t leave them on old rates
• Don’t forget to invoice for overtime
• Do you have any Un-billed, Unrecognized Revenue issues to improve?
• For long term Onshore Trips to US use onsite Rates
• Review and approve all Travel Expenses. Reduce unnecessary travel, team buildings, etc.
• Avoid Non-billable expenses, e.g. trips for offshore if non-billable
• Start Projects Earlier to have more runrate runway during the year
• Onboard in parallel especially if onboarding is non-billable
• Escalate Staffing to close open positions
• Ask Why? E.g. Why they need additional resources, there might be a bigger opportunity
• Plus 1+ ask what else does customer need. e.g. if they need 1 more expert, see if there is one more to add. Example: they’re looking for Developer resources, why not ask about Digital, QA, DevOps, Support Needs and add additional team members
• Try to Bill as close to NORM hours every month (T&M projects).
• Training – If people take training, that should be after hours on their own time, not reducing billable time
• Evaluate if any past contractual concessions can be remove that are no longer applicable e.g. remove / expire discounts

When I was starting out in the partner management, account management role in Microsoft, I asked my manager at the time what is the best lesson learned that I can apply to my role to be successful. He thought for a minute and then said, “Have a recurring communication plan with your customers”.

It is one of the most important lessons I’ve learned and applied. The recurring communication plan, scheduled on the calendars, allows you to keep the ongoing dialog going with your customers and stakeholders at different levels. It’s the way you build relationship, rapport, bring thought leadership and value, get insightful feedback, ask for favors, find out about new deals/opportunities, bring up challenging escalations to the surface, improve, etc., etc., etc.

Have a multi-level communication plan withing your Account team, Business Unit and Customer.

For my accounts, I strive to have the following in place, yours will be different, fine-tuned based on your needs

Account Level

• With the Customer (external communication)
  • Recurring Communication Plan with Customer Stakeholders (QBRs, Monthly, Weekly, etc.)
    • e.g. meet with Execs every 2 months (every 3 months is too far apart)
    • Meet your Customer Execs Direct Reports (and their Directs) e.g. every month or every other week
  • Tips:
    • 1-2 weeks before meeting with Execs, have a 1:1 or your regularly scheduled meeting with their direct reports to prepare
    • Also, ahead of Executive’s Direct reports meeting, meet with your Delivery team to prepare and gain feedback, status updates, risk, any issues, compile questions to ask, agenda, and opportunities that might be broached during Directs and Exec discussions
    • Here is a typical agenda I use with customers, refine/reduce per your needs:
      • Status update
        • Key Accomplishments, Milestones
        • Team(s) feedback – Surface feedback up from your teams
        • Outstanding issues, risks, bottlenecks
        • Risk mitigation
      • Goals, Objectives
        • What’s important to you?
        • What is on top of your mind? Or keeping you up at night?
      • Roadmap
        • What is your roadmap, plans?
        • What business value are you delivering in your next version, release?
        • Why are these things on your roadmap?
        • Why are they important?
      • Improve
        • What obstacles in way?
        • What is not working or working? How do you think we can fix?
        • What should we start or stop doing?
        • What else can we do better or improve your experience of working with us?
        • How can we be useful to you?
      • Collaboration, Thought Leadership
        • What are additional areas for collaboration? 
        • Bring with you any points of view, thought leadership pieces, ideas for collaboration, show “what good looks like” e.g. how other customers are successful implementing XYZ solutions. 

Establish Rhythm of the Business (ROB) with your Account teams and Delivery Teams as well.

• With your Account Team (internal communication)
  • Have Account All-up Team Syncs (Bi-Weekly) i.e. “One Team” – Account Managers (AM), Sales, Delivery Managers (DM), Business Unit (BU) Management, Delivery Solution Practices, Industry Solution Practices, etc.
  • Account Management, Delivery Teams Syncs (Weekly) i.e. AM, DM, PMs, Tech Leads
  • Staffing (Bi-weekly/Weekly) – Resolve staffing and resourcing issues, build long term plans for skill pools, rotation programs, developing talent, etc.
  • Account Operations (Bi-weekly/Weekly) i.e. Revenue Team, Operations Team to work through Account Receivables, optimizing P&L, Invoicing, etc

Business Unit Level

As a Business Unit Head, you might have the following cadence with your team and direct reports.

• Business Unit (BU) Level
  • Account Management Plan (AMP) Reviews (Semi-Annually or Quarterly)
  • BU Pipeline Reviews (Bi-weekly)
  • BU All-up Team Syncs (Weekly)
  • BU All-up Delivery Team Syncs (Bi-weekly) or have Delivery participate in the All-up Team Syncs
  • BU Level Staffing Calls – Resolve staffing and resourcing issues across BU, build long term plans for locations, relocation, skills pools, rotation programs, developing talent, etc.
• Individual Level
  • Account Manager with BU Head or Direct Manager – Personal 1:1s (Bi-weekly/Weekly)

Example of Individual Goals. Even if not all of them get on your annual scorecard for compensation, having those goals in mind will help you expand your relationship, grow account, establish you as though leader and trusted adviser.

1. Grow X Existing Accounts beyond stretch goal targets
2. Sustain Y Existing Account(s)
3. CM over 25% guidance
4. Intake account(s) over $2M+ with Sales in 2017 into your book of business
5. Offer New Delivery Solution Practice (DSP) wins (Digital, BI, Big Data, Support, DevOps, Cloud, Mobile, etc.)
6. Build Relationship, Communication Plan – Recurring meetings with customers, QBRs; Heatmap of expanding relationships to build
7. Participate in Events, Marketing – PR, Whitepaper, sponsorship, customer joint events, hackathons, events hosting
8. Show proactive assistance with pre-sales and sales teams, intake of new logos or incoming opportunities, incubation of new accounts. Own the deal end-to-end.
9. Individually or jointly with Sales/Business Development Team, proactively conduct lead generations campaigns (e.g. leveraging Lead Gen team) against a pre-defined target list and/or existing book of business, materializing in a growth on base of exiting account(s) or new logo acquisition
10. Delivery – Excellence in Technical Delivery, making sure we deliver on the promise. Delivery, just like Quality is inherent, it’s non negotiable.
11. Operational Excellence – Keep CRM, Forecasting, Tools, Account Management Plans (AMP), Accounts Receivables (AR), Un-billed Revenue (UB), Billing etc. up to date on ongoing basis

Assigning Goals is important whether you are a Business Unit Head, Manager, Account Manager/Executive or Client Partner yourself.

1. Have Business Development Mindset
2. Focus Revenue Growth and Exceeding Revenue Targets
   e.g. growth on base of existing account(s), new logos acquired individually or with Sales Team collaboration
3. Pay attention to Account Margins (AM%), Contribution Margins (CM%) Targets and have plans to improve AM%, CM% continuously
4. Set Individual Goals, Commitments, Stretch Targets
5. Develop/Build Pipeline – build up your pipeline of opportunities, qualify out or work on closing that pipeline one stage at the time
6. Proactive Prospecting and Lead Generation e.g. Campaigns, SalesNavigator, Warm intros from existing stakeholders, etc.
7. Build, Expand your Relationships, Network
8. “One Team” Account Thinking – Account Manager (AM), Delivery Manager (DM), Sales or Business Development Manager (SM, BD), Digital Sales, Industry Solution Practice (ISP), Competency Center (CC), Operations, Revenue Group, etc. Orchestration of all different roles that touch Account is of utmost importance and Account Manager (AM) is responsible to Orchestrate.
9. Account Planning – It’s your business plan. Plan the Work, Work the Plan. Collaborate with Sales Managers (SM), Delivery Managers (DM), Operations, Finance, etc. to align/draft. Don’t forget, your activities should lead to results and not just doing activity for the sake of activity.
10. Delivery – Excellence in Technical Delivery, making sure we deliver on the promise. Delivery, just like Quality is inherent, it’s non negotiable.
11. Keep Operations, Account Hygiene in order

As you head into the Deal Review meeting with your colleagues, management, executives, here are a few quick reminders in order to be prepared for the meeting.

• Proposal – in PPT format for example, what we showed or showing to the customer
• Ratecard – have it available
• Resource Plan – show in Excel
• P&L Analysis – have it done
• Know as much about a deal checklist as possible – 5 Rights, Make It Right (MIR) – Deal Lifecycle
• Re-read SOW, MSA – Before heading into the meeting
• “Term Sheet” – Summary of Terms in a Table Format, Negotiation Points (e.g. COLA, Limitation of Liability, Discounts, Volumes, Termination Clause, etc.) See Example here.
• Strategy, Approach – Prepare tactics, strategy, starting point, next step in Pricing, Discounts, Negotiations in general
• File Share – Consolidate (and keep updated) all of the materials in Dropbox (or OneDrive) in the “Output” folder