Account management: Best practices + how to choose the right CRM

Customer loyalty is built by nurturing trust and confidence, which is hard to do if you’re not regularly engaging your clients. Account management allows organizations of all sizes to stay on top of essential customer relationships by fostering a personal connection between a buyer and a business.

Account managers have different tasks, from responding to and anticipating customer requests, managing issues, and offering updated products or services. All of this makes account management essential to both customer satisfaction and a business’s bottom line. In this article, we’ll define account management, outline why it’s important, and show you how to do it better than your competitors with the help of monday CRM.

What is account management?

Account management is a structured approach to managing customer relationships with your business to maximize value. It involves nurturing the relationship between clients and your business by learning more about customers’ needs and creating solutions and services that match.

At its core, successful account management is built on trust and mutual understanding, where businesses demonstrate a genuine commitment to their customers’ success. This generally encompasses providing customers with service, support, and improvement or expansion opportunities that increase their consumption of a product or service and maximize retention.

In simple terms, account management is getting to know your customers better and earning their trust so that they stick around longer.

To keep a customer’s trust, you have to innovate and provide value continually after an initial purchase or conversion. Account management consists of guiding product usage, offering ongoing training, and providing personalized customer service.

The difference between account management and sales

It’s easy to mix up sales and account management, and while the two are essential for growing businesses, they’re not exactly the same. The goal of account management is to nurture existing relationships for the purpose of retaining a customer’s business and growing your company.

Sales, on the other hand, is more active and is focused on finding new leads and closing deals with new customers. In other words, sales is what teams focus on earlier in the funnel, while account management is something teams use post-sales, later in the funnel, to retain more clients and boost customer satisfaction.

What is the role of an account manager vs an account executive?

While account managers and account executives might sound similar, they serve different purposes. Account executives focus on acquiring new clients and bringing in fresh business by spending time generating leads, perfecting sales pitches, and guiding prospects through the sales process to close deals. While they provide some after-sales support, their main job is converting prospects into paying customers.

Account managers work with customers for the long haul. They want to truly understand their clients and their unique needs to better understand how to offer them more relevant products or services. The biggest difference comes down to timing: account executives work intensively with prospects for shorter periods to get them signed up, while account managers maintain long relationships, often spanning years.

Different types of account management

It’s difficult to establish set ground rules for account management as it can be different from one type of account to the next. Even within different types of account management, there are differences for each industry to take into consideration, too. While there are best practices that can apply to all types and industries, as we’ll see soon, it’s a good idea to first be aware of different types of account management.

Sales account management

Sales account management is the most straightforward version of account management. It involves following basic customer accounts, no matter their size, to ensure customer satisfaction by responding to inquiries. Often, account managers will have multiple accounts they’re responsible for and need to routinely keep close contact with each to maximize revenue opportunities and reduce churn.

Key account management

Key account management, or KAM, refers to focusing on the big accounts that are most important to a business. These can be high-profile accounts or clients that bring in a lot of revenue and repeat business.

Ideally, for KAM, you want an account manager who can spend more time on individual accounts instead of being spread over multiple smaller accounts. It’s also common to assign more than one account manager if the client account is really big, for example, an enterprise company with thousands of employees that’s using your business’s software.

Strategic account management

Strategic account management is similar to KAM, though some businesses view them differently. Certain companies may describe strategic accounts as the ones that are core to a business’s success; without them, a business may struggle to survive.

With this distinction, strategic account management is all about developing close long-term relationships over time. For example, a company may employ strategic account management if its client is a government branch that’s using specific services, like software, and makes up a significant portion of the company’s annual revenue.

Territory and industry account management

Another way to organize accounts is by territory or industry. Different areas and industries may have unique requirements, so it’s best to group them with other similar businesses so that account managers can stay consistent.

For example, a printing company may have many accounts, but their healthcare clients likely have different needs than their finance clients, so dividing these two types of accounts between account managers will ensure each gets the attention they need based on industry requirements.

Common pitfalls and challenges of CRM account management

Nurturing each customer account comes with different challenges, and using a CRM system introduces its own unique obstacles. While CRMs are powerful tools for relationship building, they can create complications when not implemented or managed properly. Being aware of the different challenges CRM account managers face can help you stay ahead of potential roadblocks so that you can actively address them. Here are some of the most common CRM account management challenges:

• Managing multiple accounts: Balancing multiple accounts with different expectations, needs, and deadlines can be overwhelming, especially when managing complex CRM workflows and data entry requirements.
• Cross-department alignment: Staying aligned with other departments such as sales, customer service, or marketing is essential to appear as a unified front, but certain software or using multiple systems can create silos if not properly configured.
• Limited tracking and insights: A lack of meaningful reporting can make it difficult to gauge your impact as an account manager, particularly when CRM reporting features aren’t set up to capture the right metrics
• Data inconsistency and lack of adoption: When team members don’t consistently update or use the CRM, incomplete or outdated information can lead to missed opportunities and damaged client relationships
• Over-automation and losing the human touch: Relying too heavily on AI, automated workflows, and generated communications can make interactions feel impersonal, undermining the human connection that’s crucial for account management
• Poor integration with existing tools: When CRMs don’t play well with your core business tools, account managers might waste a lot of time switching between platforms and risk missing important customer information
• Reactive instead of proactive management: Being reactive means you’re always trying to put out little fires to keep customers happy rather than leveraging predictive CRM data, like forecasts or sentiment analysis, to prevent issues altogether.

While the challenges of CRM account management can be a hindrance, with the right mindset, tools, and processes in place, it’s possible to overcome all of these roadblocks. Next, we’ll look at some best practices that will help you avoid any fallout from these types of challenges.

10 essential account management best practices and strategies

As an account manager, it’s your job not only to sustain a customer relationship but also to actively improve it. Depending on a number of factors like your industry, the level of your relationship with the customer, and the services you provide, account management can look different. Still, there are some best practices you can adopt to enhance the customer experience, no matter what type of relationship you have with your clients.

1. Keep the program intentional and strategic

If you want your account management program to succeed, you won’t be able to make just any client a “strategic” account. Instead, find a way to deploy a simple cutoff that decides which customers deserve an extra set of eyes and ears. This could mean being selective about accounts with a higher degree of average recurring revenue (ARR) or accounts with the potential to improve ARR. Strategic account management could also be an extra layer of service that accounts can pay for, which would help justify and offset additional costs.

2. Use technology to strengthen relationships

Creating a culture that breeds customer success starts and ends with the tools your company uses. For example, robust software like monday CRM provides the flexibility to create a custom account management workflow that will integrate into all areas of your business. It’ll help you store all your customer data and keep track of all your tasks and client communications while providing ongoing insights that will allow you to nurture and grow customer relationships.

3. Make account growth a top priority

As a key account manager, customer retention is always priority number one, but account growth is a close second. A strategic account manager knows how to keep customer engagement up and knows exactly what features or products they’ve purchased and how much more room for growth exists. To keep track of it all, you need consistent reporting. A platform like monday CRM can help keep your growth goals top of mind at all times with detailed reporting and dashboards.

4. Gain more bandwidth with automation

Account managers can save hours each week with tools to automate repetitive administrative tasks. By setting automations to trigger workflows on their own, like notifications, follow-up reminders, approval processes, and customer communications, teams can save precious time to focus on nurturing customer accounts. Many systems, like monday CRM, give users access to build custom automations powered by AI so that account managers can stay on top of every relationship without losing track.

5. Ensure seamless sales handover processes

The initial transition of a new client from a sales representative to an account manager shows a lot about your business. It’s important to ensure there’s a formal process in place so that the process is consistent and painless on the client’s end. Communication should be clear, which is why having a CRM to track messaging and important documentation between teams is so important.

6. Set a consistent cadence of communication

As an account manager juggling multiple customers, it can be easy for certain accounts to fall through the cracks. To avoid clients feeling unappreciated or forgotten, create a schedule for communication with your contacts, whether this is a quarterly meeting, a monthly check-in email, or regular follow-ups. This allows you to stay ahead of customers’ needs and remain proactive on any issues they may have, building stronger customer satisfaction.

7. Gather data and feedback to stay ahead of critical decisions

Account managers need to know where every customer account stands at all times. That means keeping communication channels constantly open with your customer, but it also means routinely surveying decision-makers for satisfaction levels. Use surveys, questionnaires, and reports to track performance on various accounts and request feedback and customer reviews to get a sense of customer satisfaction. Finally, monitor data and analytics to get insights you may have missed on accounts that are at risk of cancellation to reduce customer churn.

8. Nurture and onboard new clients effectively

In most cases, the first 90 days of a new client relationship set the foundation for long-term success. Create a structured onboarding process that introduces clients to your team, establishes clear expectations, and helps them reach quick wins with your product or service. Use your CRM to track onboarding milestones so that nothing gets overlooked during this critical period.

9. Conduct proactive check-ins and performance reviews

Don’t wait for problems to arise before reaching out to your clients. Schedule regular performance reviews to assess how well your solutions are meeting their business objectives and identify areas for improvement. These proactive conversations demonstrate your commitment to their success and often uncover new opportunities for collaboration.

10. Identify upsell and cross-sell opportunities

Your existing clients represent the greatest opportunity for revenue growth. Use your CRM data to analyze usage patterns, customer sentiment and preferences, and identify unmet needs to spot expansion opportunities. When clients are succeeding with your current solutions, they’re more receptive to additional products or services that can further improve their results.

Why you need a CRM for account management: Key benefits and advantages 

Acquiring new customers can be more costly than retaining your existing clients. If nothing else, account management saves you time and money. There are more benefits to it than only that, though.

• Focus on long-term relationships: Account managers focus on building long-term relationships rather than looking only at immediate gains like sales teams.
• Enhance trust and loyalty: Develop stronger connections with new and existing customers so that they’re more likely to stay with your company.
• Increase upselling opportunities: Your company will be better able to sell additional products and services to customers who are consistently happy and engaged.
• Scalable growth potential: The potential for business growth increases if your organization can sustainably nurture large accounts.
• Referral generation: Satisfied clients are more likely to refer your business, creating opportunities for even more sales in the future.
• Complete customer visibility: When all customer data is in one unified account overview, teams get a comprehensive view of each client’s history, preferences, and interactions.
• Streamline team collaboration: Account management makes it simpler to maintain consistent communication and customer messaging between various teams.
• Efficiency through automation: Account managers can dedicate more time to building meaningful relationships and strategic planning by automating routine tasks.

Essentially, account management is about increasing customer satisfaction. Happy customers are more likely to stay loyal to your company, but achieving this with potentially hundreds of clients is no small feat, which is what makes the role of account manager so essential.

How to choose the right CRM for your account management team

Choosing the right CRM will have a significant impact on your account management processes. To make sure you’re using the right software for your specific needs, there are a few factors to take into consideration. Here’s a look at some things to keep in mind.

• Core account management features: Make a list of the core account management features your team needs based on existing workflows or business goals. Below, we’ll cover some of the best CRM features to look for in an account management solution.
• Scalability: The platform you opt for should grow alongside your team, meaning it needs to scale as your team grows. Your team’s current workflows may evolve in a year or two if your business expands, so your CRM should accommodate a range of needs.
• Ease of use: Of course, the CRM you choose needs to be easy to use for everyone on your team, regardless of technological skill level. Find a system that’s straightforward to onboard, learn, and grow in so that you’re never struggling with the technology.
• AI and automation tools: CRM automation and AI are key features of most modern CRMs, though some are more advanced than others. According to the monday.com State of sales technology report, 82% of respondents use AI as a productivity and efficiency booster, which is why it’s important to look for a CRM with AI features that can automate manual tasks.
• Vendor support: Every CRM offers different customer service options depending on the plan you choose, so it’s important to decide how much access to customer support your team will need before settling on software.
• Budget: At the end of the day, even if a product is perfect but exceeds your budget, it’s going to be a strain on your team. Look at a CRM’s pricing and plan offerings to understand its value and see if it fits in your budget.

The best CRM features for account management

If you’re unsure which exact capabilities to look for in CRM software that will help you manage accounts effectively, the features below will give you a great starting point:

• Contact management: Centralize client information, including demographic and company data, to ensure consistent visibility into accounts
• Activity tracking: Log emails, calls, meetings, and tasks so that account managers can monitor engagement levels
• Customizable dashboards: Access personalized views of account metrics and KPIs to quickly assess account health and prioritize activities
• Reporting and analytics: Get detailed insights into account performance, growth trends, and client satisfaction to make data-driven decisions
• Integrations: Create seamless connections with email, calendar, accounting, and other business tools, eliminating data silos and building unified workflows
• Pipeline management: Tracks account milestones, renewals, and upsell opportunities visually so that nothing gets missed
• Communication history: Maintain a complete record of client interactions across all channels for contextual conversions and smooth handoffs

Key account management with a CRM

You may be wondering what key account management looks like on a CRM system, and with good reason. KAM is often the catalyst of meaningful business growth, so it’s another important consideration when it comes to choosing a CRM.

For successful KAM, you want to be able to build strategic plans for each account, track each account’s progress over time, and maintain visibility into complex stakeholder relationships. Your CRM should also provide robust reporting capabilities to measure the success of your key account initiatives through relevant KPIs and metrics.

Deploying strategic account management with monday CRM

When it comes to picking a CRM to cover your A-Z of account management, monday CRM has all the functionalities you need without being overwhelming or hard to use. The solution’s drag-and-drop visual interface, built-in AI and automation features, and straightforward contact management tools make it capable of handling even the most complex accounts.

Let’s take a closer look at some of the features that make this AI CRM ideal for account management:

Built-in communication tools

Stay connected to other team members and your clients through monday CRM. You can communicate directly from the platform, integrate popular work apps such as Mailchimp, Google apps, or social media platforms to keep all communications in one space, and build custom forms to regularly gather customer feedback from your accounts.

AI-powered workflow automations

When you’re juggling multiple accounts, AI and automation can make everything just that much easier. With monday CRM’s AI-driven workflow automations, account managers can stay on top of tasks, communications, and reporting for each account without even lifting a finger. AI automations can trigger workflows, send follow-ups, or notify a customer when a task is complete, so that you can rest assured that none of your accounts fall by the wayside.

Predictive AI analytics and reporting

Create automated reports and custom dashboards based on critical data so you can better understand your accounts and track metrics. Additionally, with predictive analytics and sales forecasting to analyze account health, account managers can anticipate needs ahead of time. For example, if a client is at risk of leaving your business, the account manager can actively intervene with a solution before the problem snowballs, avoiding preventable customer churn.

Visual client pipelines backed by AI

With monday CRM, account managers are able to visualize pipelines in a clear, transparent board so that it’s easy to understand the status of each deal. Not only that, but with the platform’s AI, pipeline management is a whole lot smarter. AI can move deals along the pipeline, automate approval processes, and even detect sentiment in customer communications so that account managers can gauge satisfaction levels in every stage of a sale.

Build stronger relationships through effective account management

The key to retaining the customers you have lies in leveraging the right tools and embracing the future of account management. AI-powered insights and automation are impacting how teams engage with clients, enabling proactive outreach based on predictive analytics and streamlining repetitive workflows for maximum efficiency. A strong system, like monday CRM, that harnesses these technologies allows you to store customer information, track interactions, automate communications, and integrate seamlessly with your existing tools.

With monday CRM, you’re doing more than just managing accounts; you’re building a foundation for sustainable growth through smarter, data-driven relationship management. The platform’s AI and automation capabilities make you more efficient and infinitely more effective at nurturing customers, keeping your business flexible, productive, and competitive.