Strategic Account Management

What

The Strategic Account Management (SAM) system in ShareBuilder CRM is a customizable framework that helps sales teams organize, monitor, and grow accounts. It allows businesses to define account categories, set performance thresholds, and maintain visibility into account pipelines across business units or clusters.

Why

SAM is designed to support strategic selling and long-term account growth. By segmenting accounts based on billing, status, or potential, sales teams can:

• Focus efforts on high-value clients

• Protect key or developing relationships

• Monitor account health and growth

• Maintain a clear, accountable pipeline

• Support Seller prioritization and manager oversight

How

Below will show how to:

• Define Account Categories

• Change and Account Category

How to Define Your Account Categories

You must be a manager to access Account Category options!

• Go to Options > Account Categories

• From here you will be able to view existing Account Categories, Add new Account Categories, or edit the Names and Help Texts associated with Account Categories.
  

  

• Choose whether account categorization should apply across all business units (cluster-level) or be managed per individual business unit.

• Typical Account Categories are as follows:

  • Key Accounts - Protected, highest billing accounts.  

  • Secondary Accounts - Protected, second-highest billing accounts.

  • Target/Prospect Accounts - Protected, non-billing accounts. 

  • Custom categories like Open - Non-protected, non-billing accounts.

Best Practice - Apply the 80/20 Rule to Identify Key Accounts

Key Accounts typically represent the top 20-25% of your clients, contributing to approximately 75-80% of your revenue. Regularly updating the Key Account cutoff level ensures that your sales efforts focus on the most impactful clients, reflecting rate changes and spending patterns.

Use a 12-month billing report to determine the cutoff level for your most valuable clients:

Run the billing report and sort accounts by total revenue.
Identify the top 20% of accounts contributing approximately 80% of total revenue.
Set a key account threshold.

How to Change and Account Category

1. Navigate to the Accounts Page:

   • Click on Companies in the left-hand navigation bar.

   • Select Accounts to view your list of accounts.

2. Locate the Desired Account:

   • Find the account you wish to re-categorize.

   • Click the caret or arrow (>) to the left of the account name to expand the quick edit options.

3. Change the Account Category:

   • In the expanded view, locate the Account Category dropdown menu.

   • Select the new category from the list. Note that only categories appropriate for account billing within the specified date range will be available as choices.

4. Save Your Changes:

   • After selecting the new category, click the Save button on the right side of the page to apply the changes.