Part 6: Essential Account Panning [Webinar]

Thanks for joining us. Today we are finishing up our series on the book Essential Account Planning and today we're going to be talking about a really important topic which is creating the Habit. So how do you get people to do the right thing all the time with account planning? Because we can develop the document and we can get into doing all the presentations, but it's really what you do during the year that makes the difference when you're doing effective account planning. So in the book we talked about a few of those areas around thinking before you plan, motivating and rewarding the team. How do you keep the team engaged and keep them focused on the ultimate goal, Establishing the right cycle, getting accountability. And we will talk about some of those areas today in our conversation. So our guest today is Dave Kwistowski. Dave is with Associated Press. He's SVP of revenue and Dave goes by Gwyzz, so we're going to call him Gwyzz today. Dave, you were telling me if you're walking down the hall and somebody called out Dave, you wouldn't turn around. So we.

No, I wouldn't. We have more Daves than Gwyzz's here, certainly.

So Gwyzz, thanks for joining us today. I'm glad to have you. So let's jump into the first question, which is kind of bigger picture Gwyzz, which is when you're talking about account planning, it usually fits within the overall sales strategy and there's a bigger context for it and usually have a vision for what you want account planning to be. How do you, how do you get that across to the organization? How do you communicate to them what you should be doing with account planning? What the importance is of account planning within the context of the overall strategy?

Well, I think here it's important to note that the AP has gone through a tremendous transformation in the last few years. Historically known as a newspaper company and then as the AP grew over its 172 year history, I think we're 172-year-old startup. We have through the years and decades added units. For example, from newspapers we added radio and TV and broadcast and then our commercial unit and then our partnerships group which works with many other customers who are maybe not newsrooms. And each time we added one, we added a sales team to it. So as time, as the decades went along, five or six sales teams with different plans, different visions, different, you know, different goals for the end of the year. So the first step us and for me was to consolidate the team into what I think are the three natural elements of Our media business, local, national and commercial, and then set them on common goals that are consistent with the company goals. And we do have units that were in some media decline and some in growth. And to get everybody on the same page was really about a one year process of one understanding what we wanted to do, how to change it and rebuild the team and then point them in the direction. So there was a. Unlike other organizations that might be wanting to just, you know, point the team and unify them, we had to recreate the team with the existing people and then point it. So it was a two step process which took about a year. And I would add that each of the units had their own support teams. Some were more self sufficient with marketing approaches or customer engagement approaches. And it was taking those common elements of each of those disparate teams and creating a uniform marketing, a uniform customer engagement and training group and then a unified sales approach and make them interdependent, which you always had in the three legged stool. There's always two other legs that help you stand up. And I think that helped with the accountability that there was other folks contributing to the effort of client success or improving the revenue with any particular client or client group.

So when you think about what you did, obviously that required a lot of change in the organization. And how did you get the organization to come together when they had so many different types of approaches, Especially around something like how we're going to plan our accounts and how we're gonna, how we're gonna plan our growth.

Well, I think the first thing is to recognize that need with my direct reports and my sales leaders and other direct reports included sales, operations, marketing, and to determine that need, you know, at the highest level, which would be me in my direct reports and come up with a plan and bring in stakeholders as necessary to learn more about the number of accounts, the diversity of accounts. And when you look at the portfolio that I have in the western hemisphere, we have the very big major networks and their parents like Comcast and Fox, down to some very small magazines that might only buy a handful of photos per year, but still they are customers. And so the diversity would go from somebody who spends eight figures with us to somebody who spends three digits with us and recognize how we could compartment all of those with different teams and trying to define where there was and the channels to there with those stakeholders and even at that step to announce the entire team taking a look at this and manage each step of the expectation along the way. So as we went along from just formulating a plan we told the entire organization we're formulating a plan and we expect to have a first step of the line, you know, in a certain date, call it three months, you know, from the start and then keep on pace for that. Always tell them what the next thing was and the next thing after that. So it created expectations, but it also created a DIS team. We had to meet the targets that were self imposed.

And you've got this whole range of different types of clients that you work with. You know, the really big news agencies or news bureau or news outlets, down to small accounts. Where's the cutoff point where you say these are the ones that are going to get the big attention in terms of developing plans for those accounts specifically. Is there an inflection point? These are the ones that really matter and get that.

Yeah, I think, yeah, there certainly was an inflection point as we. And there were two. One is certainly revenue. You have your, you know, your big spenders, you know, the big customers right at the top. And there seems to be a natural cutoff like at a top 20 or 30 level. And then there are some groups that comprise a pretty big spend but they're made up of a lot of smaller clients. And then there's the issue of some of the big technology companies which have varying levels of spend but have strategic importance to the ap. So maybe at a time when an Apple had a different strategy than they do today, we knew Apple was an important and is an important entity in the world, in the media world, and that we needed to be in touch with them not only for potential business with the AP, but how their products would affect all of our customers. So it was a dollar amount and sort of a common sense strategic evaluation.

So I want to bring up a really popular topic here which is they're changing so much in the news business. And you know, one of the big hallmarks that we think about is the last presidential election, right? So everything was turned upside down. Nothing was, was the way we thought it was going to be. So given the volatility in the market, when you look at and you're talking about new entrants as well like Apple, given the volatility change in the market, when you're thinking about longer term planning for these accounts or strategic planning for these accounts, how do you think about where those accounts are going or where the business is going? Because there's so much change going on, it's not like you're just able to look out and say, well, incrementally we're going to be able to grow them this much each year, or we want to set a big goal to grow a particular organization's revenue with us by a certain amount. There's a lot of unpredictability. How do you manage that?

There is. And I think we're adjusting to a new era where if we're working with traditional media companies, well, the upfront markets in August, September, October would tell us how the year is going to be ahead and what was the relative health of those companies. Now, if you look at some of the big technology players, they don't work towards an upfront market. They work towards a market demand. And what we have to do is by just being, having a seat at the table really with them. And I think what we've successfully done over the last three or four years is by having some seminars at the AP that might be on a various number of topics, from automation to journalist protectionism, how to protect journalists and keep them safe, to, you know, even, you know, new methods of distribution that we've somehow become, because we can gather many folks, become a de facto thought leader in many of these things. So it's staying in touch with them and also be willing to experiment with some of these companies. Let's set up a petri dish with some content and technology and see how the market responds to it and be willing to work with them for their next step is. And as far as, you know, projecting revenue, you know, their cycles can go very fast or very slow and this seems like there's nothing in between. So it's, it's being patient and having, you know, some good sense on it. But you can't pin growth to just a certain percentage every year. Say it will just come organically because it doesn't. It comes through partnerships and projects. I will say you mentioned the election and there was, you know, the AP has been a leader and the leader in vote count gathering for all of our time here going back to, you know, Andrew Jackson. And so, you know, we do is gather that vote count. If you go on election night and, you know, the vote count coming in, you know, nobody aggravates that except us. The kerfuffle on the last election night was with some of the polling mechanisms and that the way of measuring how people vote and get an understanding of it on election day was, has been changing dramatically through the years to the point now where in the last elections, some nearly 40% of Americans did not vote on election day. They voted early, they voted absentee, but they did not vote on election day. When you're doing exit polling, how do you measure the folks who didn't vote? This time around, we will be doing polling completely differently. We've done some tests with originally with the Knight foundation and now with NORC out of Chicago, and it'll be more of an online and direct contact with voters. So not only trying to understand how voters voted, but understand why those who didn't vote and why not? Because one of the surprises of the last election was Mr. Trump had brought more people to the polls than expected. Hillary Clinton did not bring as many people to the polls as expected. And that was those things compounded. And we didn't know that until the next day. Well, we'd better know that the same day and do a better job of calling races, which is one of the things that the AP has done for many years and will continue to do. So how do we sometimes we have to react to change immediately, and I didn't expect to talk about that until you brought up the election. Otherwise, change happens a little more slowly than it does on just simply an election day where it was an unexpected change.

It's always the really big visible public things that get the attention, right?

Correct. Yes.

It doesn't show the entire trend. So when you're thinking about this level of change for your accounts, are you able to do annual planning? Does that get adjusted a lot during the year?

I think one of the things that happens for a longer term, and I Look at the AP, we're always playing the long game. We're more than 70 years old. So one of the aspects of adding improved marketing and customer engagement is we've been able to reposition the AP as not just a content provider, but a preferred and essential partner in news gathering. So. So by doing more training and spending more time on webinars with customers on various topics, they not only better know how to utilize our content, but we had more direct feedback on what was important to them. And an example of that would be what we are calling an additional planning tool to our delivery method, where clients would be able to see gathering process further upstream. Where do we have reporters and cameras and where are they? What are they doing? Not just when will we deliver a story to you? And that in many cases results in customers not sending or complementing a story with their reporter and camera in a different way, knowing that our camera and reporter are doing one part of the coverage. And you listen, you hear, and you react.

So with the customer, you've talked a lot about collaborating with the customer on the planning process. It Sounds like you have a good deal of engagement with the customer as well in terms of planning out where you want to go with them, what you can do with them over the long term.

Correct. And that planning aspect I talk about happens more at the the user level with the customers. I think a level above that with strategy and business development is built on that foundation of good cooperation at the working level. And now taking it up to the.

Level when you look at the process on an annual basis, assuming we're doing annual account planning, what does a good process look like to you in terms of when do you start it during the year, what, what are the big steps that happen and when is it ready for primetime? When is it complete?

Sure. Just on a regular review basis, I'd say we're a year out. Knowing what looking at two things. One, when are major renewals happening or when are there big events? And an election would be one of them. It's not tied to customer renewals, but we do know that, for example, improving the polling process, we need to have a good product tested and available for use for this coming midterm election, knowing that the full impact will happen in 2020 and we want customers to sign in for that service. And that's. So that is really probably the longer term for us. A almost a three and a half year cycle there because it's tied to an election process on a yearly basis or a regular basis. It's looking at the renewals in the year ahead and trying to be nine months in front of that and put some engagement in training and value statements and value preparation, value improvement preparation in front of the customer on those calendars, using our training team to set up meetings with the coordination of the sales rep, marketing team and engagement. So the three of them have a responsibility to come up with a plan and set that to the calendar. And I think by having all three on of it, all three on that you mentioned earlier the plan can't go in the drawer because two other people have copies of it. So from a practical standpoint, it's in everybody's goal and compensation for the year to achieve those things. And then, you know, another influence to that would be events on the calendar maybe that aren't as long term as the election, but we might have an Olympics or a World cup where we need to put things on the calendar and promote what we're doing with our customers on the timetable leading up to that.

So all three of those, so you get that all set up and then like you said, it doesn't Go in a drawer so other people have copies of it. If we get into habits a little bit, what do you expect people on your team to do once the account plan is ready to go? And it's never complete because it's always.

Evolving and always it's a dynamic approach. I have a weekly meeting with my direct reports and it is labeled. It's not labeled the weekly meeting, it's labeled the weekly revenue meeting. So at each one of those weekly meetings, it's, how are we doing? What's the pipeline look like? And are we on target for, you know, the next set of customer touches? And it's. It's really a discipline of just checking that in some way every week and in a more defined way every other week. It's got to be part of the top of mind conversation. And I have to reinforce it. My direct reports do as well.

And what do you say to people that don't want to get involved in the account planning? Because everybody wants to get out in front of the customer. They always want to be in action. But account planning, you know, the word planning describes something that maybe we're doing back in the office, and I'm not so good at that, be mixing it up with customers. How do you get that message across to them in terms of, hey, this is going to help us. It's going to.

This is important to do well, I think it's. How do you. How have I tried to reinforce it? And that is when we've had some customer wins or we get a key renewal or a nice piece of new business that took a lot of planning that needs to be acknowledged and shared with everybody in some sort of a setting, you know, in the office, you know, it might be, you know, milk and cookies, you know, and maybe the milk is Prosecco one day. But I think it's sure you have to share the wins publicly as well as, you know, acknowledge the losses in a fashion as well. So if you keep sharing that and everybody sees that the long work pays a dividend and has a payoff, those who contributed along the way are appreciative. We've seen that in some long negotiations that have gone on for the better part of a year. At the end, it happens, and you need to share that. And it's also important to note that with any negotiation, it's a give and take. That with negotiations, we're negotiating marriages and not divorces. You know, we're not looking for wins, we're looking for business. And there are compromises that happen along the way. And I think the team has done a good job in recognizing that.

So let's talk about that long term nature of these things. When it's gone for a year, how do you keep the team engaged and how do you keep them focused on. Yes, it's the end result that we want to get to, but there are these wins along the way, these milestones that we hit along the way and the idea of focusing on the things that you can, you can control those, those control points.

Right. I think there are two parts to that. One would be, as you know, we've gone through a review of our compensation plan and where we had a commission plan that resulted in some payments along the way. But the main goal was the end of year target. And we've moved that to a quarterly review and instead of waiting for an end of year bonus, it would be now paid out in a quarterly fashion. That has resulted in a lot of folks looking at their pipeline every week, every month to make sure that they get that payment at the end of the quarter. We're just two quarters into that, but I've noticed a change in behavior by folks asking a lot of questions and I'm talking really about between 60 and 80 sales reps who are participating in that. So those little steps along the way are noticed in the quarterly payments or the quarterly recognition. The longer term happens annually. And there are two aspects of it. One, we have a mature business, so the retention is important. But at the same time, we have a maturing business that in some parts is in decline. And we put a demand on new business. We need some new customers as whatever they might be who use media and make that a part of the plan as well. So they could be paid for one, the other or both. And the new business targets are not the majority of our business. They can't be just by nature of our position, but they are something that we need to do. And that attention has resulted in really folks looking at that and wanting to develop some new pipelines with new customers. I say that because we have mature business with a newspaper, radio and tv. There are pockets of growth depending on the owners of some of these media groups. At the same time, as I look at the AP portfolio for the Western Hemisphere, 25% of my business is with customers who don't have newsrooms, our advertising partner on our mobile app, our partnership with the NFL on distribution of photos in the commercial environment. The US Government, the House and the Senate take AP feeds so they can be up to date on the news, but they're not creating content and redistributing it. So we have a lot of business that is just direct use. Some of the hedge funds, like you have an AP feed and we'll have that coming in. And I look at also the digital signage business in transit, in the buses and kiosks in New York City. Not a newsroom, but there's a display of AP content. It's another customer, it's another source of revenue and it's important.

So it sounds like a lot of creativity in terms of finding new ways to get your content out to different places. And there are many of those.

Correct. And that's understanding so many folks. Their business is built on how they show to an audience and if we can help them, would like to do that. If you look at even going back four years, a Hulu or a Pandora or a Netflix or an Amazon, they would not be AP customers, but they're all potential AP customers today.

If you look at the distribution of performance quiz and you look at your high performers for these large accounts, these major accounts, versus the people that are maybe average or lower performers to that point of habits, what do you see the higher performers doing differently in terms of the habits or things they do day to day around those large accounts?

I would put the constant touch with their major customers at many, many levels. You can't know enough people in a company and they are maybe attending events or setting up seminars, but they are also knowing what that company is doing every step of the way, trying to be a complement to that. And if you look at any of the major networks, certainly they have their on air program, but they have their digital presentations on nbcnews.com or fox news.com but they also have many other businesses below that portfolio. And next to it, Comcast owns a tremendous cable operation. Fox has television distribution. So there's a lot of facets to it. It's not just news. And every aspect of that is interesting to us because we might be able to be an assist on distribution or just complementing some existing business with photos and video. Not necessarily straightforward news content or news coverage. So it's about listening to a customer, finding out what they need. And the more questions you ask, the more answers you have sometimes.

So getting close to the customer, insight on the customer and you're talking about the contact, they're always in contact with customer. That's a really big point.

Any customer insight that you can get is valuable. And the top people have worked at making that a personal experience. They are connected to people in that company. They are visiting, calling, you know, a cup of coffee or. And you know, those top performers are generally here in New York because media companies are also here in New York and it's easy to give them good attention.

So Riz, last question, which is talking to an executive and they said, hey, you know, I want to do a better job on strategic account planning with my organization. What one piece of advice would you give them in terms of here's the most important thing that you should do?

Boy, I think every time I answered a version of this question leading up to this, I was kind of breaking it down into smaller pieces like the value that a customer engagement or a marketing or the salesperson themselves bring to it. I would say for each customer segment that you might have to break down what their needs are and make sure that you're touching it. And the accountability comes from the cross pollination of that teamwork. As we joked earlier, it was if three people have a copy of the plan, nobody can put it in the drawer. So I think it's breaking it down and adding varied accountability, you know, among the stakeholders.

Great. Well Guiz, thanks for the insight. This has been really great. I know everybody watching is going to pick up something good. They're going to learn something from this. So we really appreciate your time and sharing these points with us.

Thank you, thank you, thank you very much. I appreciate it.

So for our viewers, your action items are up on the screen here. You can get the book and align your team. Essential Account Planning is available on so you can get that pretty easily. You can also host an internal session on Essential account planning to develop a better process for your team. And then as always, you can have a 3 and 30 session with us and we'll give you the answers to your three toughest questions in 30 minutes. And our next session is going to be on Taking Action. We're going to have Tim Sanders on. Tim is the former CSO at Yahoo and he's also a New York Times best selling author of Love Is and Deal Storming. So join us then everybody for coming on.