Build stronger customer relationships with the best account management software

Introduction

You already know the complexities of B2B account management. It involves multiple stakeholders across organizations with differing priorities. According to Gartner, 55% of buying groups experience a degree of dysfunction–reducing the likelihood of closing high-quality deals by 73%. A point to note: you can simplify your account management process with the right account management software that can make it easy for you to boost customer relationships, and differentiate your business in a competitive market. The list doesn’t stop here. A smart account management software can also help you: 

• Improve collaboration among teams 

• Boost productivity 

• Close deals faster 

With relevant insights into key customer accounts, your team can easily identify opportunities to increase customer lifetime value.

In this guide, we will help you with tips on choosing the right account management software for your business. Before we dive, a look at the business impact of using account management software:

Business impact you can expect from account management software

Shortened deal cycles

B2B deals can take a long time to close. With AI-powered deal insights and sales automation, sellers can make faster progress converting opportunities to closed deals. Deal teams can stay organized and reduce average sales cycles.

Increased revenue from expansion

Applying the Pareto principle to account management, 80% of a business’s revenue could come from 20% of its clients. Key account management software helps you identify these accounts and generate upsell, cross-sell opportunities to expand revenue.

Improved productivity

Does a CRM actually take selling time away from sales reps? Solutions that automate repetitive tasks such as data entry, enable workflows and sales sequences can actually help them save time. Reps can improve productivity with more time to focus on key sales activities.

Higher customer lifetime value (CLV)

Engaged customers are less likely to churn. Customer journeys that drive personalized customer engagement and orchestrate account-based marketing help with improving CLV. Customer retention is further improved with strategic account management through account executives.

Increased collaboration

Customers want their vendors to know them and value their business. To deliver exceptional customer service, the organization must act as one entity. Lay the groundwork for success with shared context across sales, account management, project management, and customer support.

Faster business decisions

Adapting to challenges and opportunities can help businesses unlock growth and improve sales efficiency. Business insights from account management software help measure sales performance, forecast sales and make faster decisions based on data.

The top 10 components of account management software

The right  account management software should help you easily scale your B2B sales strategies, including access to robust record keeping, sales tools and insights–helping you refine your sales and customer success process, unlocking growth.

1. Contact management

The first step of building relationships is to understand your customer. Contact management helps you keep a record of all customer information and interactions. Get a 360-degree view of customers with contact information and associated accounts.

2. Account management

Make it easy for your sales team to deliver great customer experience with real-time visibility of your accounts. Manage account records, associated contacts, interactions, deals, and opportunities. Leverage networks with account hierarchy mapping related accounts such as subsidiaries and partners.

3. Deal management and deal teams

Create and work on deals, and opportunities for new business, upsell or cross-sell associated with new and existing accounts. Assign owners with lead routing, build deal teams and enable executives to find the next best action to close deals.

4. Sales pipeline

Never miss a revenue opportunity with visual sales pipelines to manage your sales process. Get insights on which deals to prioritize and those most likely to close. Increase sales volume, average deal size and sales efficiency.

5. Messaging channels

Serve customers on the channels of their choice. Communication tools enable sellers and account executives to engage and follow-up with customers in real-time. Execute inbound and outbound sales motions with phone, email, SMS, live chat and social media messaging.

6. Campaign automation

Unlock growth opportunities with account-based marketing strategies. Run multi-channel campaigns from a single dashboard. Execute email marketing with ready-to-use templates and email tracking. Send 1:1 messages on SMS, and WhatsApp. Automate customer experience with journey builders. Personalize customer engagement with customer segments based on demographics, intent, and behavior.

7. Sales automation

Increase sales productivity and enhance customer experience. Build workflows and sales sequences to automate the sales process. Reduce grunt work with automated data entry, tasks, notes and reminders. Ensure sales reps follow up consistently and close more deals. 

8. Reporting and analytics

Make faster business decisions with important metrics and KPIs in a single business intelligence dashboard. Understand sales team performance, sales and marketing ROI. Unlock opportunities to sell or convert with AI-powered insights such as lead scoring, sales forecasting. 

9. Configure, Price, Quote

Final negotiations can make or break a deal. Close deals faster by enabling sales reps to personalize quotes and share them with the customer. Pre-approve the conditions for discounting to accelerate negotiations and remove friction from the contract signing process.

10. Integrations

Enable increased collaboration across your organization with a unified tech stack. Implement CRM faster with readily available integrations for  marketing automation, customer support automation, enterprise resource planningRP and Business Intelligence. 

Key things to consider when choosing an account management software

Are you asking yourself if this account management solution is right for my business? To answer this, start documenting your requirements and goals.

1. Identify your CRM requirements

To ensure success you need buy-in for your CRM project. Build an evaluation team with sales management, sales team members, leadership and other stakeholders. Discuss key requirements, processes and prioritize each business use case.

A use case requirements document can help you prioritize the attributes listed below —

2. Ease of use

CRM solutions may be used by a large part of your organization. Choosing an intuitive and user friendly solution can mean faster adoption with minimal training.

3. Total cost of ownership and budget

The price advertised by CRM vendors is often the license fee. You should also find out about additional costs associated with implementation, infrastructure usage, add-on features and services. Clear understanding of your goals and budget will help you choose the right plan.

4. Ease of implementation and customization

This is one of the most important steps in CRM program success. Plan aspects of CRM software implementation and onboarding before you lock-in the vendor. Think about:

• Product-requirement fit: Does the solution need any custom development or integrations?

• Third parties: Will you need consultants and system integrators to implement? Can your software vendor help here?

• Timeline: How quickly do you want to implement the CRM? Will it be all at once or in phases to limit business disruption?

5. Marketplace integrations and extensibility

For your solution to act as a single source of truth, it should integrate with any existing systems that hold account information. This could be marketing automation, helpdesk, billing, ERP. Find out if your vendor offers an app marketplace with pre-built integrations for your use case.

6. Security certification

As you collect sensitive customer data, you inherit a responsibility to protect it. Choose vendors certified by reputed third-party security agencies. A track record of frequent security audits can ensure you adhere to data protection regulations and security standards.

7. Vendor support and partnership

Evaluating a CRM system includes evaluating the vendor. Read customer reviews to understand how they support existing customers with onboarding or technical issues. Evaluate their services such as implementation, dedicated account managers, and premium support.

The 5 best account management software tools in 2024

Freshsales

Freshsales is an AI-powered CRM solution that’s great for account management. Build customer relationships at scale with a 360° view of contacts and accounts, and powerful sales automation capabilities. Unlock growth with deal insights, account management tools, and Kanban view across multiple sales pipelines. Being easy to use, it’s faster to implement for admins and delivers higher adoption among sales teams. Freddy AI capabilities Freddy Insights and Freddy Copilot with generative AI to help productivity. Key account management features such as Configure, Price, Quote, marketing automation, support automation, and an app marketplace are also available on the platform.

Pipedrive

Pipedrive is a sales CRM and pipeline management solution. Users find it easy to use with a simple, clutter-free UI. It also has robust pipeline management capabilities. Missing engagement channels such as phone and live chat may pose a challenge. So can the limited ability to customize data fields, modules, or configure role-based access and reporting. Overall, Pipedrive is a good fit for smaller businesses with moderate account management needs.

Zoho CRM

Zoho CRM is a great choice for sales teams of all sizes. Zoho marketplace offers many complementary solutions on the platform. It’s worth noting that some AI features may only be available with a certain number of licenses. Key account management functionalities like telephony, and invoicing may incur additional costs. Users report that the UI is not as modern and intuitive as other options. With an attractive pricing model, exhaustive feature set and app marketplace Zoho is an all-round solution.

HubSpot

HubSpot is known for their marketing automation solution. Their competitive sales hub can help you with CRM and account management. Some common account management features such as account territories and account owner assignment use workflows in HubSpot. This can mean more intensive implementation and administration. Onboarding may also have additional costs involved. HubSpot is known for its in-depth help content and massive community to help with most things you may be stuck with.

Salesforce

The original SaaS CRM, Salesforce Sales Cloud is popular among enterprises for its ability to accommodate complex use cases. While users say that the CRM can be difficult to use for the uninitiated, Salesforce has tried to rectify this with multiple versions of their solution aimed at small businesses such as Salesforce Lightning, Salesforce Essentials and Salesforce Easy. It can be expensive compared to competition and implementation can be an involved process. If your business requirements justify the cost involved, there are few replacements for Salesforce and its broad capabilities.

Account management success stories

These businesses successfully implemented Freshsales. Here are some outcomes they achieved

Evans Manufacturing organizes & streamlines their sales process

Evans Manufacturing had a complex sales process where a deal had to be proposed through multiple distributors before it was presented. “We have large distribution entities and offices, and reps in each office, sometimes with hundreds of clients each. We wanted to have that nested loop well drawn out and organized.” - VP of Sales at Evans Manufacturing.

Centralizing customer information with account hierarchy helps sales personalize customer engagement proactively.

“We can pull the required information from Freshsales and have a virtual sample done before they even ask for it.” - VP of Sales at Evans Manufacturing.

Key features

• Contact and Account Management

• Deduplication (Freddy Copilot)

• Workflow Automation

• Territory Management

• Auto-lead assignment

• 2-way Calendar and Email Sync

• Custom Contact Lifecycle Stages

• Custom Fields/Modules

• Tags & Record Types

TKF Telecom France builds better customer relationships and boosts sales

TKF Telecom were using sales tools that couldn’t map account hierarchies. They couldn’t automate desired patterns of engagement with contacts. Sales reps, account managers and partners lacked a unified customer view. Freshsales helped cross-team collaboration and sales growth.

“Today, TKF Telecom France and our partners can manage opportunities and accounts efficiently. They can segment the most promising deals and personalize their pitches for each segment. It has increased demo requests, boosted pilot orders, and ultimately translated to new customers.” - Managing Director, TKF Telecom France

Key features

• AI-powered Lead Scoring (Freddy Insights)

• Lead Nurturing Campaigns

• AI-powered Subject Line and Email Generator (Freddy Copilot)

• Out-of-office detection and calendar event suggestion (Freddy Copilot)

• 360° Context

• Sales Insights (Freddy Insights)

• Sales Analytics and Reporting

Sify Technologies gets insights that enable faster decision-making

Sify Technologies started to engage potential customers through a digital-first model. This required a CRM platform to streamline sales activities from lead management to opportunity. Implementing Freshsales helped them gather insights to shape their strategy and achieve better results.

“We were able to gather intent data from email engagement and profile our audience and market to niches better. Through these insights, we have been able to realign our priorities and find the next tangent of growth.” - Head, Digital Sales, Sify Technologies

Key features

• Channels like Email, Phone, Chat, SMS, WhatsApp, and Facebook Messenger

• Sales Forecasting (Freddy Insights)

• Next Best Action (Freddy Insights)

• Mobile CRM

• Automated Email Campaigns to expedite next steps

• Deal Collaboration via Slack 

• Proposal and Contract Management with CPQ and Built-in eSign

• Deal Rotting

• Sales Quota

• Product Catalog

Lori Systems accelerates revenue and scales

Lori Systems was expanding quickly and needed to replace spreadsheets with a CRM solution. They wanted a solution that could adapt as they scaled operations across multiple countries.

“As a fast-growing company with limited resources, one of the key arguments for Freshsales was the ability to start with a lower cost plan and upgrade if needed. The other key factor for us was the high level of customization that was possible with Freshsales. The team supported us with quick customization that adapted to our changing needs and new business processes. It was easy for us to move from one plan to another as we needed access to more and more features.” - Product Operations Manager, Lori Systems

Key features

• Data import with smart field mapping

• Sandbox

• Migration from other CRMs

• Easy-to-use UI and Customer 360 view

• Custom Roles and Permissions

• Audit Logs

• Field permissions

• Zoom integration

• 1-click Freshdesk integration

• Freshworks Marketplace

What do you think?

If you went through this guide, we hope it inspires your search. Or at least helps you think about your next steps. If you haven’t read all of it or want more help, our CRM experts can help you compare available options and design a solution personalized to your business needs.