Best Practice for Account Insight Maps

Today's buyers are more informed than ever before.

In a crowded field where buyers can easily learn about many potential suppliers, you need ways to stand out from the competition. Often, that requires your team to fully understand the customer’s business problems, what they must achieve, and why.

An account insight map is the perfect tool to:

  • Gather and organize information about your customer’s business goals and pressures.
  • Describe the initiatives that executives put in place to address these.
  • Map solutions onto your customer’s business problems.

The insight map helps the revenue team to start conversations with the customer that show not only product expertise but also business expertise.

Collaborating with your customer on an insight map gives you a way of providing insights into their business they wouldn't get anywhere else, which helps you increase your value to them.

The customer sees that your focus is on their success.

Above is a typical account insight map. It's made up of cards of various types:

  • Goals
  • Pressures
  • Initiatives
  • Obstacles
  • Solutions

Together, these tell a story about the customer's business problems and how you can plan to address them.

When you understand the goals, pressures, initiatives and obstacles that the customer thinks about, your credibility increases, and the platform from which you position your offering is more informed.

The insight map helps you to get ready for any business conversation with your customer. These kinds of conversations include:

  • Doing your initial research and discovery.
  • Growing your relationship with a customer who is currently using your solution.
  • Engaging after a significant change in the customer's business, such as a recent acquisition.
  • Reengaging with an existing account.
  • Meeting a new key player or reengaging with an existing one.
  • Asking for help from your mentors or supporters.
  • Conducting a business review meeting.
  • Communicating value following the implementation of your solutions

The following topics describe best practices to apply when you are creating insight maps for opportunities.