Speaker 1: Now, if you're about to start a new job as a key account manager or even thinking about it, then you're not going to want to miss this video because I am about to lay out a complete 30, 60, 90 day plan to help you crush those first three months. So sit tight. Hi, heroes. It's Warren here from Account Manager Tips. And if there is one thing I know, your first three months as a new account manager are the most challenging. And of course, the ones with the most at stake. Why? Well, because while you're trying to figure it all out, everything you do is being viewed through a microscope. Yes, people will judge you. And opinions, you know, right or wrong, are being formed about your effectiveness from day one. Of course, first impressions stick. And, you know, great news. If you shine, you're going to find yourself on the fast track to success. But if you fail to impress, then doubts about your abilities may linger and follow you around like a dark cloud. A 30, 60, 90 day plan is essential to help you transition from your old job to your new one. It's going to ensure you focus on the right priorities, that you track your progress, that you measure results and get you standing on your own two feet as soon as possible. The point is to build credibility quickly and to earn the confidence of your clients, your colleagues and your boss. All right, now create two versions. The first is going to be a 30, 60, 90 day plan presentation. Summarize how you get up to speed in the role over the course of your first three months and present your plan over three slides. Simple one for each month. I also like to include a visual CV as well. This is just really handy for interviews to let people know a little bit more about who you are. A 30, 60, 90 day project plan is going to be a detailed list of all the activities you need to get settled into a new role. And you're going to group those into 30 day periods as well. But that's what this whole video is about. So, you know, sit tight. We're going to keep getting deeper into this. All right. Now, if you're a member of the CAM Club, you can grab a 90 day plan template for Asana, Excel and PowerPoint. And if you're not a member of the CAM Club, what are you waiting for? The CAM Club is a private learning community helping busy account managers get results. Inside, you're going to find templates, guides, courses, mini training and a connected community of like-minded professionals all here to help you succeed. So learn more at thecamclub.com. Before you get started, you need to know this about your new job. It is OK if you're a bit nervous. Have you got butterflies, right? Don't worry. You got this. Your new employer wouldn't have hired you if they didn't believe in you. But be honest with yourself about potential challenges and take some time to think about how you might handle them. All right. Is a job in a new industry or is it one that you're already familiar with? Are you moving to a new organization or a new business unit in the same company? Big difference. If it's an internal move, are you going to have to juggle two jobs because you have to help out in your old role while still starting the new one? Are you going to be making a clean break? If you've been promoted, well, how will your peers react? Did anybody apply for the job you're about to move into that is now going to report to you? Because, you know, it could get a little tricky. Are you moving to account management from a different profession because there may be skills or competencies gaps you need to close? Are you inheriting the account management role or is it a new position? Will you need to define new processes and systems or are they already established? Remember, there's nothing that you can't overcome with a little preparation and perseverance. Forewarned is forearmed, they say, right? Treat your new boss like a client. Your manager gave you the job. They can help you get things done. They are your advocate to the wider business. And of course, they approve the promotions and the pay rises and the bonuses. So treat your new manager like you would your very, very, very best client. I don't care what else is going on. They are now number one. What's important to them is your top priority, OK? Now, to be honest, your life will be a whole lot easier if you keep following that advice well beyond your first three months. Trust me. Now, on your first day, invite your boss to a recurring meeting to discuss your 90 day plan. It should be monthly at a minimum. And while the focus is on your performance, use the time to also learn a bit more about your manager. How do they like to interact? What are their expectations of you? What are their roles and responsibilities, right? What are their most important priorities right now? And is there anything that you can do to help them? Keep an eye, too, on who they have relationships with and get to know those people, because everybody is going to be talking about you. They're going to be gossiping and you want the news to be good. Importantly, continue to clarify. You know, you're new, you're expected to ask questions, right? So don't be shy about it. All right. Review the job description. That is literally the first place to start, right? Just go through it with a highlighter and, you know, highlight the main responsibilities. That way, you're not going to miss any important requirements in your 90 day plan. And it will also ensure that, you know, you use the right terminology rather than generic objectives and results. For example, don't say, meet with key stakeholders when the job description has identified who those stakeholders are. And you can say, meet with product management and technical instead. So here is an example of the job description for a senior key account manager at Amazon, which was advertised in July 2020. You can see here the different terms that I've highlighted. I found at least a dozen actions that I would include in my plan. So the job description can give you a massive head start on your 90 day plan just by copy pasting the key responsibilities. Now, the thing is, you want to remember to tweak them because you need to reflect the fact that you're new and learning. So, for example, it's unlikely you're going to be able to drive best practices until, of course, you understand what they are. All right, now that's the pre-work done. So let's get into the detail of how to create a 30, 60, 90 day plan for key account managers. All right. So your three month success plan is grouped into 30 day periods. Each has very specific activities and outcomes that move you quickly from making a negative contribution to a positive one. Week one, don't sweat it too much, right? This is just about setting up your workspace, getting your logins, confirming roles and responsibilities and expectations. But after that, from days one to 30, you want to get up to speed, take charge of your clients and establish credibility. In the next 30 days, 31 to 60 days, you want to grow your influence, develop your strategy and secure small wins. And then in that home stretch, those final 30 days, you want to add value and build momentum that's going to sustain you for the next three months and beyond. In addition, every 30 days, you want to commit to five milestone goals for each of the following. Learning goals, those are actions you'll take to address skills or knowledge gaps. People goals, those are steps you'll take to grow and engage your internal and external networks. Performance goals, those are short term objectives related to your current duties and aligned with overall company goals. Client goals, those are activities that get your clients closer to their business goals. And then personal goals is anything that's going to make you a better version of you. Our milestone goals represent a significant stage in your development, so don't take the easy route. The more challenging the goals are, the more satisfying it's going to be when you achieve them. And of course, make sure they're smart, specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and time bound. This is an excellent habit to get into anyway, because it's so easy to be distracted by what's urgent at the expense of what's important. So I like to keep setting those milestone goals every quarter. It keeps me focused on professional development, continuous improvement. And of course, make sure I've got an outstanding record of achievement to showcase to my leaders when it comes time to performance reviews. And of course, to recruiters if I'm looking for a new job. All right, now that's enough of the framework. Let's get into the nitty gritty, okay? In the first 30 days, your goal is to meet, learn and understand. You want to become as independent as possible and you want to prioritize stability for your clients and of course your internal teams. You want to meet critical stakeholders. You want to learn as much as you can and understand the priorities of your organization and of course, your new clients. When it comes to meeting, you want to get those stakeholder relationships underway really quickly. So ask your boss who you need to know. Schedule those early introductory meetings with internal stakeholders, external stakeholders, vertical stakeholders, lateral stakeholders, basically everybody, right? You want to understand requirements and create a set of questions that you'd like to know the answer to and ask those same set of questions to everybody. You're going to get a much better sense of what's going on if you do. And you can find a list of these questions in the free 30, 60, 90-day Excel template, which you can find at amtip.co slash 90-day plan. All right, now customize these questions, okay? So you might need to tweak them a little bit depending on who you're talking to. For example, sales might have more competitor insights than operations might. All you need to do really is listen and reflect on what you've learned. Think about who has influence, which relationships you need to nurture, and which alliances you may need to build a little bit later. Now you move on to learning and understanding, which is about transforming information into knowledge. You want to find out everything you can about your organization, about your clients. Consider the implications of what you discover, right? You know, what does it all mean? How will it impact how you do your job or where you focus or what your priorities are? And keep an eye out for any missed opportunities or potential risks. All right, that's your first 30 days. All right, let's move on to your next 60 days, which is strategy and planning. By now the training wheels are off, and even if it's a little bit shaky, you should have enough information to assess customer risks, identify opportunities, and create some strategies to address them. So it's time to get started on strategy and planning. Invest the time in client research. Not just their history with you, but their industry, their customers, their suppliers, their competitors, internal capabilities, vision and values, mission, whatever you can find. Educate yourself and become an expert at that point where your industry and your client's industries intersect. Be crystal clear on why your clients use your solution and why they came to you in the first place and why they should stick around. Check out my video on client research hacks for a quick start guide to learning more about how to research your client. And if we can, club members, you can download the 20-page account manager's guide to client research with more than 125 power tips. Now review your core processes, and if you don't have them already, develop some process maps to understand workflows. You don't have to spend a lot of time on it, but the point of all this is to identify any gaps, remove risks, and bring stability to your clients and to your internal teams. So once you've got all of that together, it's time to distill that into a plan that drives operational and organizational action. So first, just follow this simple five-step process to develop your strategy. Think about where are we? Where do we want to go? What changes have to be made? How should changes be made? And last but not least, how will progress be measured? A simple five-step way to create a strategy. And then you can create a simple one-page account plan to define your objectives, set your goals, and identify the actions you'll take to achieve them. Now be sure to check out my other video, The Ultimate One-Page Key Account Plan, because that will guide you through the whole process of creating an account plan. Link is in the description below. And guess what? It includes a free template too. All right, so if you do all of that in your first 60 days, there is going to be no stopping you. You're into the home stretch. For the final 30 days of the plan, you need to deliver results, right? And you want to build momentum that's going to sustain you long into the future. Because you're soon going to be having that meeting with your boss who's going to decide your fate and decide if you've passed your probationary period. So do not take the foot off the gas now. Seek those opportunities for early wins that make a meaningful impact. Encourage important behaviors and that are clearly linked to actions that you've been taken. You want to make sure there's no doubt in anyone's mind you did this. So at the end of your first 90 days, you want to present a list of accomplishments to your boss that demonstrate you have initiative, that you're aligned with the organizational goals, and that your result's driven. Now of course, you'll have lots of plans in motion and not everything's going to be done. That is okay, and of course it's expected. All you need are a couple of small successes. It might be some inefficient process you've resolved, or it might be a long-standing customer complaint you've fixed, or a meeting with a C-level executive that has been avoiding your company. Showcase the results that you're proudest of. Develop alliances. By now you should know who's who in the zoo, and you should have a point of view on who has the power and the influence. They're the people who are going to help you get things done in the future. Now don't make the mistake like I often have of only hanging out with the people you like. Map out the critical internal relationships based on qualities like expertise, control of information, networks, access to resources. Ask yourself how you might earn their support and what resistance you might encounter. Now I've written a comprehensive e-book with a template on relationship mapping. You can use this for internal and external networks, and you can grab it for free at amtip.co slash relationship. All right, you're almost at the end of your 90 days. If you got this far, take a minute to reflect and refine. Just review and refresh those plans to respond to surprises, and of course any new opportunities. And here's some questions to ask yourself. How do you feel? Is the role of key account manager living up to your expectations? Is there anything bothering you? Are people that you're not connecting with? Have any meetings raised alarm bells or policies and strategies you're not comfortable with? What's gone well? What hasn't gone well? And are there any missed opportunities? It's really good to have those front of mind when you're going to inevitably have that meeting with your boss about, you know, passing probation. All right, now let's take a look at some common mistakes. Doing what you've always done. You know, a new job brings new opportunities and challenges, but previous success doesn't guarantee future results. Review the job description and decide what you need to stop doing and what you should start doing. This is a great opportunity to reinvent yourself a little bit and shake off some of your bad habits or to focus on developing new skills. Unrealistic expectations. You might be full of enthusiasm and ambition, you know, but don't be too ambitious with your goals. Better to under-promise and over-deliver in your first few months. Otherwise, you may be overwhelmed, which leads to lack of focus, bad decisions, and poor results. Knowing the answer before understanding the question. Avoid jumping in with solutions to problems without exploring the situation and gaining support for your ideas. You'll come off as a know-it-all and, you know, you may even offend some people whose views you're unwittingly criticizing. And I've done this many times myself, you know, quickly giving advice when nobody was asking and some people never forgave me for it. Now, not putting people first. You know, while it's essential to learn the technical aspects of your new role, make sure that your priority is understanding people, politics, and culture, because that is where things can come undone really, really quickly. Talk to colleagues, peers, leaders, other stakeholders. Learn the information that you will not find written anywhere and build relationships that will hopefully later become alliances. All right, now let's talk about some tools for the job. Now, the problem with pen and paper is that it's not made for sharing, it's not made for collaboration, it's not searchable, and it's not the ideal tool for complex detailed plans with deadlines. So for your 30, 60, 90 day success plan, I strongly urge you to consider a cloud-based project management tool, or at the very least, an Excel document. Now, don't take shortcuts. There's simply too much at stake, which is, namely, passing your probationary period. Now, I love Asana. Asana is an app that helps you build project plans, coordinate tasks, and hit deadlines. You can set strategic goals, you can track progress, you can connect your calendar, and you can report on progress, all within a beautiful and flexible workspace. Things I like, well, you can easily move between a board and a calendar view. You can create detailed tasks using sub-tasks, notes, attachments, links, which makes it a really powerful all-in-one tool where you can keep everything related to your onboarding together in one place. You can set due dates and reminders so you don't miss anything, and there is a dedicated workspace just for files. It makes it super easy to locate any documents you've uploaded, and there's also a dedicated conversation workspace which makes it easy to collaborate. You can add your manager as a collaborator and save a whole bunch of emails simply by using the chat features in Asana, or potentially even colleagues if there's a couple of you starting at the same time. And the ability to export your plan to a CSV file means you can easily import your project into other applications or circulate it as an attachment. You might need to do some minor formatting though because it's CSV, it's not super pretty. And the price is sweet, it's free for teams of up to 15. Now don't forget, Camp Club members, you can grab a 30-60-90-day Asana template by visiting the resources section. Now the other option is Excel, which is a great choice for less complex 30-60-90-day plans. The design elements are really flexible and you have complete control over the look and feel, and it's also easy, which means you'll be more likely to use it, and half the battle of a 90-day plan is keeping it up to date. Now what I love, flexible design options. You really can get as creative and as colorful as you like. Conditional formatting helps you take your layout to the next level and makes it a breeze to get a quick overview of your data and spot important queues, things like due dates. Everybody has access, right? So there isn't an organization in the world that doesn't have Excel installed on every desktop and laptop. Copy and paste works well too, which means it's really quick to create presentations from an Excel worksheet. It's also simple to circulate a worksheet by email, either as an attachment or share it as a UANI link. All right, now Excel is not free, but hopefully you have an enterprise license in your new job. If you don't, the price is only $5.99 a month for Microsoft 365 Personal. It's not going to break the bank, and it also includes Word, Outlook, and PowerPoint. Now you can grab my 30-60-90-day Excel plan template for free by visiting amtip.co slash 90-day plan. All right, now I hope this guide to creating 90-day success plans for maximum impact helps you survive and thrive in your new account management role. If you would like assistance with interview preparation, designing or writing your 90-day plan, or anything else, you can book a career power hour with me at any time. Just visit amtip.co slash power hour, or think about joining the Can Club. I'd love to see you there. Finally, don't forget to like, share, and subscribe. And if you'd like to stay in touch, well, you can find me on the social media platform of your choice at Oric A. Brown. All right, till next time, heroes. Bye for now.