Account Management is Your Startup’s Growth Department with Alex Raymond, Founder of AMplify - Ep 69

With so much attention within the go-to-market world paid to marketing and sales, account management, which is arguably just as important, rarely gets its due.

Alex Raymond is the Founder of AMplify and Host of the Account Management Secrets podcast. Alex joins co-hosts Matt Amundson and Craig Rosenberg for the first major discussion on the podcast of account management and its crucial role in growing revenue and overall company value for SaaS vendors. 

Plus, Alex breaks down how CROs should organize their team, what types of people make for the best account managers, and why in-depth stakeholder mapping of customer accounts is so critical to growing revenue. 

Also, Craig mixes up country singers, Matt discovers a great path, and Producer Sam compares someone’s comment to military ordinance. 

Critical Takeaways

• Account management should be positioned as the "growth department" of your company, responsible for driving profitable revenue from existing customers. Shift the mindset from reactive support to proactive growth, ensuring account managers are empowered and resourced to expand accounts, not just retain them.
• Start building account management capabilities early, even before you hit $10M in revenue, so you can learn from customers, reduce churn, and set the foundation for compounding growth. Don’t wait until churn or customer growth becomes a problem you’re hearing about in your board meetings.
• Ambiguity about who owns customer growth leads to missed opportunities. 
• Great account managers are creative problem solvers with strong business sense, often with consulting backgrounds. They should be able to see the big picture, ask insightful questions, and build long-term relationships, rather than just focusing on renewals or incremental expansions. PS: former consultants make for great AMs.
• Build Robust Stakeholder Maps and Engage at Multiple Levels.
• Vendors need to actually do QBRs (Quarterly Business Reviews). Go talk to your darn customers.

Chapters

00:00 - Episode Preview

01:00 - Trouble with Tickets

03:44 - Introducing Alex Raymond, Founder of AMplify

05:59 - The Role of Account Management in The Growth of B2B Startups

12:27 - The Power of Exponential Thinking for Entrepreneurs

16:01 - A Quick Sidebar about Business Events and Dining in Boulder

19:31 - Why Account Management is a Revenue Function & When Your Startup Needs Account Managers

29:15 - Where Account Management Should Fit in Your Revenue Team’s Organizational Design 

36:26 - What To Look for When Hiring Great Account Managers

42:03 - When Account Managers Should Be Brought into New Deals

49:13 - Developing Complex Stakeholder Maps for Customer Accounts

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Epic Quotes

• “ The CRO should be managing the entirety of their revenue cycle, not just some slice of it.” - Alex Raymond
• “ Land and expand has never been more important than it is right now.” - Alex Raymond
• “ I just never, ever want to be a CEO.” - Matt Amundson

Connect with Alex

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/afraymond/ 
• Website: https://www.amplifyam.com/ 
• Podcast: https://www.amplifyam.com/podcast 

Shoutouts

• Craig’s Episode on Alex’s Podcast: https://www.amplifyam.com/account-management-secrets/why-post-sale-is-still-broken-and-what-to-do-about-it-craig-rosenberg 
• Mike Rapp: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelrapp-intelepeer/ 
• Alex’s Episode with Mike Rapp: https://www.amplifyam.com/account-management-secrets/serve-retain-sell-how-account-management-builds-revenue-leaders-mike-rapp 
•  Dr. Benjamin Hardy: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drbenjaminhardy/ 
•  Conscious Entrepreneur Summit: https://consciousentrepreneur.us/ 
• The Science of Scaling b