Denise Matalas, Oracle’s Vice President of Strategic Sales and Marketing Programs, previously identified the ways in which strategic account planning has brought genuine value to not only Oracle, but also its customers.

Let’s take a look at the specifics behind Oracle’s visual approach to account planning.

Technology’s role within the account planning solution:
• Visual and collaborative
• Flexible and scalable
• Enables customer-centric value selling

Along with the built-in ability to drive thought processes by asking the right questions, the tool is also tailorable to Oracle’s sales methodology. The tool helps optimize sales effectiveness, but not at the expense of ruining salespeople’s mindset and approach towards their business objectives. Oracle is able to substantially tailor the tool to reflect its multiple sales functions, while remaining flexible and providing structure.

Additionally, the relationship maps allow salespeople to quickly and easily distinguish key influencers, thus providing insight into where salespeople should focus their effort. By applying visualization technology, Oracle has been able to recognize opportunities in its strategic accounts that might have otherwise gone unnoticed.

“The ability to map out relationships and get a visual image of who we’re connected to and identify where we may have gaps is a very powerful tool,” Denise said.

Furthermore, the tool keeps the team on track by monitoring their goals, objectives and actions. Assigning owners to specific tasks with certain due dates prevents responsibilities from falling through the cracks.

“Pushing the team to come up with mutually agreed upon goals helps the team accomplish things not only from a revenue perspective, but also from a customer perspective,” Denise said.