Kelly Rue: Hi everyone, I’m Kelly Rue. I’m a director with the Alexander Group. I’m joined by Drayton Williams, who’s another director with the firm. Today we’re diving into a topic that’s becoming increasingly important for revenue organizations. The choice between a single account ownership model and a bifurcated account ownership model. So each of these approaches has real implications for growth and customer experience and also operational efficiency. I’ve seen companies struggle with this as they move up market or they expand product lines. There’s also many other situations to. Drayton has helped numerous organizations evaluate and implement these models. So I’m excited to dig into the conversation with him today.
Drayton Williams: I’m excited too. Great to be here, Kelly. It’s a conversation a lot of companies are having, especially as they scale.
Kelly Rue: So let’s start with the basics. Let’s ground everybody here. So when we think about single account ownership, we generally mean that one account executive handles everything from prospecting to closing, the long-term relationship management, the end-to-end process. They’re really responsible across the board, and that often feels natural early on for organizations. It reduces overhead and keeps the sales organization flexible before you have the scale to specialize, but there are also reasons to maintain this model in more mature organizations. Right?
Drayton Williams: Yeah, exactly. One person can really own that entire customer journey. This single account ownership, we find it. It can be really simple. It reduces a lot of the handoffs. Right. Its customers really appreciate this continuity, particularly in the fintech space. More broadly across other fintech companies. It is common, though, as organizations scale up to think about other models, there’s really no one right answer on what sort of coverage model you should have and you should really think about, hey, what’s most important to our buyers and how can we at the same time maximize top-line growth?
Kelly Rue: Perfect. Yeah. And when we think about the other side of the spectrum, the bifurcated model splits responsibilities. So you have hunters who focus on acquiring and closing new logos. And you have farmers who take over after the deal is signed. The farmers responsible for that nurturing, expanding and retaining customers. And I’ve seen this work well in companies where onboarding is time-consuming. For example, this model thrives when the farmers or account managers, which is often kind of one of the job titles that we see most common in the market for farmers when they build credibility through consistent interactions with their customers, by really understanding their customers business and business goals, business drivers and their needs, and they’re really able to form those long term, authentic and nurtured relationships with their customers.
Drayton Williams: Exactly. And to your point, shifting some of those existing customer activities to that account manager? It’s a way to allow our hunters to focus on identifying closing net new customers. It really gives a clear swim lane that directly ties to the profitable revenue growth engine.
Kelly Rue: Absolutely. It really allows kind of both roles to operate at peak efficiency in an optimal world. So let’s start with the single account ownership model. Now that we’ve kind of gone through the basics of what both are. So when we think about a single account ownership model, what are some of the use cases where we see this model, and where our clients are using the single account ownership model? It’s still the prevailing practice across most of the tech industry, right?
Drayton Williams: Yeah, but really it depends on the company and where they’re at in their growth journey and product complexities, etc. So early-stage companies can benefit from that single account ownership model. Right. It’s easy as you’re starting up, you can scale just simply due to resource constraints as you’re going to get in the later stage. Companies more complex might make sense up upmarket, but at the same time, that doesn’t mean it’s a one-size-fits-all across the company. So really, the important thing is to think about where you’re at in your growth journey, where some of the complexities might lie and pick the model that’s right for you.
Kelly Rue: Gotcha. Makes sense. So the strength of this model is really about simplicity and consistency, right?
Drayton Williams: Yeah. That single account ownership model, one relationship owner, one narrative, one point of accountability.
Kelly Rue: Okay, so on the flip side, when we think about the bifurcated model, let’s talk about that. And why do companies use it? What I’ve seen is that when companies scale and they look to optimize, that’s often a time to think about making a change. And when we think about kind of organizations growing, diversifying their offerings, sometimes that single account model can really feel strained, and so companies start to think about introducing more specialized resources. They might be running into problems where relationship managers are spending huge portions of their time on servicing or onboarding or compliance tasks, and therefore they’re kind of abandoning that new business development motion, which we know is critical to driving additional growth. So when we think about some of the compelling reasons to adopt a bifurcated model what are some of the reasons that you’ve seen with your client?
Drayton Williams: Yeah, there’s really I bucket into four main reasons that we typically see that shift to the bifurcated model. One is the increased new logo acquisition goal. So as there’s more pressure on getting net new customers, this shift to a bifurcated model makes sure that hunters aren’t so bogged down with the account management activities, leading to more time that they can go prospect and sell new business. The second is that, as clients develop a more prescriptive customer segmentation, they actually might deploy both models, so they might still keep that single account ownership model for the complex enterprise relationships where continuity is really valued. But on the other hand, that shift to the bifurcated model can really help drive an efficient growth engine in the transactional mid-market customers. The third reason is the job bandwidth simply is increasing, whether that’s the increased product suite, expanded customer set, or just sales process complexity. As that bandwidth starts to increase it. It really creates a higher need for specialization. And this specialization in hunting versus farming can ensure that we’re growing the top line, but also maintaining the base. The last fourth reason is a more established customer base. So as companies scale, there’s a much larger existing base. And with that, there’s service. There’s adoption needs and retention needs. And that bifurcated model allows that level of focus on those things without slowing down the growth engine.
Kelly Rue: You mentioned growth. That was kind of a major theme in what you were just talking about. And I’d like to add that as organizations expand into new product lines or service areas. Expansion is often a major growth driver for those clients. And so oftentimes, you need that kind of further dedication driving that expansion, that dedicated farmer can really accelerate that. And the same thing holds true on the flip side, when we’re thinking about new logo growth, if that’s a major strategic driver for the organization, a dedicated hunter also helps to really drive that forward, too.
Drayton Williams: Yep. Exactly. I think both can be true. So in the bifurcated model, your hunters are really responsible for that new logo growth engine. And then to your point, the farmers are able to go deep in that existing installed base. And where you’ve got those new products or service areas you mentioned, they can really build that out without sacrificing the new logo. So you’re really at the end of the day, getting the best of both worlds.
Kelly Rue: All right. Let’s talk about some specific kind of real client examples. So you recently worked with a large fintech client who had hit a ceiling with their single-owner structure. What happened in this situation? What did you see?
Drayton Williams: Yeah. So they really were trying to continue to increase their top-line growth and improve operational efficiency. To your point, they started hitting some limitations there. And they’d been using the single account ownership model for a while. It worked at first, but as they started to scale up and as I mentioned earlier, customer base expands. And so they started to see some cracks.
Kelly Rue: Gotcha. What kind of cracks were you seeing?
Drayton Williams: Yeah. So there were cracks in operational efficiency, which ultimately led to top-line growth issues. And this was primarily due to inconsistent rule execution. So we did a time study, and we found that good cohort of the account executives were spending 40% of their time on Post-sales activities. Because of this new pipeline growth slowed. Most of the account executives were only bringing in 1 or 2 new logos a year. This was well short of company growth goals. In addition, new logo deal sizes were dwindling. ASP was well below management’s expectations. The key driver there was that they’re spending less time on developing opportunities, going deep into the sales pursuit process. And then on the flip side, for the territories where they had a more hunting-oriented account executive, existing customer churn skyrocketed. So they actually had 10 to 20% higher churn rates than in other territories.
Kelly Rue: So problems on both ends of the spectrum; it sounds like not a lot of job specificity or focus. And individuals were kind of spending their time where they deemed most appropriate or working to their individual skill sets, it sounds like.
Drayton Williams: 100%. Because of this, new business development slowed other areas. Existing clients weren’t being prioritized, so it’s really all over the place. Ultimately, sellers were just taking that choose-your-own-adventure approach, and their overall company revenue growth lacks strategic focus and clarity.
Kelly Rue: So what did you recommend?
Drayton Williams: Yeah, so we did end up launching that bifurcated model. Hunters focused exclusively on the new business. Farmers would take over accounts immediately after close to manage and grow relationships. And during our engagement, we co-developed a prescriptive sales playbook that started to orient sellers to that new model, provided a clear coaching mechanism and could reinforce expected role behaviors. These sales playbooks really connect the dots to the overall business strategy. They allowed our client to quickly operationalize our recommendations and new go-to-market model.
Kelly Rue: And so what were the results of the client saw after all of this work that you did?
Drayton Williams: Yeah, the results are pretty immediate actually. And there are four key outputs we saw in the first year. New logo acquisition increased by double digits. The hunters were starting to report higher deal sizes and ultimately, overall new ACV productivity. Customer, on the existing customer side, there was much higher customer satisfaction. The farmers were more responsive and strategic expansion was growing as well. The farmers had more bandwidth to go out and identify new opportunities within existing accounts.
Kelly Rue: Amazing. Wow. That’s a really powerful shift. Awesome. I’ve also worked with a lot of clients recently on documenting these types of structural changes in sales playbooks. Oftentimes, sellers really need that one clear source of truth, and honestly, other parts of the organization, too. You get revops aligned, you get sales leadership aligned, you get your frontline sellers aligned on this is the structure going forward. This is the best practice in the ideal state. So to communicate those changes to those folks and then also kind of hold as that contemporaneous resource for them as they move forward and adopt the model. So playbooks can be a really great tool to drive that alignment and make sure we’re maximizing impact as we make structural changes like that. We’ve done some recent research in the fintech space in particular, and playbooks are one of the top investments that we’re seeing our clients make in the market. So we know no model is perfect. There’s no one-size-fits-all across the board. So what should companies keep in mind when we’re choosing between these two?
Drayton Williams: Yeah, you’re right there. There’s no exact perfect answer for each situation. It comes down to your company’s growth stage, how complex the deals are what customer expectations are. So if you’ve got a highly technical, long sales cycle, that single account ownership may provide some better continuity post-land. If your growth strategy is more dependent on balancing that new logo acquisition and expansion, the bifurcation helps have more capacity, more focus in those areas. If you’re scaling quickly, that hey, this single account ownership may make a lot of sense up front, but as you start to grow, you may reconsider. Is the existing install base becomes large enough? And again, even within a company, you might be deploying both if you have more complex customer segmentation, to say that the needs of upmarket customers may be different than the needs of downmarket customers.
Kelly Rue: These have been some great insights and I really appreciate it. So the takeaway is that both models can work, but the right one really depends on your organization and where you are in your journey, what your customers need from you and your specific situation.
Drayton Williams: Absolutely. Both models can lead to success across the fintech space and whichever one you choose, at the end of the day, the goal is the same: to deliver trust, value, and a seamless client experience, ultimately leading to top-line profitable growth.
Kelly Rue: Thanks for the conversation today. Drayton, appreciate your insights and your experiences here. If anyone is evaluating your own account ownership model and any of these kind of situations that we talked through today ring true to you and what you’re seeing in your organization. Our team is here to help you think through it. Feel free to reach out to either Drayton or myself, or your contact at the Alexander Group to talk through this further.
