📘 Where Value Lives Companion Resources
Reading progress: Chapter 23 of 25
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Next: Chapter 24 → Where Competitive Advantage Lives
Welcome to the companion page for Chapter 23 of Where Value Lives.
This chapter introduces the GROWTH Framework.
By this point in the book, we have covered a great deal of ground: value, quality, customer attention, strategic account selection, trust, buying centres, psychology, competition, value propositions, organisational culture, leadership, measurement, technology and the future of Strategic Account Management.
The GROWTH Framework brings that thinking together into a practical structure.
Because ideas are useful.
But at some point, somebody has to do something with them.
Preferably before the account plan becomes a beautifully formatted monument to good intentions.
The GROWTH Framework is designed to help Strategic Account Managers think systematically about how value is understood, created, recognised and developed inside strategic customer relationships.
It is not a magic formula.
Business has suffered enough from magic formulas.
It is a way of organising attention around the work that matters.
On this page, you’ll find resources to help you apply the GROWTH Framework to your own strategic accounts.
Use this page to think about:
The aim is not to make Strategic Account Management mechanical.
The aim is to make it more deliberate.
In the Chapter 23 summary video, Fred explains how the GROWTH Framework helps organise Strategic Account Management around the customer’s world.
The video explores each element of the framework and shows how it can be used to structure better account reviews, sharper internal conversations and more customer-relevant account plans.
The important point is this:
A framework is not the strategy.
It is a thinking aid.
It helps us ask better questions, notice what we might otherwise miss, and keep attention focused on value rather than noise.
Used well, GROWTH should not make the account manager sound more scripted.
It should make them think more clearly.
The Chapter 23 Companion Toolkit is designed to help you apply the GROWTH Framework in real account situations.
Suggested tools and exercises for this chapter include:
The purpose of the toolkit is to make GROWTH practical.
Not a poster.
Not a slogan.
Not a laminated card that disappears into a drawer and is discovered during an office move in 2034.
A working discipline for account thinking.
Frameworks are useful, but they are also dangerous.
They are useful because they help us organise thinking. They give structure. They create shared language. They help teams discuss complicated things without wandering off into fifteen different directions and calling it a strategy session.
But they are dangerous because they can become substitutes for thought.
People fill them in.
They complete the boxes.
They produce the slide.
They say, “We have done the framework.”
And sometimes the account is no better understood than it was before.
That is not the framework’s fault.
That is what happens when tools are used as administration rather than thinking.
The GROWTH Framework is intended to do something different.
It is meant to help Strategic Account Managers organise attention around the questions that matter most in a strategic customer relationship.
For me, the framework works best when each element becomes a serious conversation.
Goals asks whether we truly understand what the customer is trying to achieve. Not just what they are buying. Not just what they have asked for. What they are trying to make happen in their world.
Relationships asks whether we understand the people, influence, politics, trust and access that shape the account. Not just who we know, but who matters and how value is interpreted across the buying centre.
Opportunities asks where value could be created. Not just where we can sell more, but where the relationship can help the customer improve, grow, reduce risk, innovate or achieve something important.
Worth asks what the account is really worth, and in what ways. Current revenue matters, but so do future potential, profitability, influence, learning, innovation, reference value and strategic fit.
Trust asks whether the relationship has enough confidence, credibility and openness to support strategic work. Without trust, the account may still transact, but it will struggle to become truly strategic.
Human attention asks where attention should go, whose attention is needed, and whether that attention is being invested wisely. This is where strategy becomes real.
Those six areas are not separate boxes. They are connected.
If we do not understand the customer’s goals, we cannot create relevant opportunities.
If we do not understand the relationships, we cannot influence how value is recognised.
If we do not understand worth, we may misallocate attention.
If trust is weak, the customer will not let us into the conversations where strategic value begins.
If human attention is scattered, the account plan will remain largely theoretical.
That is why GROWTH is not intended to make Strategic Account Management tidy.
Strategic accounts are rarely tidy.
They are full of people, pressures, politics, opportunities, surprises, frustrations and the occasional internal meeting that makes everyone question their career choices.
The framework helps us make sense of that complexity without pretending it is simple.
It helps us ask:
What do we know?
What do we assume?
What have we not yet understood?
Where is value being recognised?
Where is attention being wasted?
What should we do next?
That last question is vital.
A framework that does not lead to better action is just business decoration.
GROWTH should help account teams decide where to focus, what to learn, who to involve, what value to create and how to become more useful inside the customer’s world.
Because that is the point of Strategic Account Management.
Not to complete the framework.
To grow the value.
The purpose of a framework is not to replace judgement. It is to focus attention where judgement is needed most.
Choose one strategic account and run a simple GROWTH review.
Do not try to create a perfect account plan.
Just answer the six questions honestly:
Then complete this sentence:
The most important GROWTH gap in this account is…
Make the answer specific.
Better answers might include:
Then decide one action.
One serious action is better than a glorious list of twenty-seven intentions that no one touches again.
This chapter comes from years of using frameworks in training rooms, boardrooms and account planning conversations — and seeing both their value and their limitations.
A good framework helps people think.
A bad use of a framework helps people pretend they have thought.
The difference is behaviour.
When account teams use structure to ask better questions, challenge assumptions, clarify priorities and agree action, the framework becomes valuable. When they use it merely to complete a document, the framework becomes wallpaper.
The thinking in this chapter connects to several important areas:
Useful themes to explore further include:
The central lesson is this:
Structure is useful only when it improves understanding, attention and action.
Thank you for reading Chapter 23 of Where Value Lives.
This chapter matters because Strategic Account Management needs both philosophy and practice.
The philosophy tells us where value lives.
The framework helps us work with that truth in real accounts.
GROWTH is not intended to make account management formulaic. It is intended to keep attention focused on the things that shape strategic value: the customer’s goals, the relationship system, the opportunities for mutual value, the real worth of the account, the depth of trust and the human attention required to make progress.
Used well, the framework should make account teams more curious, more disciplined and more useful.
And usefulness, in the end, is what customers recognise.
If you would like access to the wider Where Value Lives resource library, including practical tools, worksheets, prompts, updates and future companion material, you can join the reader community here.
You do not need to sign up again on every chapter page.
Once you are part of the community, you will be able to access the growing collection of book resources as they are released.
The aim is to help you turn the ideas in the book into practical action across your real accounts, real customers and real commercial relationships.
Because frameworks do not create value by themselves.
People do, when the framework helps them pay attention to what matters.
If you would like access to the wider Where Value Lives resource library, including practical tools, worksheets, prompts, updates and future companion material, you can join the reader community below.