Are you focusing your efforts on the right accounts? Discover how strategic sales and account management can unlock hidden potential and drive growth by prioritizing where you spend your time.
Focusing on the Right Accounts and the Right Strategy
For many sales and account management teams, the strategy regarding existing clients is to “check in” and make sure everything is “OK." While this strategy may get you meetings with your clients, it does not add value to the client, and it does not increase your sales. A better approach, shared by sales consultant Aaron Prickel in this video, is to evaluate each existing client to make sure your team is calling on the accounts they need to. Your primary focus should be on managing the relationship with your high growth accounts and the accounts your organizations needs to keep, retain, or grow. The next step is to create an individualized strategy for each account that meets your objective for that account, using the same tactics and strategies that you would for a prospect in your sales pipeline.
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Video Transcript
What it really boils down to is: "Which accounts should we focus the most time on?"
Traditional account management is going around, visiting accounts, making sure everything's OK. The issue with this is that it can turn you into a professional visitor, and there's really no value added to the account.
The problem exists with people who call on safer accounts (or the accounts they like) versus the high-growth accounts (or the accounts that the organization and the company really need to either keep, retain, or grow).
Which accounts should we focus the most time on? Each account manager could have 20 or 100 accounts depending on the organization. But are we spending the right amount of time with the right people?
After time, it really boils down to the specific strategies and tactics associated with each account. Are some of them at-risk accounts, so the strategies and tactics revolve around keeping them? Are there some strategies and tactics for growing and expanding our wallet share? Or, how do we become a virus within that account so that we're not constantly reselling ourselves every time the main contact leaves?
When you look at true strategic account management, it's about unlocking the hidden potential that already exists within the places you are. By becoming a virus, knowing who to spend time with, how much time to spend with them, and the proper strategy and tactics, you will unlock that potential.
