Account Management

• Account managers
• Sales Managers/ Sales executives
• Any staff managing significant client accounts
• Commercial Managers

Course objectives

• To apply a strategic selling approach for winning and developing all your significant accounts
• To analyse the client ‘buy in’ and vertical and horizontal methods of selling across the organisational structure
• To tap into the decision making process and motivation of your prospects and clients
• To understand and influence different personality types in the decision making process to achieve a profitable result
• To identify your customers’ true needs and priorities and integration that into your company’s product and service offering.
• To analyse your unique selling proposition (USP) compared to your competitors
• To encourage client loyalty

Course content

Account Management Defined

• The fundamentals of account management
• Best practice and maintaining professionalism in commerce
• Managing the work pipeline and creating strategy
• Spotting the signals showing key account potential
• Dealing with client difficulties and objections
• Strategies for wining new business and invigorating dormant and defecting customers
• How to sell without selling and achieving a trusted advisor position

Client Decision Making Process

• How to prepare for bids and Requests for Proposals (RFP)
• Understanding Harvards Reviews 11 Decision Making strategies
• Buyer psychology and motivation
• Explore organizational culture, international business and buying approaches
• Understanding why your key accounts currently prefer you or not – the features, benefits and value proposition
• Strategies to stop indifference in a saturated market

Results Based Negotiation

• The steps of negotiation process
• Carving the best outcomes
• Heading towards a win-win situation
• Dealing with obstacles, stalemate in agreement and dealing with negotiation tactics and tricks
• Become a strategic business partner to your clients by creating better performance centric contracts

Encouraging Client Loyalty

• Why key accounts fail – relationship fit issues
• How to build stronger and better relationships through customer relationship management
• Benefiting from increased loyalty through networking
• Customer profiling and psychometrics
• Imbedding empathy to clients and advance communication methods
• Benefiting from customer referrals and creating a reputation based relationship
• Why under promise and over deliver

Key Account Management in Practice

• Delving in deeper to current accounts and developing plan of action
• Creating an account plan to take the business to the next level
• Managing timelines and pipelines of business
• Forward planning for future revenue
• The 12 Principles of Key Account Management
• Success Action plans