Dear Dana,
I personally believe that keeping a successful portfolio of account requires below ingredients. However, every account manager learns what is required to successfully maintain an account and improves on it as he/she goes along. Here is what I have learned with my experience so far:1) Be honest and straight forward with your customers regardless of how bad the problem might seems. Clients are surprisingly more receptive to the truthful assessment when it is followed by a logical solution to those problems. This will build trust;2) Always ensure on-time delivery of a product / service. But in order to be great in handling your accounts, go beyond and surpass customer expectations. Make them feel that you have their best interests at heart and you are attending to their needs. This will translate into customer satisfaction and repeat business;3) Be proactive and carry a can-do attitude. This might seem a cliché but it is quite true;4) Train yourself to be a solution oriented person rather than just a problem identifier;5) Work out a pragmatic balance between your company’s needs and your customers’. This could mean finding a balance on efforts (costs) that you incur on handling an account and the benefits (revenues) that it generates. At the end of the day, a successful account value graph should head upwards on an year-to-year basis. Work out a realistic assessment on the dollar value growth of each account and work hard to ensure that you surpass these numbers;6) Own your accounts. By this I mean, be responsible for the rise and fall of each of your accounts;7) Don’t consume24/7 of your life but it helps if you are accommodating and easily reachable to your clients after working hours. It does make a lot of difference.
I hope that answers your question.
Regards
Tahir
Great answers from Syed and Irphan, I fully support your statements.
I was fortunate enough to be a Strategic Account Manager for more than10 years. These Accounts were so critical to our company that I was fully dedicated for years to one and only one client. I would elaborate on Syed’s answer from a complementary point of view: owning the relationship with the client, being honest, proactive, under-promising and over-delivering are essential, and I would summarize all of this under two headers: (1) Know you client’s business better than he actually does and (2) Be the client advocate within your company.
Know your client’s business better than he actually does: interestingly enough, in large companies, people tend to know what happens in their own department, but have little understanding of what happens in other departments, geographies … As an outsider, you get a chance to learn about every single department and build a holistic view that nobody gets from within (by the way, the opposite is true, my then client knew more about my employer than I did ;). This view gives you the chance to “connect the dots” and discuss opportunities that would remain unnoticed within your client. In the end of the day, you are not perceived as selling your products, but as building value for the client. This builds an amazing long-lasting trust which turns into profitable business. I would recommend the following to develop this level of knowledge about your client’s business: meet every possible department at your client, read about their industry, survey their competitors, attend professional conferences from their industry … Become the expert in your client’s business, you’ll be ahead of your client; you’ll be ahead of your competitors.
Be the client advocate within your company: as a matter of fact, by earning this relationship with your client, you don’t need to sell your products/services to your client, you do sell your client’s needs/expectations to your management, your product or services specialists. If you are fortunate enough to work in a large organization with a broad portfolio of products/services, your job is about stretching your colleagues and managers, getting them to deliver solutions that fit your client’s needs. Even if you work in a smaller company, there would be opportunities for customizing standard offers, whether this is in terms of functionalities, integration with the client’s environment or from a commercial perspective. This might also mean being harsh on your own organization whenever something does not match your expectations: you own the relationship with your client, you would not accept that your company under delivers.
Being a Key Account Manager is risky business; you are requested to put all your eggs into the same basket. And it is equally rewarding when you successfully own the relationship: your client loves you, your employer respects you, you learn a lot and may earn a lot as well.
All the best
Key Account Management is long term NURTURING of an Account/Organisation to propose/sell in your products/services to contribute to the Account/Organisation's productivity, efficiency,h an objective of LONG TERM mutual beneficial business relationship and a KEY CONTRIBUTOR to your employer . Thus all activities of the person handling a key account has to be around the said objective.
Unlike a typical sales person, A Key Account Manager works as a CONSULTANT to the defined Key Accounts.
Key Account Manager requires updated knowledge about the products/solutions/services and all necessary information about the defined Key Accounts.
Build relationship at all levels by MAPPING the defined Key Accounts and collect all information about their business, organisational structure, processes followed (such as indenting, purchasing, decision making, payment, etc.), authority, financial status, extracts of their planned budget of interest to your business, competition presence and all other relevant information which will keep the individual busy planning various activities around it to meet the said objective. All this helps the Key Account Manager to have a platform/contacts to create NEEDS and influence the decision making at various levels by POSITIONING.
Defined Key Accounts view Account Manager as a single point of contact for all concerns related to their business relationship and therefore this challenge is acceptable.
Accurate information about the defined Key Accounts must be documented and put into a system for ready reference and future action plans.
Maintain contacts and continuous flow of required information at all levels and at all times irrespective of any seasons.
Key Account Manager is looked as informative and problem solver and thus Key Accounts view them as CONSULTANTS and not as a typical sales person.
Building strong relationship at various levels in the Key Accounts also helps in having an easy access to the required information to form a strategy for favourable decisions.
Long way to go but a BIG SHARE to have .......................
