For any company involved with sales, account management and key account management is crucial and requires a vastly different skillset and toolset than winning new sales.

What is (Key) Account Management?

The core concept of account management is that winning a new account is more costly and difficult than maintaining and upsellingUpselling Upselling is a selling technique where a seller introduces a more expensive, an upgrade, or add-on to a buyer to increase the average order value. an existing account. Yet account management still requires planning, resources, time, and energy. We are the first CRM vendor worldwide to include account management in the core system. Account management has to do with the size of the account, planning how much revenueRevenue Revenue is the amount of money a business generates during a specific period such as a year or a quarter; also called sales. you expect from the account, plans for enlarging the account, and strategies for cross-sellingCross-selling Cross-selling B2B is when a customer purchases a product and they are offered a second product at a discount or as a reward. and upselling.

The Right People

This planning must include the account rep who will be consistently managing and selling into accounts. Additionally, an account manager must be positively supported by technology so that they can immediately see all the potential, possibilities, and issues of any particular account.

Nature of Accounts

Many times accounts should be strategically managed due to the size of the account. Working with a large enterpriseEnterprise Enterprise (in the context of sales) is a relatively large organization typically composed of multiple levels, locations, and departments which need multi-layer software systems that support collaboration across a large corporate environment. is very different from working with a young, dynamic company striving to move forward. Where there is a parent company and subsidiaries, there are issues specific to selling and account-managing them. One issue can be that despite a company being a subsidiary of a parent company, it can have relative autonomy to make its own business decisions.

Politics

One risk you take when you’re selling to different subsidiaries or different departments is that you may be dealing with a lot of internal politics that you’re unaware of. One subsidiary might be favoring one solutionSolution Solution is a combination of ideas, strategies, processes, technologies and services that effectively helps an organization achieve its goals or hurdle its challenges. of your type, and another might be favoring a different one. Therefore you need to proceed with caution.

Importance

Why is account management so crucial? Because managing accounts done well provides your company with a steady flow of revenue. Efficient account management builds strong relationships, and by doing so provides predictability. You’re able to say with some degree of confidence that a particular account will bring you a certain amount of revenue in the coming year.

In this ebook we’ll go into considerable detail about account management. Let’s get started!