3. Definitions
• Account
– Any organization, or subset of an organization,
that operates to some extent as a single circle of
influence in its decision making processes –
especially as these decisions relate to the
organization’s interaction with your organization
• This definition is fuzzy and fluid by necessity
– Affected by natural forces of change and/or the
account manager
4. Definitions
• Account Management
– A sales person’s concerted, conscious efforts to
foster a high-level relationship between an
organization and your company toward the
specific goal of exposing and creating the sales
opportunities, appropriate for the particular type
of account (end user / OEM / VAR) that will result
in sales momentum.
5. Definitions
• Sales Momentum
– Revenue generation that is disproportionate, in a
nonlinear fashion, to the sales effort invested in
an account
6. Definitions
• Account Management vs. Account
Development
– Activities required to establish sales momentum
(account development) are often different from
those required to sustain and expand sales
momentum (account management)
• Many people often use the terms
interchangeably
7. Definitions
• Contact / Lead
Management
– Objective: Account
Management
• to be considered
• close transactional sales
Opportunity
Management
Contact/Lead Management
8. Definitions
• Opportunity Management
– Objective:
• close larger sales or series of
sales
• More strategic: disconnected Account
Management
interactions compared to individual
purchasing cycles
• Non-technical influences on decisions
motivated by business considerations, Opportunity
Management
strength of relationships, political
pressures, and organizational
structures.
Contact/Lead Management
9. Basic Decision Process
Plan
Value Adding Partner
Recognize
Search
Solution Provider
Evaluate
To make a Sale
To Dominate an Account
Supplier/Provider
Repeat Business
Select
To be Considered
Vendor
Commit
Implement
Track
10. Definitions
• Account Management
– Objective:
• Generate /sustain
Account
momentum within an
Management
account that will expose and
create sales opportunities
out of proportion to sales
Opportunity
effort
Management
– Often accomplished by
teams
– Affects culture of Contact/Lead Management
customer accounts
Account management is a focused and proactive sales process that invests time into
understanding the “greater picture” of an account and leveraging that information to build
influence and sales over time.
11. Territory Account Management
• Example components of a balanced territory business plan.
Timeframe Affect on Area Success Leading Risk if
Factor Indicators Overdone
Or Mindset
Account Longer term Focused Planning & New Insight Dependent upon
Penetration a few accounts
Development Partnerships Proactive Opportunities
or an Industry
Increased Mindset
Control
Opportunity Shorter/ Broad Coverage Leads & Visits Lack of larger
Management High sales and sense
Medium term Diversification New Accounts
Levels of of control
Sales
Activity
12. Habit One – Be Proactive
• Activity is important…
– But it is not the ultimate metric
• It is important to do things right…
– It is even more important to do the right things
• Cannot merely react to customer requests
• The most significant “competition” is often the fact
that an application has never been considered – or
has been written off as unapproachable
13. Habit Two – Begin with the End in Mind
• Effective activity is focused activity
• Evaluate all activity in light of goals
• If you are not regularly making conscious choices not
to do various tasks, you are probably not executing
on a strategy
• Have a goal for every visit, every phone call, every
email
• If you do not begin with the end in mind, you risk
losing “impact effectiveness” – interactions with
customers in which you have the right message at
the right time
14. Habit Three – Put First Things First
• There will always be more valuable things to
do as a salesperson than there will be time in
which to do them
– If you don’t make the decisions, they will be made
for you by the tyranny of the urgent
15. Habit Three – Put First Things First
• Account managers should be very responsive to but
not completely ruled by inbound customer requests
– The largest opportunities are typically long-term, slowly
developing, paradigm-shifting processes that can take
months/years to bring to fruition
• It will be rare for the most important action items in these
opportunities to come in with “urgent” time frames
• Anyone can handle action items that are both urgent and
important
– You must manage your accounts, not merely service them
16. Account Selection
• Overarching goal: identify End-user, VAR, and
OEM accounts that generate sales revenue
completely out of proportion to sales effort.
(sales momentum)
17. Factors to Consider in Account Selection
• What business is the account in?
• What is the financial health of the company?
• What is the top-down organizational structure?
• What are the purchasing sign-off procedures and the
amounts per level?
• How does upper management view the project's success?
• Who are the influential key inside people in each
organizational section?
• Who are existing partners? Who are potential partners?
• What is your competition's strategy for the account?
• What are the current projects for your products, list the
people involved, identify the timeline, and identify the
budget?
• What is their timeline? What is their budget?
• Where does their funding come from?
18. VAR Accounts
• Mechanism for sales momentum in a Value
Added Reseller (VAR) account is the growth of
the VAR’s own business
– VAR must have a solid business plan
19. OEM Accounts
• The goose that lays the golden eggs
• Sales momentum attained by embedding your
product within the customer’s products
• If you are selling a higher-level sub-assembly, it
is, of course, best to look for applications
where cost is not the only factor in the
decision
• Long-term and slow to develop
20. Habit Four – Think Win / Win and
Habit Five – Seek First to Understand, Then
to Be Understood
• Must understand and believe in the connection between
account’s adoption of your solution(s) and the attainment of
your customer’s business goals
• “Understanding” must go far beyond the technical details to
the social, political, organizational, and business issues
• Use natural ‘events’ as opportunities to learn the rest of the
organization.
– Purchasing issues – great time to meet and visit the purchasing
department – who and how do they work?
– Design changes- meet the end user department, understand what
other issues may be addressed in future.
– Trial Run/Successful Projects – Great time to follow-up with directors,
did it meet their objectives
– Company Budget Planning – Offer to do “rough quotes” for engineer
managers during fiscal cycles.
• Best information is often indirect or even unspoken. LISTEN!
21. Habit Four – Think Win / Win and
Habit Five – Seek First to Understand, Then
to Be Understood
• Once you understand, tailor your
presentations can speak directly to the
customer’s situation in a way that no low-cost
competitor can match
23. Cash is King! Where Can Your Product
Help Drive the Process Faster or Better?
Stock Offering,
Bank Loan
Cash Build-up
Raw In Progress Finished
Materials Capital Equipment Goods
Operations:
Cash R&D
Sales
Marketing
Accounts
Accounts Sales Revenue
Receivable
Payable
24. Balance Sheet
Snap shot at any point in time showing the value
of your investment:
Assets – Liabilities = Owner Equity
Generate Cash and Thrive
Consume Cash and ???
25. Balance Sheet
The three most important elements of the
balance sheet which have the largest impact
on CASH:
Receivables
Inventory
Payables
26. Understand how the Financials Add-up
• What is all involved in the end system and how can
you help reduce these costs?
– Personnel costs
– Indirect costs like corporate overhead
– Depreciation
– Annual operating costs
– Capital equipment costs
101 finance book: “Analysis For Financial Management”, Robert Higgins
27. Maximize Benefits in Financial Terms
• Accuracy - Will the proposed system provide better accuracy.
• Availability - How long will it take to develop and implement the system?
• Compatibility - How compatible is your alternative with existing systems and procedures?
Will one alternative require less training of personnel or less new equipment or software?
• Efficiency - Will your alternative provide faster or more accurate processing. Will your
alternative require fewer resources for the processing?
• Maintainability - Will the maintenance costs for your alternative be less than the others?
Are the maintenance resources easier to acquire for your alternative? An example of this
could be availability and cost of programmers to maintain the software.
• Modularity - Will the software for your alternative be more modular than the other
alternatives? Greater modularity can reduce maintenance costs and will increase the
portability of the software.
• Reliability - Does your alternative provide greater hardware or software reliability? Greater
reliability translates to higher productivity in using and/or operating the system and less
time for operations and user support.
• Access - Does your solution provide better connectivity so live or post results can aid future
implementation.
28. Habit Four – Think Win / Win and
Habit Five – Seek First to Understand,
Then to Be Understood
• Look for opportunities to present on the strengths of
your company
• Longevity, strong leadership, success as a publicly
traded company, market resilience and global
presence
• Your customer cannot afford the possibility of being
marooned on an obsolete platform
• Don’t pull the company overview slides out of your
presentations.
29. Habit Six – Synergize
• Synergy – any situation in which the whole is greater
than the sum of its parts
• Does a product’s sales drive sales of another
product, and vice-versa?
• Teamwork within the organization
– You are to be the “face of corporate” to your customers
– You cannot be “Corporate” and must not try
30. Habit Seven – Sharpen the Saw
• You are in a marathon, not a sprint
• You need to stay technical or up to date
– Regular, scheduled times for self-study
– Make time to read trade journals, local business journals,
customer / partner / competitor web sites
• Study the methods of your colleagues, business
partners, and competitors
• Jealously guard your other life priorities
