Case Study
Senior Account Management in a Major leading Global Software (and Hardware) Company
Background
This team are the Premier Support, purely dealing with renewals which bring in a significant annual revenue. The brief was to change the culture of ‘order taker’ to become true relationship account managers, out with their customers face to face in constant contact rather than just approaching them a month before renewal. They needed their Account Managers to be proactively developing their Accounts, looking for new opportunities to expand their services within their customers businesses. The range of skills varied from absolutely no sales experience and no sales training to consultants who had been in sales for over 20 years (with some bad habits picked up along the way!).
Action
Two day programme with the objectives of:
- Gaining a recognition that the culture needs to change to proactive relationship sales management
- Providing the essential skills to understanding their customer’s external, internal and personal drivers
- Developing an understanding of the customer needs and providing solutions rather than products
- Positively overcoming objections
- Identifying the high performers within the Account Manager team and those individuals with potential
Outcome
- Increase in 1:1 visits up by 20%
- All account opportunities identified through using stakeholder mapping and management tools learnt on the programme
- During one programme an individual Account Manager closed a deal for £1.2m using the methodology he had learnt that day
- There was an immediate buzz within the team rather than complacency which is driving a healthy competitiveness amongst individuals
- We are now in the process of developing a comprehensive Sales Academy (7 core Modules) endorsed by the ISMM
