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Strategic Account Management – The Punchlist

by Ian Smith | Sep 2, 2014 | Sales Management | 0 comments

 


You know it has to be easier going back to the well! Cold calling strangers, even ones that should have the right problem you can solve, is tough. So why don’t more companies have a measured, tactical approach to “farming” their existing clients? Who knows, but here are my top 10 ideas to maximize your revenue from your fan base.

Top 10 Actions  

  1. Establish a Company Fact Sheet on your key accounts. What does this look like? I’ve made it easy, here is a free pdf listing on what you should know. Free pdf.
  2. Establish Economic Values. I define this as the difference between what you can realistically sell them if all relevant profit centers in your client purchased your services, minus of course, what you’ve sold to date. Now of course for many reasons, a great client household name may have low economic value.
  3. Establish an Engagement Strategy. What’s your insightful angle of attack? How do you believe you can improve the life of the individual manager inside your client? Think client manager. Think people not company. People improve then companies improve.
  4. Build great diagnostic questions that will help you uncover the truth behind your client’s operation. My favorite sales process that is built around “Diagnosis” is called The Prime Process. See my take here.
  5. Conduct war room sessions with your management team to rehearse all the scenarios, all the ways your company can bring improved performance to a range of client managers.
  6. As part of your strategy be gutsy. Call at the highest possible level in the client account. Explain your engagement strategy. Ask for help on how to execute it.
  7. Consider after qualifying the size of the opportunity, a site visit. The Land and Expand strategy is essential for long term relationship building. But this visit needs an agenda. It needs to ensure the right people are available and the visit itself needs to add value to the client.
  8. Consider a strategic workshop with client senior management and your senior management. What could you be doing more of together?
  9. Consider long term framework arrangements on pricing and product collaboration.
  10. Review the possibility of detailed Case Study testimonials.
Closing deals with clients is the beginning of a relationship not the end. Build a Strategic Account Management Strategy and you will scale your business for the right reasons.

 

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If it’s good enough for us: Executives spin off internal IT efforts into viable businesses ow.ly/Q7WT50uXrC0 via @WSJ Marketing an internal software service to the outside needs its own strategic plan!

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9:24 am · July 10, 2019
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Eleven votes seths.blog/2019/06/e…

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9:46 am · June 22, 2019
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Great week in Albuquerque at the National Senior Games - ran seasons best M60 - 400m - 59.74 - 4th in the final - ranked 6th in the world rankings - the US is loaded at this event! @SeniorGames1

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11:44 am · June 19, 2019
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Semiconductor Supply Chain - Take a look at @Mycronic solutions - RT @mrsi_systems: Challenges and Solutions for Bonding Ultra-Small Ceramic End-Terminated Capacitors mrsisystems.com/2019… pic.twitter.com/uWos…

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10:36 am · June 18, 2019
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RT @DanielPink: How to lead more effectively, via @Neil_Irwin: "One of the strongest predictors of success for middle managers was that they held frequent one-on-one meetings with the people who reported directly to them.” nyti.ms/2WHuJ6v

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10:32 am · June 18, 2019
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China’s Huawei expects a $30 billion dent in revenue—for the first time quantifying the potential impact of the U.S. blacklisting wsj.com/articles/u-s… via @WSJ - Interesting 16% of the $70 billion procurement is sourced from the US - that's a big hit to US businesses

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10:28 am · June 18, 2019
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Salesforce’s all-stock deal, with an enterprise value of $15.7 billion, is aimed at expanding the business-software firm’s digital offerings. wsj.com/articles/sal… via @WSJ - Now strategically I get it but a price tag of 39 times sales! (Even SF is only at 7 times sales value)

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1:08 pm · June 10, 2019
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Investors have given an unenthusiastic welcome to Infineon’s $10 billion acquisition of Cypress Semiconductor. Here’s why. wsj.com/articles/thi… via @WSJ

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12:56 pm · June 4, 2019
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Getting into shape nicely for the National Senior Games @SeniorGames1 in 2 weeks 60.78 400m M60 #3 in US rankings - & 27.77 200m at todays Battle Road track meet

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8:18 am · June 2, 2019
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Seth on culture - Of course they’re wrong seths.blog/2019/06/o… my 2 cents - culture is a corollary of behavior-eg if leadership insist on meetings starting on time and trapping actions - that is the culture

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8:12 am · June 2, 2019
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Globalization’s next chapter bit.ly/2Xl6HPM via @McKinsey_MGI - "The final big change in globalization increasingly, is regionalization. Trade within regions like the EU-28 or the Asia–Pacific region is growing much faster than the long-haul global trade"

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11:54 am · June 1, 2019

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