Account Managers often struggle to grow and retain revenue, particularly during economic uncertainty.
Here are four common mistakes that contribute to customer churn and prevent realizing the full potential of account relationships.
1. Unable To Transition From Tactical To Strategic Sales Motions
While account managers need to be responsive to tactical customer asks, fulfilling requests without digging deeper can inhibit growth and retention.
Account managers should leverage tactical customer asks as an opportunity to explore, question, and understand the what and why that is driving the requests. Often, customers don’t know what they want — or they know what they want but don’t know the most effective way to achieve what they want.
If an account manager can extract the strategic thinking behind customer requests, they have a chance to present big ideas to deliver value. That helps the account manager shift from the vendor’s status to a trusted advisor.
The key to driving organic growth through large and strategic opportunities is to uncover the what, and why behind customer asks and explore the strategy more fully.
2. Not approaching accounts from their perspective
It’s natural for sales teams to begin account planning with what your company wants out of the relationship. However, an outside-in account planning approach can drive more revenue and profit faster.
Account managers spend a lot of time thinking about what they want to achieve and how to get it. Shifting more of the focus to what the customer wants enables mutually beneficial conversations that otherwise might not occur.
Helping customers achieve their objectives typically compels them to move faster than initiatives your company thinks are a good idea but may not align with the account’s strategic priorities.
3. It’s Easier To Be Reactive Than Proactive
Reactive account managers encounter unwelcome surprises when they don’t stay ahead of the knowledge curve, whether it’s about the customer, competitors, or the customer’s industry.
Proactive motions require more than regular contact. Strategic priorities can shift; leadership changes occur; competitive actions may demand countermeasures, and the marketplace is constantly changing.
Account managers can’t afford to wait for their customers to come to them with a challenge. Instead, they should look ahead, anticipate trends, and prepare for opportunities to prompt meaningful and strategic conversations beyond the current solution.
4. Assuming that Others Within the Company Understand the Client as Well as They Do
Galvanizing and aligning the resources responsible for servicing and growing the account is challenging under the best circumstances. To that end, it’s unlikely that the organization will know or appreciate the customer’s needs and objectives without a structured direction from the account manager.
The best way to foster alignment is to create a good account plan synthesizing plan objectives, milestones, tactics, and action items to stimulate growth and retention.
Account plans help answer the question: “What do we do next?” They build and sustain momentum as you tackle short and long-term initiatives, keeping teams focused on “the prize” even as they manage the day-to-day execution.