Articles under ‘Account Management’

With relationship based selling, the clue is in the title! To be successful with this type of selling you need to be developing and extending relationships. The activity is similar to networking except you are building a network within the client account. Seek to keep updated with what is going on and also expand your [...]

It is easy to assume that everything is going swimmingly with a client. You are delivering what you promised. The client is paying your bills. You are talking to the client most days, surely an account review is just a waste of time?
Actually, the more regularly you work with a client on a day-to-day basis, [...]

During the account planning sessions you will have identified potential opportunities but this should actually be an ongoing activity with all priority accounts – even those not big enough to justify formal account planning sessions.

When we are working on our accounts day-in, day-out it is sometimes hard to see the wood from the trees. Taking time out to review important accounts on a periodic basis will help to protect what we have already achieved and maximise the growth potential.

Building accounts take time and focused effort. When you have a number of accounts, it may not be possible to pay the same amount of attention to each of them. Not all accounts will be worth the effort. By prioritising our accounts we can ensure that we maximise the sales we generate from the time [...]

When a business is brand new then there is an obvious need to win new clients. As the business becomes more established then the sales focus should change to be a combination of finding new clients and selling more to existing clients. The easiest sale to make is to existing clients and yet this is [...]

The other day I was asked a question which I know is a common issue so I thought I would share my response. The question was to do with broaching the subject of additional services where you could see a client had a need for them.

There is a saying that ‘Words are cheap’. When it comes to building trusted relationships with clients words can turn out to be very expensive.

One of the things that amazes me about small and medium sized businesses is how they struggle with lead generation from existing clients. This should be one of the easiest sales to make. There are three main reasons for this: