Customer Retention: The Holy Grail of Sales!

Every sales executive and sales representative needs to make an annual revenue goal. It’s no secret that the easiest path to “making your number” is to keep your existing business and sell more to an existing account. Why?  The easiest customer to sell to is one that already buys from you. Current accounts know your […]

Crafting a Powerful “Green Field” Sales Strategy

While many account managers are quick to voice their desire to become a “trusted advisor” or “valued partner” to their key customers, they are mistaken in believing that periodic, well defined and publicly completed sales opportunities will serve as effective pathways.  Savvy account managers don’t strive for incremental growth year-over-year, they are obsessed with developing […]

What Is a “Green Field” Sales Strategy?

In many regards, account managers—especially those charged with managing large, revenue generating account teams—have to adopt two very different mindsets.  On one hand, they must develop a powerful defensive strategy to insure the competition doesn’t gain a foothold that compromises existing business.  On the other hand, they must craft an offensive strategy that will grow […]

Strategic Account Management: Rebuilding a Poor Customer Relationship

Recently we were conducting a sales workshop on selling to strategic accounts. During one of the breaks a participants (Ken) asked us to have lunch with him so that he could discuss an account problem and gain our insight. Background & Situation During lunch Ken explained that he had recently been asked to take over […]

Warning Signs That Your Key Account is About to Defect!

We all know that in sales, obtaining new business is the Holy Grail. The question is what are you doing to protect and grow the customer that is feeding you today? Whether you call them key or strategic accounts, they are the accounts that are important to you Are you building solid relationships that help […]

Is Sales Planning a Waste of Time?

The Context In a recent sales workshop we had lunch with three sales representatives. For purposes of anonymity we will call them Abbie (A), Bill (B) and Charlie (C). It was 10 months into their fiscal year and the conversation turned to their sales funnels, sales planning activities and their efforts to close the year […]

Best Practices with Strategic Accounts

For every sales organization there are very large accounts that require extensive company resources. Whether you call them “key, national or strategic accounts” does not matter. Loss of even a single important account would create a significant revenue or profit shortfall that would be difficult and time consuming to replace. For many sales executives, effective […]

Essential Skills of the New MedTech Account Manager

The healthcare eco-system is in flux as implementation of the Patient Protection & Affordable Care Act unfolds. New reimbursement models are forcing collaboration between payers and providers to improve patient satisfaction and health outcomes. As healthcare stakeholders begin to take more financial risk for patient outcomes, they will demand value-based products and services be provided. […]

10 Reasons Why Strategic Account Plans Fail!

Many sales professionals are asked to develop a Strategic Account Plan (SAP). These plans allow sales professionals to keep management abreast of changes with their customers and competitors, develop strategies to foster profitable growth and define success metrics with a focus of 1-3 years. Because SAPs are plans they need to be reviewed, updated and […]