Selling to Major Accounts

Tools, Techniques and Practical Solutions

AMACOM, 1999

15 min read

10 take-aways

Audio & text

What's inside?

Every sales force needs hunters and farmers: The hunters bag the big accounts and the farmers make them grow.

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Why waste your precious sales resources trying to lure potential prospects when you can use strategic account management to focus on the few customers that are responsible for the bulk of your revenue? In this ultimate guide to strategic account management, Terry R. Bacon provides a variety of useful tools that you can use to assess and analyze your key customers and competitors as well as your own company. As you read it, you will find yourself classifying your strategic customers and recognizing their importance to your company. Then you can prioritize the service and attention you give them. Using the strategies in this book can help your firm build a long-term competitive advantage. getAbstract recommends this book to CEOs, account managers, sales managers and salespeople who want to pump up revenues from existing sales efforts.

Summary

Strategic Account Management

Strategic account management means focusing your sales effort on the customers who make up the bulk of your sales. A strategic account management approach to selling is very different from other common methods. Strategic account management is not the same as retail selling (selling to wholesalers and distributors and promoting through packaging and advertising), mass marketing (selling directly to customers through mail order or other mass medium) and sealed bidding (opening vendor bids publicly with the lowest bidder winning).

For a company to be able to use strategic account management certain conditions must apply. The company’s products or services should be sold directly to other companies or purchasing entities, such as government offices. The qualified customer should have an ongoing need for the product or service. While price is always a consideration, the company needs buyers who are looking for added value and are willing to pay for it. You can provide this added value in the form of customized service, product modifications and specialized attention. Finally, the seller should have or be able to develop a continuous business...

About the Author

Terry R. Bacon, Ph.D., is the president and CEO of Lore International Institute, a consulting firm that offers corporate training programs in sales and marketing, leadership and strategic account management. He has written more than 80 books and educational programs.

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J. M. 1 decade ago

Really helpful model for learning different approaches to different account types, and how to manage the time invested in each.

Terry R. Bacon, Ph.D.