Essential Account Planning

Essential Account Planning

Author: Mark Donnolo

Publisher: Association for Talent Development

Published: 2017-05-23

Total Pages: 201

ISBN-13: 1562867776

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Sales growth starts with planning Sales accounts are harder than ever to win, let alone keep. Globalization, cloud computing, and crowdsourcing create a marketplace where any account can be lured away by a hungry startup. And the face-time advantage? Forget it. Today's high-quality sale will likely involve six or more decision makers. That's why it's time to get strategic about how sales teams frame their approach. In Essential Account Planning, sales enablement expert Mark Donnolo blends his years of experience with expert interviews and stories to show you how planning can reliably drive revenue. His five-point framework will prepare you to address the arguments you're certain to hear against account planning, such as lack of commitment, ownership, and time. Each sales organization is unique, but most have similar challenges and succeed using common principles. And chances are, sales reps in your company already perform many of these account planning tasks, albeit on the fly or independent of others. This book's ready-to-use tools and templates will help you get everyone on the same page to deliver immediate results. In this book, you'll learn how to: Develop a consistent account plan structure. Create the habits and culture of an ongoing planning process. Navigate the politics that impede information sharing. Many salespeople believe that more selling creates more sales, but the salespeople who invest in account planning become the true sales leaders. Use Essential Account Planning to bring stability to your sales organization and start seeing the rewards of planning today!


Key Account Management

Key Account Management

Author: Diana Woodburn

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2011-03-07

Total Pages: 497

ISBN-13: 047097415X

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"This book is crammed with distilled, practical wisdom for key account managers and their directors. Organizations claiming to practise key account management should equip everyone involved with a copy, so they really understand what they are supposed to be doing. Anything less is just old-fashioned selling." Developing successful business-to-business relationships with more customers in highly competitive markets requires processes and skills that go beyond traditional selling activity. The very best state-of-the-art strategies are set out clearly in this book by intentionally known authors who have worked at the highest levels with more key and strategic account managers worldwide than probably any other leading advisors. Based on the hugely influential KEY CUSTOMERS it looks at: Why has account management become so critical to commercial success? What are the key challenges and how do successful companies respond? What part does key account management play in strategic planning? How do companies build profitable relationships with their customers? How does key account management actually work? What does a successful key account manager look like and what skills does he/she need? How should key account managers be evaluated and rewarded? How do companies achieve key account management? By addressing these key questions Woodburn and McDonald provide tools and processes for success honed by tough consultancy projects with the boards of some of the world's leading companies. The book stresses the elements that really matter - from developing a customer categorization system that really works and analyzing the needs of key accounts; to understanding the new skills required by key account managers and ensuring that key account plans are implemented. The 'real world' approach is backed by tested principles and the latest research from the renowned Cranfield School of Management. Key Account Management comes from authors who have taught leading companies how to approach their most powerful and demanding customers and still make money. It is essential reading for all senior management with strategic responsibility, for key or strategic account directors, and for marketing and sales executives. The clear and authoritative approach also makes it an outstanding text for the serious MBA and executive student as well as business-to-business company directors and key account managers.


Key Account Plans

Key Account Plans

Author: Lynette Ryals

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2010-05-14

Total Pages: 408

ISBN-13: 1136390669

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To manage key accounts profitably you need strategic planning that works. This book is the definitive guide to achieving this based on the unmatched practical and research experience of Ryals and McDonald. Key Account Management is proven to deliver substantial benefits to the bottom line. Best practice companies know that real results from managing powerful customers are not achieved through short-term cost cutting. Instead, as the best companies understand, it depends on fostering carefully developed and profitably managed relationships with an equally carefully selected group of key accounts. This is a genuinely strategic activity that goes well beyond sales management and the simplistic use of budgets to generate targets. It is about the behaviours and practices that make predictable, profitable and sustainable Key Account Management possible. To achieve this the book is constructed to deliver- * Clear descriptions of the various techniques and the reason for their importance * A hugely powerful step by step approach to using the key techniques to build strategic skills * Templates for building real plans * Cases, examples and vignettes to show best real world practice Based on wide application in the business world, and the world class research at Cranfield Management School this book will be an essential introduction to the principles and reality of Strategic Key Account Planning. For senior managers, key account managers at all levels as well as those on executive and MBA courses it will be an essential guide and text.


Insight Selling

Insight Selling

Author: Mike Schultz

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2014-04-30

Total Pages: 263

ISBN-13: 1118875060

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What do winners of major sales do differently than the sellers who almost won, but ultimately came in second place? Mike Schultz and John Doerr, bestselling authors and world-renowned sales experts, set out to find the answer. They studied more than 700 business-to-business purchases made by buyers who represented a total of $3.1 billion in annual purchasing power. When they compared the winners to the second-place finishers, they found surprising results. Not only do sales winners sell differently, they sell radically differently, than the second-place finishers. In recent years, buyers have increasingly seen products and services as replaceable. You might think this would mean that the sale goes to the lowest bidder. Not true! A new breed of seller—the insight seller—is winning the sale with strong prices and margins even in the face of increasing competition and commoditization. In Insight Selling, Schultz and Doerr share the surprising results of their research on what sales winners do differently, and outline exactly what you need to do to transform yourself and your team into insight sellers. They introduce a simple three-level model based on what buyers say tip the scales in favor of the winners: Level 1 "Connect." Winners connect the dots between customer needs and company solutions, while also connecting with buyers as people. Level 2 "Convince." Winners convince buyers that they can achieve maximum return, that the risks are acceptable, and that the seller is the best choice among all options. Level 3 "Collaborate." Winners collaborate with buyers by bringing new ideas to the table, delivering new ideas and insights, and working with buyers as a team. They also found that much of the popular and current advice given to sellers can damage sales results. Insight Selling is both a strategic and tactical guide that will separate the good advice from the bad, and teach you how to put the three levels of selling to work to inspire buyers, influence their agendas, and maximize value. If you want to find yourself and your team in the winner's circle more often, this book is a must-read.


Key Account Management

Key Account Management

Author: Malcolm McDonald

Publisher:

Published: 1998

Total Pages: 194

ISBN-13: 9780750632782

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Key account management is a natural development of customer focus and relationship marketing in business-to-business markets. It offers critical benefits and opportunities for profit enhancement to both sides of the seller/buyer dyad. Based on extensive and unique research by Cranfield School of Management, Key Account Management presents a new framework for understanding the development of key account relationships. It incorporates a comprehensive guide to the current practice of key account management, and comments on the challenges for the future of key account management practice. The research was based on in-depth interviews with key account managers, their managers and their main contacts in the customer organization. Addresses one of the key new areas in strategic marketing practice Ideal for practitioners and students Based on the unique expertise of the Cranfield Marketing Faculty


Key Account Manager's Pocketbook

Key Account Manager's Pocketbook

Author: Roger E. Jones

Publisher:

Published: 2013-09

Total Pages: 112

ISBN-13: 9781906610593

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The new, 2nd edition of the Key Account Manager's Pocketbook gives practical advice on how to keep and develop important customers, thereby maximising ongoing revenue streams, reducing sales costs, improving investment planning and increasing market knowledge. It opens by describing the key account manager's role and then goes on to describe how to rise up the so-called customer perception ladder, moving from a simple commodity supplier to developing a solid, long-term business partnership with your key customers. The author next explains how to develop the 'key account development plan', how to increase your influence with the decision-maker in your key account (relationship management) and how to win new business. The final chapter runs through the essential steps of key account handling. There are short exercises throughout which, if carried out, will help to reinforce the key learning points.


The Strategic Key Account Plan

The Strategic Key Account Plan

Author: Hartmut Sieck

Publisher: BoD – Books on Demand

Published: 2016-01-07

Total Pages: 174

ISBN-13: 3739224576

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The other day in Germany: The Key Account Manager John Smith is told by his boss to create a Key Account Plan for an important, strategic customer. Should he now quickly prepare a PowerPoint presentation and show it to his boss so he's satisfied? Is a Key Account Plan actually a presentation or a real tool? If it actually is a tool, what characterizes a good Key Account Plan? How should such a Key Account Plan be structured? Should the Key Account Manager prepare this plan by himself? Just as he is contemplating all these questions, he stumbles on an interesting survey. According to this study only 20% of Key Account Managers said that they actually use this plan as a tool in their daily work, but it was this 20% that was more successful than their competitors in the year of the crisis in 2009! The conclusion from the survey catches John Smith's attention and he decides not to prepare a mere presentation but to make the most of the Account Plan by using it as a real tool. If you can identify with John Smith, this book is for you. This book will help you to structure and prepare a Key Account Plan in a professional manner. You have already prepared an Account Plan? Then use this book for a thorough scrutiny of your plan. This book is intended to be used as a guide for your work, so you can immediately put into practice what you have just read.


Key Account Management

Key Account Management

Author: Peter Cheverton

Publisher: Kogan Page Publishers

Published: 2015-02-03

Total Pages: 416

ISBN-13: 0749469412

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An organization's key accounts are its lifeblood. Key account management focuses on the long-term investment of resources in customers that can offer an exceptional return on resources. But which are the key accounts? Are they the ones growing the fastest? The ones that are most financially secure? Or are they the ones that shout the loudest? Key Account Management puts forward a straightforward and effective planning methodology. This fully updated 6th edition of Key Account Management takes a long-term, team-selling strategic view of the whole process, from defining the customer, to managing the relationship and achieving key supplier status. With coverage of latest best practice including IT's role in account management, plus new case studies, online supporting resources and a new section comparing how different industries/markets approach key account management, it stands alone as the premier book on managing key customers. Online resources include helpful templates, guides for students and lecturers, and self tests to ensure that best practice is being followed.


Super Strategist

Super Strategist

Author: Lesley Bielby

Publisher: Figure 1 Publishing

Published: 2021-04-27

Total Pages: 175

ISBN-13: 1773271482

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Super Strategist: The Art and Science of Modern Account Planning is the only modern guide to advertising’s arguably most vital discipline, that has been written with the passion of someone who’s found their calling and the wisdom of an industry veteran who is still actively leading strategy in a large, modern, full-service agency. Super Strategist is full of practical advice for newcomers and usable strategies and insights for experienced planners, or anyone with an interest in the discipline. Readers will find clear outlines of the role of account planners within an agency, including step-by-step plans to achieve success with clients large and small: how to conduct modern consumer research, develop and implement the creative brief, use data skillfully to protect and improve great work, and use all of these tools and more to influence the feather in the planner’s cap—the customer journey. Whether it’s called account planning, brand planning, strategic planning, or creative strategy, the goal is the same: to inspire brilliant work that is backed by rigor and data. Creative is still king, but in today’s fractured markets clients need to know their multi-million-dollar campaigns are supported by up-to-the-minute research and data-driven insights. Account planners ensure, as Douglas Atkins puts it in the foreword, that the work is idea-led, but consumer-informed. To find that perfect balance of art and science, the successful account planner is “X-shaped”: experienced in digital, social, communications and brand strategy, comfortable in creative and quantitative disciplines—a Super Strategist who is the fulcrum of any successful agency.


Handbook of Strategic Account Management

Handbook of Strategic Account Management

Author: Diana Woodburn

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2014-03-17

Total Pages: 540

ISBN-13: 1118509072

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A compilation of the established knowledge in strategic account management While companies and academics expend tremendous effort on mass marketing, they often overlook their immediate customers (which are critical in both senses) and hence the importance of strategic account management (SAM). This handbook is a compilation of papers that present researched knowledge of SAM across the academic community which fills a void in the existing academic literature. Handbook of Strategic Account Management identifies drivers of the SAM approach, key issues and success factors, operational needs and areas still awaiting exploration. Each paper includes an overall referenced summary of the tenets of SAM relevant to the area it reports, and together with the combined list of references, it creates an indispensable resource for academic readers, students, and researchers. Handbook of Strategic Account Management is written by over 40 knowledgeable experts with substantial experience of SAM from teaching, researching, writing and advising companies on why and how it works, spread widely across Europe and the US. It represents the balanced, researched body of knowledge in SAM and will be an invaluable resource to anyone exploring the approach, whether for a student thesis, for original research or for answers on how to approach SAM as a company initiative. "Today’s strategic, key and global account management professionals owe thanks to a small community of academic researchers who, over the past three decades have been pioneers in identifying, cataloguing and analyzing the selling and business management practices of an emerging profession we now call strategic account management. This Handbook is an important milestone to mark SAM’s still evolving impact on corporate business strategies and its ever-increasing relevance as a proven engine for growth in business-to-business strategic customer relationships." Bernard Quancard,President & CEO of SAMA (US-based Strategic Account Management Association with over 3,000 members worldwide) Yana Atanasova Bjorn Ivens Toni Mikkola Ivan Snehota Audrey Bink Ove Jensen Stefanos Mouzas Kaj Storbacka Per-Olof Brehmer Robert Krapfel Peter Naud頠 Olavi Uusitalo Noel Capon Antonella La Rocca Jukka Ojasalo Tom Vanderbiesen Simon Croom Sylvie Lacoste Catherine Pardo Stefan Wengler Osman Gök Nikala Lane Nigel Piercy Kevin Wilson Paolo Guenzi Régis Lemmens Michael Pusateri Diana Woodburn Stephan Henneburg Tommi Mahlamäki Jakob Rehme John Workman Sue Holt Malcolm McDonald Sanjiy Sengupta George Yip Christian Homburg Florin Mihoc Christoph Senn Judy Zolkiewski