Previously you could probably hear a lot about account management in the interviews or speeches of the best CEOs or Sales stars speakers at professional conferences. You may have a feeling that it sounds perfect but nobody told you about step-by-step and precise actions on how to implement it in your business. İn this article we want to discuss how you can improve account management techniques in your business.
Firstly we need to start with your CRM and check your sales dashboard. Let's imagine that we see the following data in your pipeline:
1) Lead verification. At this stage, we have leads that your Marketing department brought from their advertisement activities or you got leads from the website contact form. In case you see 0, no worries, you always have sales guys who hopefully did their job better. So we see 100 deals.
2) Intro/Demo calls. At this stage, we see how many of your prospective clients are ready to have a call with you. Let's say it is 50.
3) Commercial offer. You did your job on Intro/Demo calls really well and sent a perfect commercial offer for them. Champagne is already pouring and money is almost in your pocket :))))) 20 deals are here.
4) Stand-by or Follow-up. Here you have deals that will not be closed today, in a month or even a year. Some clients' replies that you can see here might be the following - Not now….. We are OK but will keep your contacts for the future….. Please contact me in Q32021….. If you see that stage in your CRM it is a good sign as it means that your business is focused on the long-term run. Most of the owners and SDRs do not even get to this stage as they simply marked deals as failed and that’s all that they are capable of. Yes, 340 deals have not been won. The solution at this stage is simple.
Try to follow them up with your new articles, updates, info relevant for them, and your updated offering. Remember the following: people don't buy until your value will be higher than the cost
of your services. If your offer is not clear, the value is vague and you still have not gathered the detailed requirements then you are in trouble.
5) Contract signed. The good news at this stage that salespeople are already thinking about a new Ferrari and yacht. The problem here is that your work and relationship with the client have not even started. The deal will be considered won only when your 1st invoice has been paid or better if the 12th invoice has been paid. We strongly recommend checking and thinking about your client's LTV as you will find a lot of interesting things that you can use for future wins. At this stage, you should focus on working with your team and client very closely to make sure that you deliver on-time, submit quality that is more than expected, and the client is ultimately satisfied. Send progress reports, updates, have some progress calls to make sure that you are on the same page with the team and the client and everything goes smoothly.10 deals here.
Account management in sales is a strategic direction for your organization as it allows you to build better relationships with your clients, get testimonials, ask about referrals or make some intro for you. Finally, if you deliver everything that you promised to the clients you can do a 100% probability up-sale. Invest more time, energy, knowledge in Stand-by and Contract signed stages to be on top of your competitors and improve your sales positions. If you do follow-ups with your clients that refused your offer or are not ready to buy now it is your chance to build relationships with them, improve your offering, get more requirements and insights from them to become a trusted partner.
We hope that makes sense to you. If you see that you need to take a deep dive into account management in your business we are here to set up these processes.
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