Managing Major Accounts Proactively

Who is it for?
• Account managers looking to develop their relationships with, and secure more business from, their major accounts.
• Sales managers seeking to gain more visibility over the major accounts in their portfolio, to gain greater understanding of business opportunities and to make more informed decisions over their allocation of resources.
• Technical consultants, project managers and other customer facing people involved in the sales and implementation processes with major accounts.

What is it about?
Most sales managers and account managers understand very well Pareto's Law, that 80% of your business will come from 20% of your accounts. They are also painfully aware of the difficulties and costs involved in opening up new accounts. Yet it is relatively few organisations, when they have spent considerable time, effort and money in establishing an early success with a customer, then proactively develop the business relationship.

Moving from a reactive to a proactive sales approach is a key challenge for many organisations today as they seek to differentiate themselves in the marketplace, develop deeper long term relationships with major accounts, lower the overall cost of sales, improve margins and grow profitable, sustainable business.

The MAP3 Account Development Planning Workshop is designed to give the participants the knowledge and tools required to successfully plan for and implement these relationships.

Participants are initially introduced to the MAP3 Account Development Planning Methodology, Process and Tool.

Each and every participant will then develop an account development plan for one of their key major accounts during the course of the day to walk away and implement.

How do you benefit?
Quite simply the implementation of effective account development planning puts 'you in control of your business' rather than 'your business being in control of you'!

For many people 'account management' means looking after or farming the relationship with an existing customer, and will usually be measured in terms of on-going revenue, gross margin and customer satisfaction. In our terms this is 'account servicing' and while a valuable function, does not by itself constitute proactive account management.

Proactive account management means you being responsible for the total relationship between your organisation and another, and in particular for managing the development of the relationship to meet specific business goals and objectives that have been set.

How does your company benefit?
The implementation of effective account development planning gives your company greater visibility of current and future business opportunities and allows more informed decisions over the allocation of scarce and costly resources.

Course overview
The day covers:
• an introduction to the MAP3 Account Development Planning Methodology, Process and Tool.
• the development of an account development plan for a major account by each participant. During the day we look at each part of the plan in turn, and then apply it to the particular customer. The plan is developed and refined as the day progresses, to finish with a good first plan.
• coaching and feedback on the plan by the course leader.
• feedback on the plan by the other course participants.
• access to the MAP3 extranet for a range of supporting materials on an ongoing basis.

Testimonials
"I found this session extremely useful. There is so much to remember to keep on top of with a major account that it's great to have a system like this. In the real life account that I chose to work on during the day it revealed two "blindspots" and also sharpened my objectives - so I am confident that it will justify the time and money just from that one account, and I intend to apply it to others too."
Jane Roberts, Managing Major Accounts, Toplevel Computing

"I found the course really informative; it gave our organisation plenty of information on how to better manage client accounts."
Steve Hanham, Account Manger, Streets Heaver