Introduction
Account Managers play a pivotal role in revenue generation and client satisfaction, yet when it comes to results, only 8% of sales leaders believe their account management teams are exceptional. This concerning statistic underscores the critical need for organisations to re-evaluate their approach to account management.
The importance of account management teams is often overlooked or underestimated, leading to suboptimal outcomes. Several factors contribute to this issue, including the mistimed creation of these teams, incorrect structural setups, and inadequate organisational support. In many cases, organisations spread the responsibility for managing accounts across different functions and individuals, which may work initially or with a small client base but is ultimately unsustainable. Account managers possess a unique skillset that combines commercial acumen with exceptional customer care. Relying on non-specialists to handle client relationships risks missing revenue opportunities and causing client frustration, potentially driving them to seek alternatives.
Recognising the appropriate time to establish an account management team can be challenging, but significant growth and increasing client demands often serve as strong indicators. Whether you are considering creating an account management team or are currently managing one, the below 10 tips will help you build and manage the function effectively, ensuring it delivers outstanding results for your business.
Tips for Success
✅ Align Roles and Goals: To set your account managers up for success ensure their roles and responsibilities align with your long-term organisational objectives. This alignment will enable you to identify the skillset your account managers will need to be successful and ensure you ire the right talent. The job description should mirror the reality of the role, if it doesn't, you risk the account managers you hire being set-up to fail.
✅ Cultivate Diversity and Collaboration: Build a diverse team with complementary strengths and experiences whilst fostering a culture that prioritises collaboration and a customer-first mentality. Account managers will face issues and challenges with varying degrees of complexity and severity, so being able to leverage opinions and ideas from a team that is diverse will yield more creative and effective solutions.
✅ Matching Accounts to Account Managers: Assign the right account managers to the right accounts based on their skills and expertise. Segment your customer portfolio and identify what their specific needs are and what challenges they have, this will help identify which account manager will be able to give them the best level of support. Whilst it's best for the clients to not move account managers around too often, if an account manager can be more effective on a different account, move them.
✅ Leadership for Team Success: Provide strong leadership that is focused on the team's overall success rather than individual goals. This doesn't mean you should ignore your team members goals, but you should ensure that their individual goals contribute to the teams long-term success. As a leader you must consistently try and improve your teams working environment and remove blockers to their success.
✅ Empowerment: Work with your team to create a strategic plan that is aligned with the organisational strategy and empower your team to execute. Not only will empowered account managers be more motivated but they will also be more effective, increasing your chances of team success.
✅ Adapt: Regularly review team structures, processes, procedures, and overall strategy and adapt them as necessary. Before making any significant changes, discuss them with your team and ask for input where possible. This will help to get their buy-in and ensure the changes won't have any unintended consequences.
✅ Vision and Mission: Ensure the entire organisation is aware of the account management team's goals and strategies. Create a team mission and vision statement and share the teams short, mid and long-term goals with the wider organisation. Create opportunities for cross-functional initiatives and encourage support from all departments. Account managers will require help from several business functions to ensure they meet their goals, so keeping the business updated on the teams activities and encouraging collaboration is of critical importance.
✅ Training: Review the teams training needs, and support upskilling where necessary. Give your account managers the time, resource and encouragement to develop their skillset and increase their knowledge. Weave training and development into the goal setting process so it becomes part of the team culture.
✅ Tools: Ensure the team has tools that enable them to do their best work. Too often CRM tools are imposed upon account managers without understanding how they will contribute to the success. CRM tools can be very effective but they need to be set-up and implemented in the right way. Before implementing any account management tools, understand what challenges your account managers face and what would help them become more effective and efficient. No tool might just be better than a bad tool.
✅ Feedback: Seek feedback at every opportunity. If utilised correctly, account managers will interface with nearly every area within your business, and through these and the interactions with your clients, they are best placed to identify growth inhibitors and potential risks to your goals and strategy. If you have created a collaborative an open culture and have developed a diverse team, your account managers will not only have valuable feedback, but they will likely have some innovative ideas to resolve issues and drive growth.
Conclusion
The crucial role of account managers in driving revenue and ensuring client satisfaction cannot be overstated. To build and manage effective account management teams, I have outlined ten key tips for success. From aligning roles and goals, fostering diversity and collaboration, and matching account managers with the right clients, to providing strong leadership, empowerment, and continuous adaptation, these strategies form the foundation for excellence in account management.
By following these guidelines, organisations can transform their account management teams. By doing so they can expect new revenue streams and increased client retention.
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