Posts from April 2012

What are the differences between Strategic Account Management and Selling?

Ask the question, “What needs to happen at your company to maximize your success with your strategic accounts?” and you’re likely to get answers like this:

• The leaders at the account need to know about the value we can bring them besides what we’re doing for them right now.
• We need to penetrate different divisions of the accounts.
• Our relationships need to be deeper if we want to keep competitors out.
• We need to work directly with decision makers at the enterprise level.

Nice list, but not unique to strategic account management.

Indeed, the answers tend to be the same as those to the question, “What would you like your salespeople to do more of?"

Company leaders often ask the question, look at this list, and decide, “Okay – looks like we need sales training. Let’s put something on the agenda.”

This is a mistake.

While on their face, many of the outcomes of strategic account management and sales are the same (e.g. higher revenue, higher margins, longer contracts, deeper penetration, more mindshare, stronger relationships) and some of the concepts are the same, the paths to get there can be quite different.

Here are 5 areas where these differences stand out...