The Three Q's

 

"As a manager, it will serve your company's best interest if you are aware of three vital factors which impact an account manager's performance."...

An account manager we recently worked with as a candidate for placement interviewed with two different litigation support companies. With each of these companies, he was allowed to do a field ride with a top account manager.

After two separate field rides, the candidate had not seen a single sales appointment made to a potential new tryer.  They had only observed pick-ups and deliveries. 

In a recent sales training class, an experienced account manager commented that he had not been on a single sales appointment in the preceding two months!  He had been very busy doing everything…except seeing potential new tryers.

If, during that same two-month period of time, the account manager had averaged only 2 appointments per day, he would have had face time with 80 potential new customers.  At 3 per day, the number would be 120; at 4 per day, 160…in just two months!

Right now, without referring to sales reports, or specifically asking your account managers how many sales appointments they went on last week, how many would you estimate that they did, on average, per person?

As a manager, it will serve your company’s best interest if you are keenly aware of three vital factors which impact an account manager’s performance.

1. Quantity of sales appointments - You need to know how many potential new tryers your account managers are in front of weekly.
2. Quality of prospects - You need to know whether their prospects are bona fide buyers of the kinds of services your company provides.  If they are not currently buying from a competitor, they probably aren’t realistic prospects.
3. Quality of the sales presentation - You need to know if the case being made by your account managers is compelling, i.e. would you have been pleased, or disappointed, with how your company was represented if you had sat in on a few of the appointments?

The math gets pretty simple from here! 

• If an account manager is in front of great prospects, and does a stellar job when giving a sales presentation, but they are in front of half the number of new prospects they should be seeing, their volume will predictably be half of what it could have been. 
• On the other hand, if they do the appropriate number of sales appointments, and do stellar sales presentations, but are in front of “poor to marginal” prospects, their volume will probably be 75% less than it could be.
• Finally, if they are in front of the appropriate number of great prospects, but cannot make the case for using your company’s services, they will likely perform so far below their potential that they will either, a) choose to leave… eventually, or b) be terminated.

As a manager, your personal success, and that of your company, is predicated upon the success of your team.  In fact, your performance is equal to the collective efforts of your team, and will always be judged accordingly.

It takes no great ability to hold people accountable to a certain set of standards.  That is not the challenge.  The challenge is to hold yourself accountable to making sure you are not asking your team to perform at a level that exceeds their current level of training, or training and development you have either provided…or made available.

For those managers who have sent account managers through our sales training, you already know we spend the better part of a full day on the single component of prospecting.  We spend parts of three days focused on developing the account managers’ skills and knowledge to be able to do effective sales presentations.  And, we help each individual in the class develop a grid of daily activity based on their current level of production, which could range from someone new who has no base of business, to someone producing over 100K per month.

If you have account managers on board who you believe have more potential than is currently being reflected in their performance, we can help you provide the specialized sales training that can make a significant difference.

Our current sales training schedule is: October 20-24, November 17-21, December 15-19, and January 26-30.  If you have any questions about the training, or would like a few referrals, please give us a call.  If you would like, take a moment to access schedule updates, review the training outline, or read a few testimonials.  Let us hear from you soon if you would like to send one or more account managers to attend one of these training workshops.