Organizations that have successfully implemented strategic account management programs have made it a top management priority. They make it a priority that each staff meeting includes a review of strategic account plans, priorities and progress. This is pretty basic to any thriving key account management program. Most successful sales executives understand this. Yes, top level meetings with the client’s top level people need to be held at regular intervals and functional managers on each side of the relationships must work hard at accomplishing the agreed action plans. However, this may not be enough to drive the kind of revenue and profit growth that most organizations require today. We are often asked what other practices should be implmented along with this very basic but important practice.
Read MoreTags: Strategic Account Management, Selling Process, Key Accounts
Key account management will fail for sure without a strongly committed group of C-level executives. Employees watch C-level executives to determine what the business priorities are. It is very humbling when you are a C-level executive to recognize that. What you say is one thing, but really it's what you do that counts. C-level execs need to lead the key account management process to get the whole organization committed. They are the people that can make major commitments to key accounts and it shows the commitment as a supplier to support those accounts.
Read MoreTags: Closed Loop Marketing, marketing with limited resources, Selling Process, Key Accounts
All business functions and levels need to be involved in the key account management process to ensure short-term and long-term success. This means that everybody needs to recognize that key account management is not a sales strategy; it is a business strategy. Various business functional operations must execute the promises made by key account managers and must be involved in setting the promises being made to strategic accounts. It's VERY important that the people on the shop floor, quality, distribution, finance and so on buy in to the whole program and participate in it actively. C-level executives must be committed to key account management as a long-term business strategy. Key account management is a process that maximizes the long-term business value of the most important customers.
Tags: Strategic Account Management, marketing with limited resources, Key Accounts
Many companies who are struggling, ask us about key account management, also referred to as strategic account management. They ask what it is and how can it help them grow their sales and profitability. So we asked Brian Smith to provide a little more in-depth perspective on the topic and he has graciously agreed to write a series of articles for this blog.
Tags: Strategic Account Management, Strategic Planning, marketing with limited resources, Selling Process, Key Accounts
Many companies who are struggling with implementing key account management in their organizations. Many of these organizations have difficulty understanding what it truly is, why it is as important as any other business strategy that will help them grow their sales and profitability. So we asked Brian Smith to provide a little more in-depth perspective on the topic and he has graciously agreed to write a series of articles for this blog.
Tags: Strategic Account Management, Strategic Planning, marketing with limited resources, Lead Generation, Key Accounts
Many companies who are struggling, ask us about key account management, also referred to as strategic account management. They ask what it is and how can it help them grow their sales and profitability. So we asked Brian Smith to provide a little more in-depth perspective on the topic and he has graciously agreed to write a series of articles for this blog.
Tags: Strategic Account Management, Strategic Planning, Lead Generation
We here at Evenstar often get asked by companies about how they can improve the performance of their business blogging. Although they do have blogs, they find the results underwhelming: the volume of website traffic is lower than desired, and they generate little to no buzz through blog subscriptions, RSS feeds, or on social media.
Tags: Online Marketing, blogging
Many traditional marketers are concerned that when it comes to writing blog articles the content has to be considerably different among the. They worry that too much repetition in the same theme is detrimental to their brand. They ask: "Doesn't this week's post seem too similar to that post we did a few weeks ago?". Sometimes marketers are so close to these products that they are afraid of repeating themselves and ask for suggestions to help the posts stand out a little more. For example, a business has two brand names for the same product; a suggestion is adding the product name in the blog title and throughout the blog to differentiate it. Otherwise, it will remain essentially the same blog, and that is fine in this instance.
Tags: blogging, Inbound Marketing
If you've been doing even a little reading about internet marketing and blogging in particular, you have no doubt heard the term "CONTENT IS KING". This means that the content of your blog is what will get you found on internet searches. If we follow this train of thought, then it means your blog should have content that your customers are searching for. In other words, content that they will find useful.
Tags: blogging, marketing on a shoestring budget, Inbound Marketing
The recent changes to the Google search algorithms have now made it essential to publish content on the web
. It is no longer acceptable from a search engine standpoint to develop static web pages about your company's products or services, stuff them with a bunch of keywords, and stand back and wait for an avalanche of traffic and leads to come to your website.
Tags: Online Marketing, blogging, marketing on a shoestring budget, SEO