Building and Sustaining Key Accounts
Key Accounts are just that - key , to your success. How can you help your Sales Reps increase business in their Key Accounts, and increase success in opening new accounts?
Just being very good at what they do isn't enough. Your competitors are very good too. They have read the same marketing books, attended the same sales training programs- and they are constantly trying to persuade your customers to buy their products instead of yours. How can you deal with this constant competitive attack? How can you ensure that your customers will always be more inclined to buy from your Account Reps over theirs?
From time to time there will be technical breakthroughs that make a particular product appear superior. But the business world knows that technical differentiation is temporary; most products and their accompanying services and prices balance out. So how can your company's offering of product/service/pricing be distinguished from your competition?
Sales Success Through Relationships
This dilemma has been successfully addressed by Tony Putman, an international marketing consultant who has helped hundreds of organizations in most every industry for over 20 years. Putman's approach has been to help Account Reps raise their business relationships with clients to the highest level, what he calls: "The Ally Relationship."
At that level, your Account Reps will always have an inside track with your customers to offer them alternatives to whatever your competitors propose. And your customers will be more inclined to remain loyal to your Company. Of course your competitors are well aware of the importance of relationships in making sales and will always try to establish the closest relationship possible with your customers. So how is the Ally Relationship concept different from the relationship building techniques most sales people apply?
A Professional Approach to Relationship Building
The truth, as Putman discovered, is that most sales people don't follow specific techniques to build relationships with their customers other than whatever lunches, golf games, sporting events or other social amenities their customers are willing to accept. But the business world has become too busy to participate in these practices as in the past. So sales people are often reduced to simply trying to be affable, hoping this leads to a closer relationship with their customers. Few customers can afford to be loyal simply in response to "warm personalities". Customers require more value to remain a customer.
Ally Relationships meets this need because ally relationships evolve through the nature of the conversations that your Sales Reps have with their customers. Features and benefits is base information easily available in our web-connected world. The ally conversations revolve around the customer's strategic issues, topics where your Sales Reps will learn how to add value for their customers... consistently! Ally Relationship techniques are based on specific principles and techniques which can be learned and perfected.
Putman validated his concepts with dozens of organizations including a 5 year project with 400+ partners of a Big 4 US Accounting/Consulting Firm. According to the partner responsible for Development, Putman's concepts achieved the "highest level of acceptance in the history of the Firm."
"With an Ally Relationship You Don't Sell -They Buy"