Handling multi location accounts
Do you remember OEM account categories 2 and 3- ( Managing Key Accounts) those situations where you may be responsible for the design center but the plants are outside your territory? At these accounts your success depends on a strong team effort
The first, vital step is to secure agreement from all the parties involved that the account is worth perusing. This agreement must establish how your contribution will be measured.
Compensation is often seen as a barrier to cross territory account management. It should not be. Sales account measurement is the greater problem and that problem stems less from logistics than ineffective cooperation.
The national and international account manager must manage/coordinate all of the business activities as if the account was within his span of control. All of the activities of documenting, maintaining and growing still must happen but many of the activities will be delegated to others. The account manager’s job becomes one of managing and coordination, rather than doing everything alone.
The account manager’s responsibility includes:
Coordinate
He must gather the account history from the field, including documentation of existing applications and their resulting benefits.
He must track service calls, seminars, training exercises, lab projects and anything else happening in the business which assists the customer.
He must liaise with product or engineering management on all applications resulting from process improvements coming from the plants and remove any road blocks that could potentially emerge.
He must establish new specifications for new product requirements emanating from the field.
He must gather all of the cost savings information from the plant or plants.
He must routinely report all of this information to his purchasing and management contacts.
MANAGING:
The account manager has the responsibility to specify your products on every conceivable application on new designs.
He must identify and coordinate the sales activity at any outside design suppliers and coordinate those activities.
He must identify all part suppliers, potential or approved applications by location, by salesmen. Marketing can be of great assistance here.
He must coordinate the quality control programs of the account with the company.
He must understand current warranty problems to offer service fixes and to identify long term decision projects.
He must manage the worldwide pricing philosophy of the account.
He must make sure that all of the products used in manufacturing are available to and through the field service organization.
He must understand the account’s new product needs and communicate those that fit our capabilities to the product development function.
SALES SUMMARY
Control your attitude: control your attitude by not judging the day by the weather.
Control your attitude by greeting people properly.
Control your attitude by establishing symbols.
90% of the way you feel is determined by deciding how you want and expect.
85% of the people will respond with”Good Morning” when you say good morning
Take care of your health.
Get enough sleep.
Have a good diet and exercise programs.
Avoid poisons.
You can have everything you want; if you help enough others get what they want.
Immediate follow up: have participants decide upon a greeting they will use with people over the next month. Have them a record the no. of people who do and don’t respond positively and report the results at the next meeting.
One week follow up: during your next meeting review the percentages of positive responses from each person. Then ask each person to write a daily plan for eating exercise, sleep, and poison avoidance. Ask them to report their results in the next meeting.
One month follow up that everyone share progress of their health plan and suggest ideas that may help others. Divide your group into teams; ask them to devise a support system to help one another achieve health goals.
(This exercise can be done among the sales people of the company)
Part of a manager’s job is to delegate responsibility to employees.
Delegation: to entrust responsibility, grant authority and create accountability for results. There are several steps to progress through when delegating responsibility.
Sell them on what is in it for them. People want to see themselves winning and feeling good about the results they achieve.
Delegate the results to be achieved: keep people thinking about the results, not the tasks.
Have people bring you a plan of action: people often have better ideas about their work than management does. Also, an employee will want to implement his own plan.
Never tell anyone something you can ask: ask people questions about their plans in a manner which will help them determine if it is viable. Let them come up with own answer.
Implement the plan, but first the person to whom you have delegated how he can measure the progress.
Follow up and control the plan by asking the responsible person for the pre determined specific desired results.