Strategic Account Management Training – The Importance of Reflection

In any of our training programmes, we always talk about the importance of reflection and ask the participants to take the time to reflect and consider what you have learnt and then importantly, how you can apply this to help you do your job more effectively.

Without this reflection and reviewing of lessons learned, there is the risk that you as an individual, and your business, will not get the maximum return on the investment that has been made in any development programme.

We as a team at Customer Attuned are no different – we recognised the importance of reflection and so we look back on client engagements and use this review to feed into future projects.

As an example, the joint team from Customer Attuned and MAP Training have recently looked back at the Strategic Account Management programme we kicked off with the Broker Distribution team at Ecclesiastical last year and considered our top 3 takeaways:

The importance of adaptability and flexibility in programme design – we set off on a path at the beginning of the year with a clear programme structure in mind. However, as we reached the second and third stages of the programme, there were some changes in the structure of the team, and consequently, some team members having changes in how they faced off to their markets. As a result, different needs evolved and so we worked really closely with the client to adapt the latter parts of the programme to ensure they got what they needed to help them get ready for 2024.
The importance of giving all participants a voice throughout the programme – initially, to support this programme, we invested time in understanding every team member’s view on why and how they felt their roles needed to evolve to mirror the changed (and still changing) distribution landscape and route to market. They were already a high performing team so it was important that we didn’t go over things they knew already; but took the time to design something bespoke that would resonate with an experienced team and give them some different approaches and tools to help them manage their key broker relationships. We took feedback as we went and tweaked styles in delivery to help this really land with impact.
Don’t be afraid to give something extra if it is the right thing to do! Every company that designs training programmes will know that planning for a year long programme at outset in terms of design time can be a real challenge. A delivery day is a delivery day and therefore easy to budget for – but some sessions just need more design time than budgeted for to make sure you get it right. This programme was no different. But in addition, by the time we got two thirds of the way through the programme, there was a joint realisation that we had effectively given the team a new toolbox and gone through how to use all the tools, but we needed an additional session just to spend some time thinking about what tools were most appropriate to use and when – especially when it comes to managing relationships that are at different stages of development from brand new to long standing and the various stages in between. This additional virtual session proved invaluable with great feedback from programme delegates and helped make the final part of the programme even more beneficial.

All of the points above, and especially the final one, tie back nicely to the opening statement of the importance of reflection. Reviewing and thinking about what you have learnt and how you can apply your learning, is not just something to do at the end of any development programme – it should be a really key part of activity throughout the programme.

Our thanks to the whole team at Ecclesiastical (below) who engaged so openly and so wholeheartedly with some new concepts last year – a great team and a great business to work with.

Strategic Account Management Training

“The combined team from Customer Attuned and MAP Training did a fantastic job of creating and facilitating a bespoke strategic account management programme for us – with ongoing agility to adapt it to ensure it stayed relevant as our needs evolved”

Geoff Turner, Broker Distribution Director, Ecclesiastical Insurance

If you are interested in discussing any development needs across your business, please do get in touch – we would love to hear from you.

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Alan Thompson

Director & Head of People Capability at Customer Attuned Ltd

Alan has an in-depth knowledge of capability development with extensive experience of designing and delivering blended training solutions for clients across several industries, making use of online, virtual and traditional classroom training methods.

Alan is a very engaging classroom tutor, and has enjoyed working with a variety of global clients over the past few years to deliver highly successful people development programmes.