What value do you see as a leader when you invest in your sales and account management teams?

If you are considering investing in improving the capability of your sales and account management teams, have you got a view of the return you would expect to get from your investment? From our experience, thinking through the measures of success (or the return on your investment) is often one of the last things on the agenda when scoping out a development programme, and to a degree this is understandable.

But we would suggest challenging yourself and starting with a draft set of measures of success at the beginning of any programme scoping, because when you have a good idea of what you want to see as outcomes, the scoping and planning is much easier!

One of the most critical components of any successful development programme, is having real clarity in why you are investing in the programme in the first place and what differences you expect to see – and investing in improving the capability of your sales and account management teams is no different.

Consider some of these example questions, do you want:

To see an increase in new business volumes for your business?
Your teams to generate growth from new client acquisition or increased revenue from existing clients?
To see an improvement in conversion rates for new business?
An improvement in the quality and strength of your customer relationships?

These are examples of some business outcomes you may want to see as a result of your investment – and all are linked closely to financial results. But whilst your ultimate goals are likely to be these financial benefits, there are other areas where you may be looking to develop value for your business by investing in a sales and account management capability programme. Consider these additional example questions, do you want:

To develop a team of talented account managers who can build and maintain long term trusted relationships with your customers in order to deliver greater mutual value
To have a pipeline of sales and account managers who have the talent to move into more senior roles in the future?
To demonstrate your commitment to your teams by investing in them?

These example questions may be additional outcomes that are key to ensuring you are getting value out of your investment. Having clarity in these business outcomes then feeds into your development objectives and we would recommend starting your thought process with just one further question –

“What do you want participants to do differently as a result of attending and completing the development programme?”

Asking this question when considering the specific objectives of your programme, helps get away from just identifying the acquisition of knowledge or new skills and helps to unpack specifically, what you would like them to do in order to help deliver the value identified in your business outcome questions.

The AMPLIFY sales and account management programme from Customer Attuned starts with helping you identify the value you want to generate from your investment.

Once we have that joint understanding, we can then design a bespoke programme for you that includes both what needs to be developed; and most importantly, how this will change what the participants do as a result of attending.

Our new programme AMPLIFY is practical and immersive, designed to explore the concept of Trust in the B2B Environment and guide account managers to deliver profitable growth over a long-term period, not just chasing short term sales targets.

AMPLIFY is a highly engaging and interactive people development programme that blends experiential workshops, one-to-one coaching, real-life assignments and provides on the job tools to deploy immediately – and all within the context of your industry and your desired business outcomes.

Get in touch

Please get in touch to discuss how we can help you unlock your account managers full potential and drive exceptional results in account management.

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.

What value do you see as a leader when you invest in your sales and account management teams?

Get in touch

Learn more about AMPLIFY here.

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