Selling 3 - Territory and Account Management

Course Duration: 2 Days

New and experienced salespeople need to know how to analyse their time and manage their territory and their accounts so that they can be more efficient and effective when selling.

World Class Training

This course will deliver more change and better results than almost any other sales training course run today.

With a plan, one that you have developed yourself, you take greater ownership and you become more effective. Without a plan, or even with one that you haven't created yourself, you lose motivation, become less personally accountable and you achieve less. The Territory & Account Management techniques covered here add substantive value to each individual and for each organisation they work.

Learning Outcomes

Ron Pollak Training has devised a course that will achieve the following learning goals. Each of your team will:

• Understand why the business needs his/her plan.
• Understand the process of preparing a plan.
• Understand the weaknesses in the process of planning.
• Understand the consequences of not preparing a useful, detailed plan.
• Understand his/her planning style.
• Understand what he/she needs to do with his/her plan.
• Understand he/she is accountable.
• Understand that he/she needs to keep management updated on his/her progress against a plan.
• Know it's up him/her to achieve the plan (he/she should appreciate that motivation is in his/her control).
• Know when he/she needs to call for help.

Who Will Benefit

Salespeople who have completed Selling 1 & 2 and wish to expand their knowledge and skills in the area of Territory & Account Management.

Advantages

Effective management of both Territory and Accounts delivers the following advantages.

• It crystalises what each sales person is going to do over the period of the plan;
• It provides measures against which the following factors can be assessed:
• Profitability of the territory;
• Efficiency of the salesperson;
• Understanding of the client base; and
• Opportunities and risks in the territory.
• It demonstrates that each sales representative has considered:
  • Who he/she is going to sell to,
  • What products he/she plans to sell,
  • When he/she plans to make their sales.

Territory and Account Planning

• A key outcome of this course is that participants will prepare both an individualised territory plan and an account plan for a couple of their own accounts.
• There are a number of factors that make or break a planning process. Each of the following aspects has been covered in the design of this course.
• Planning is a process that each individual approaches in a different way; one process will not / cannot help everyone.
• Some people just don't plan; they do! Does this make them ineffective in a sales role?
• Some people can plan, but they can't put their plan into words; particularly into words and numbers; this is especially true of sales personnel recruited into sales from a technical, scientific or manufacturing/industrial role.
• Many people believe that preparing a sales plan is merely a function performed for management; therefore, they will undermine or minimise the exercise.
• It is difficult for most / many account managers to manage the process as it is:
  • Prepared generally, in one big hit; no one sales territory receives the attention it deserves.
  • It requires individual estimates / forecasts of the future.
  • It needs to be based on past experience that may not be a good guide to the future.
  • It ignores unforeseen and unforeseeable events that are way beyond the control of the sales person / planner.
  • It requires information that, even within the organisation, may not be available; new products, changes in structure and strategy, financial incentives / disincentives, price changes.
• People are made responsible / accountable for their efforts and results versus the plan and therefore are reluctant to be bold or ambitious.
• History shows that the plan will be challenged. What is the process when a sales person plans to achieve less in the future than management expects?
• The biggest inhibitor to the success of any managed account plan is change. People can plan, but then even with the most compelling logic, will find it difficult to permanently alter their patterns of work to take advantage of the ideas and approaches they identified during the planning process. The more innovative or risky the ideas, the more difficult it is to start the process anew.

Each business defines its accounts using different terminology. The terminology is not as critical as the methodology - and then its application.

"In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable." Dwight David Eisenhower (American 34th President (1953-61) 1890-1969)

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