SCOTSMAN® Developing Relationships & Managing Accounts
How to climb the preferred supplier ladder.
An extended version of the SCOTSMAN® Masterclass in Commitment Selling. In this comprehensive programme, participants develop their ability to win accounts — not just the next deal. It focuses on how to build and implement account plans and strategies, and how to effectively manage account relationships in order to win new business opportunities.
Sellers managing strategic accounts
Classroom & Virtual
Multi-day classroom
Account-plan templates
Inside the Accounts programme.
Gaining the political commitments to develop the relationship, building a Care Plan for the account, and developing a Prospecting Plan to uncover new opportunities.
Account Management
We examine the differences between account management selling and deal selling, and the concept of preferred supplier relationships.
Preferred Supplier Relationships
We discuss how preferred supplier status has several gradations, each represented by a closer relationship with the customer. We examine the political commitments that really lock us into the customer organisation, such as being on committees or having a joint long-term plan.
Prospecting within the Account
We examine how we might escape from our current level of contact to meet more senior people in our accounts, and do this without upsetting our existing contacts.
Relationship Management
We discuss the importance of being in tune with the prospect’s buying cycles, and keeping in touch until they are ready to move, so we will be the first name they think of when selecting a supplier.
Sales Meeting Objectives
We examine the difference between the agenda for a meeting and the objectives of a meeting. The objectives are always customer commitments. Senior people expect you to give them some sort of decision to make and will be frustrated if you don’t. So we examine the decisions they might find interesting, and the commitments we need – qualification, timetable, lobbying or criteria commitments.
Need Creation
We discuss different selling styles, in particular the difference between selling to recognised needs and selling to unrecognised needs – responding to needs versus creating needs, and the advantages and disadvantages of each.
The Hunting Licence
We examine how you can pro-actively set up activities within an account to generate new opportunities. These activities include selling and running workshops, audits, courses, etc.
Getting your House in Order
We discuss processes where the salesperson commits to sorting out any issues and showstoppers in the account, and the Account Manager takes ownership to sort out any problems with the relationship.
Selling to Senior Executives
We discuss the language of senior executives so that we can engage with them in a discussion about their business. Senior people buy policy not product. They are generally more interested in return than cost, in competitive edge and increased effectiveness.
What participants take away.
By the end of this programme, participants can:
- Develop a Scouting Plan, to talk at many levels.
- Gain access to key individuals within new and existing accounts.
- Hold effective sales meetings.
- Put in place a process for pipeline and networking management.
- Create major opportunities at a senior level.
- Gain a Hunting Licence within an account to open up and discover potential opportunities.
- Put in place remedial and housekeeping activities.
- Qualify opportunities very thoroughly — they take a lot of resource.
- Uncover the complex decision processes of large organisations.
- Understand the “Political Map” in your accounts.
- Structure the plan to gain access to all key people at all levels within new and existing accounts at key times.
- Escape if trapped at the wrong level.
- Talk the language of senior executives.
- Gain Preferred Supplier Status.
- Use the appropriate Account Planning Documentation.
How this programme runs.
Classroom
3 days.
Virtual
5 × 2.5 hrs Virtual Classroom, plus 4 hrs Online Modules.
SCOTSMAN® Pipeline Simulator
The programme includes the SCOTSMAN® Pipeline Simulator.
What this programme sets out to do.
- To develop an account management and development culture.
- To enable participants to work effectively in an account management environment — building a relationship with the account and orchestrating specialist salespeople — so their company is well placed to win any new business that arises.
- To practise the necessary skills by carrying out assignments based on live accounts.
From Understanding to Commitments — Why SCOTSMAN® Outperforms MEDDIC
MEDDIC tells you what to find out. SCOTSMAN® tells you what to get the customer to do. In account growth, that distinction is the difference between a renewed contract and a multiplied one.
“A real game changer that gives you confidence to better qualify and focus your pipeline.”