Chief Executive

DECEMBER 1, 2022

Ten or 20 or 40 strategic accounts drive 80 percent of revenues for most organizations,” says Dave Irwin, president of Polaris I/O, a B2B customer-retention software platform. Knock, for example, created a customer-advisory board made up of buyers of its rental-housing management software. “We Assume evolving needs.

Retention 98

Retention Travel Digital Transformation Software 98

AIHR

APRIL 8, 2020

Example scenario: Tom and Jill are both account managers at a bank. and a revenue of 10 million dollars. Every 1% on top of that 33% proposal win rate translates to roughly 300,000 dollars in annual revenue. When an organization has a culture of secrecy and not sharing, employees tend to adopt that culture.

Scaling 86

Scaling Banking Implementation Revenue 86

Chief Executive

NOVEMBER 21, 2022

I had an image of dueling product managers at headquarters, each producing a stream of product (or packaging) changes because each had to show “progress.” Each was vying for slightly enhanced revenues. In this company, it appeared that product management was “driving the boat.” Their job was to maximize revenues.

Sales 52

Sales Sales Revenue Operations 52

Zenefits

FEBRUARY 7, 2023

Sales reps can be enticed to open new accounts, manage a certain size book of business, or increase their sales volume. Sales management personnel can offer input for the company strategy involving performance criteria, tiers of incentive payments, and more. These are most effective when paid at intervals on a sliding scale.

Compensation 52

Compensation Sales Sales Retention 52

LSA Global

NOVEMBER 18, 2023

Sales leaders are uniquely accountable for leading, managing, and coaching their teams (just like all other new managers ) PLUS meeting revenue targets, perhaps the most important and pressure-filled success metric of any organization. The pressure to deliver against ever-increasing revenue goals is unrelenting.

Sales Management 36

Sales Management Sales Sales Manager 36

LSA Global

MARCH 17, 2025

Sales success requires a thoughtful combination of strategic thinking , people skills, and analytical expertise to effectively lead, manage, and coach a sales team. The most successful sales managers master the top sales management skills required to drive revenue with loyal customers and an engaged sales team.

Sales Management 48

Sales Management Sales Sales Manager 48

LSA Global

JULY 15, 2024

The good news is that when a sales force puts the customer first , adds meaningful value, and builds trusted advisor relationships , they grow revenues, margins, deal sizes, and relationships. Sales leaders know that an underperforming sales force misses opportunities, loses deals, and negatively impacts customer loyalty.

Sales 56

Sales Sales Implementation Sales Management 56

LSA Global

DECEMBER 21, 2022

The roles differ mainly in how they go about generating revenue. Typically, B2B sales hunters focus on new customer acquisition while B2B sales farmers are responsible for nurturing and growing current accounts. What Makes a Good B2B Sales Hunter?

B2B 36

B2B Sales Sales Metrics 36

Monday Task Management

MARCH 15, 2022

When you automate repetitive parts of your workflow, you free up your time to complete more valuable tasks and maximize your revenue. For example, when a client completes and submits their intake form, create a task for the account manager to review the answers.

Onboarding 52

Onboarding Small Business Workflows B2B 52

Monday Task Management

MARCH 15, 2022

When you automate repetitive parts of your workflow, you free up your time to complete more valuable tasks and maximize your revenue. For example, when a client completes and submits their intake form, create a task for the account manager to review the answers.

Onboarding 52

Onboarding Small Business Workflows B2B 52

Harvard Business Review

JULY 5, 2012

Your company's account management and operating teams play critical roles in making this happen. Seeking new sales without strong account management and operating teams is like pouring water into a bucket with a hole in it. This is account management 101, right? When you are not proactive, value erodes.

Sales 17

Sales Sales Account Management Accounts 17

Harvard Business Review

JUNE 22, 2018

As ongoing account management activities consumed more and more sales time, new customer acquisition slowed down–and the company’s revenue growth began slowing, too. Having two sales roles (one for account acquisition and another for account management) has several advantages.

Sales 15

Sales Sales Account Management Accounts 15

Harvard Business Review

JANUARY 30, 2014

Obviously, the top sales challenge always is exceeding the monthly, quarterly, or yearly revenue target. However, the sales challenges that inhibit a company from achieving revenue growth vary based on the sales organization stage. Another challenge revolves around the predictability of revenue and the size of the sales organization.

Sales 17

Sales Sales Revenue Scaling 17

Harvard Business Review

FEBRUARY 18, 2016

To start, you can estimate the full system cost of hiring, training, compensating and integrating each specialist into the organization, and weigh the cost against the specialist’s value—the amount of profitable revenue you would not get without that specialist.

Sales 14

Sales Sales ROI Account Management 14

Harvard Business Review

JULY 17, 2012

While these transactions provide revenue, these buyers are often moved to make a purchase out of love, politeness or a feeling of obligation, rather than real market demand — and crucially, these sales don't offer candid feedback or give any indication of what a real, unbiased customer might think of your product or service.

Sales 18

Sales Sales Cash Flow B2B 18

Harvard Business Review

JULY 17, 2012

While these transactions provide revenue, these buyers are often moved to make a purchase out of love, politeness or a feeling of obligation, rather than real market demand — and crucially, these sales don't offer candid feedback or give any indication of what a real, unbiased customer might think of your product or service.

Sales 18

Sales Sales Cash Flow B2B 18

Harvard Business Review

APRIL 25, 2014

Many companies, however, measure sales efficiency in terms of sales cost versus revenue. A more meaningful sales ROI is to measure sales cost against gross margin or profit (EBIT), which helps leaders more effectively align the number of accounts per sales employee with actual and potential revenues.

Sales 15

Sales Sales ROI Marketing 15

Harvard Business Review

JUNE 10, 2016

The challenge becomes how to sell your product and create a sustainable revenue stream, so that you can further develop your product offerings, build your infrastructure, repay your investors, and pay yourself. Unfortunately, many tech startups get stuck at this stage because they can’t quite figure out a scalable way to go to market.

Marketing 14

Marketing Sales Sales Software 14

Harvard Business Review

NOVEMBER 23, 2018

On average, roughly four times as many winners – defined in this case as those companies that grew absolute revenue at a significant rate and gained market share within their industry over the previous two years – as losers have digital tools embedded into their core commercial capabilities. Automate account management.

Sales 15

Sales Sales B2B Accounts 15

Harvard Business Review

JUNE 16, 2015

But consider the work of the Boston Consulting Group, which indicates that SO practices, such as targeting high-value customers and deploying sales resources with strategically-appropriate criteria, have more than three times the impact on revenue growth than SE initiatives.

Sales 14

Sales Sales Strategic Planning KPI 14

Harvard Business Review

NOVEMBER 4, 2013

Sales makes certain that customer needs are addressed and that short-term company revenue goals are achieved; marketing ensures that product and customer segment strategies anticipate the evolution of longer-term customer needs. But the tension created by diverse viewpoints also has a positive side. Sales tasks.

Sales 15

Sales Sales Marketing Implementation 15

Harvard Business Review

NOVEMBER 21, 2013

Even though managers were spending more than 80% of their time focused, as I had been, on the second two categories, the report found that sales management could affect only the first – the sales activities. Many sales leaders have been inadvertently micromanaging through revenue or profit numbers, which is counterproductive.

Metrics 9

Metrics Sales Sales Sales Management 9

Harvard Business Review

JANUARY 8, 2014

Vantage Point Performance and the Sales Education Foundation recently conducted a study on the measurement and management of sales forces. The data points revealed 306 metrics considered by leadership to be key to effective sales management. We need more revenue,” would sound from the top. “No But which ones really mattered?

Sales 10

Sales Sales Manager Sales Management 10

Harvard Business Review

OCTOBER 2, 2012

Recently, I wrote about Akamai, a company with strong network effects that successfully transitioned from a single product to build a platform that garners over a billion dollars in revenue and is now a core part of the Internet's fabric. Expedia grew to account for roughly one third of the company's revenues. Think about that.

Scaling 11

Scaling Travel Engineering Revenue 11

Harvard Business Review

DECEMBER 21, 2011

The company holds us accountable for revenues and expects us to develop and maintain the connections to drive sales. Marketing designs the promotional campaign. Your sales force is ready to execute. "We We own the relationships with customers," say your salespeople. Just pay us our commissions and leave us alone.".

Sales 15

Sales Sales Accounts Insurance 15

Harvard Business Review

JULY 14, 2015

Although her work generated a great deal of enthusiasm among them, when she requested additional resources to expand her effort, executives told her that if she didn’t have a plan for fast double-digit revenue growth, they wouldn’t increase their investment. Focus on getting these people involved first. Work your network.

Account Management 14

Account Management Accounts Revenue Scaling 14

Harvard Business Review

AUGUST 5, 2014

That isn’t easy, but the payoff is worth it: Our most recent research shows that companies with excellent marketing capabilities outperform the market with 2-3X greater revenue growth. That helped account managers focus their pitch on the client’s business issues and build rapport. That bottom line sensibility is crucial.

Banking 14

Banking Marketing Revenue Sales 14

Harvard Business Review

MAY 10, 2016

It had been reasonably successful in dealing with the 10% of large customers who drive 90% of revenue. These 1,000 customers had been assigned account managers, and sales people were keen to answer their questions and return their calls.

B2B 13

B2B B2C Transportation Sales 13

Harvard Business Review

JULY 29, 2013

The role and profile of a field salesperson is becoming similar to the role and profile of a key account manager — someone who brings business acumen and problem solving skills, and that can help buyers define opportunities and tailor solutions. Greater access and faster response times for customers.

Sales 11

Sales Sales B2B Accounts 11

Harvard Business Review

SEPTEMBER 14, 2017

One technology company targeted a 50:50 pay mix for salespeople in new customer acquisition (CA) roles, but a 70:30 mix for salespeople in account management (AM) roles. However, more than two-thirds of the company’s annual revenues were driven by multiyear contracts customers signed in prior years.

Sales 8

Sales Sales Compensation Insurance 8

AIHR

APRIL 25, 2018

When asked to identify the critical roles in his company, the CEO neglected to mention the account manager for a key customer, in part because the position was not prominent in any organization chart. When the incumbent account manager, a very high performer, suddenly took a job at another company, the move stunned her superiors.

Account Management 61

Account Management Succession Planning Revenue Small Business 61

Harvard Business Review

JUNE 27, 2012

Here's a non-intuitive secret: Your next level of new revenue may come from renewals, add-ons and upsells. All of these are forms of revenue you can drive from redoubling your focus on after-sale service and first-rate customer support. In return, they prefer to forego the traditional incentives. We didn't flinch. We held the line.

Sales 18

Sales Sales Revenue Sales Management 18

Harvard Business Review

SEPTEMBER 20, 2016

Many companies have great success using incentives and stretch goals to motivate the sales force and drive revenue. Consider the following sequence: A bank account manager, under pressure to make a sales goal, pushes a customer to add a credit card, even though the account manager knows it’s not in the customer’s interest.

Sales 13

Sales Sales Banking Account Management 13

AIHR

SEPTEMBER 30, 2021

For example, when you think about a sales function, you think about, you know, the whole customer engagement piece channel management, the commercial part of the internal sales, account management, these are capabilities which are critical, if you want to have a successful sales transformation.

KPI 52

KPI Scaling Implementation Digital Transformation 52

Harvard Business Review

FEBRUARY 17, 2015

Presales requires a dedicated team of experts split into roughly two-thirds for technical activities (crafting solutions to customers’ problems) and one-third for commercial activities (managing deal qualification and bid). These activities have two to three times more impact on revenue generation than generating leads.

Sales 14

Sales Sales Telecommunications Engineering 14