Developing key account management skills helps you become a trusted advisor for influential accounts and become a strong candidate for future executive positions.
Here are four key skills that every pharmaceutical account manager should be trained in, to successfully retain the most important accounts.
1. Developing a Value Proposition
How exactly do you convince a potential client to continue to choose your products and services over competitors’? By developing a convincing value proposition.
A value proposition is a statement that shows a potential client exactly how they will benefit from your products and services, and more importantly, why they should choose you.
An excellent value proposition will:
- Generate faster, more profitable sales
- Create a long-standing relationship with key clients
- Outline precisely what your company will do for its customers
- Speed up the client acceptance process
When you put an emphasis on customers’ needs, you’ll be able to create a value proposition that is hard to turn down.
2. Accessing & Integrating at Strategic Levels
In order to become a trusted partner of your account, you must be able to understand their needs and behaviors and leverage this information to boost mutual value creation.
To become an invaluable part of your customer’s team, you must integrate yourself at the strategic level. That means you must create relationships with key players within your account’s organization and position yourself as an integral part of the strategic process, rather than just a replaceable supplier of products and services. This will allow you to grow and profit with that account indefinitely.
3. Gap Analysis
In most organizations there is a gap that separates where they are today and where they want to be. Account managers need to understand this gap and evaluate how they can assist the Key Decision Makers (KDMs) to bridge the gap.
Typically, key problems that most businesses face fall into one or more of these four categories:
1. Strategic
2. Financial / Operational
3. Products and Services
4. Marketing
Account managers should become a trusted advisor to the KDMs by devoting time, effort and energy in helping them overcome their most pressing business challenges and reach their long-term goals.
4. Executive Level Presence
Executive level presence is the ability to show confidence and competence that earns you the respect of colleagues and clients alike. Learning how to maximize your executive presence, exemplify confidence and project competence will drive your success in any professional environment.
Knowing who to talk to about what in an organization is only half the battle. By developing an executive presence, you are guaranteeing that clients and colleagues alike will stop, listen, and seriously consider what you are offering.
Gain These Skills and More with Excellence in Account Management
With The Brooks Group’s Excellence in Account Management program, you’ll learn how to understand and predict the complex needs of your clients so that you can become an invaluable part of their organization
Become a respected part of your own organization by retaining influential accounts and becoming a key component of value creation. Contact us today.
More:
Read about the signs suggesting your account managers need training here
Interested in created a custom learning experience for your account managers? Learn about our instructional design capabilities here
This blog was originally posted on https://thebrooksgrouponline.com/2021/03/4-essential-skills-for-pharmaceutical-account-managers/
