5 Goals Every Account Manager Needs

Several important roles help a business thrive and run smoothly. Each role has a specific role to play in helping client relationships, ensuring product or service quality, and more. Account management in the business plays a significant role in the company’s customer relationships. Successful key account management teams serve as advocates for clients but also work internally to ensure both new and existing customers are satisfied with the onboarding process.

Sales professionals often strive toward consistently improving their careers, which can bring about new opportunities for them. However, you may have difficulty finding something to strive toward without the right goals. This post will explore five important goals that sales managers need to have. Each of these goals plays a crucial element in nurturing relationships with customers and allowing yourself to open up new opportunities and doors throughout your career.

The Roles Of An Account Manager

If you are considering a career as an account manager and want to set up some goals beforehand, then it is essential to understand the role that you will play in a corporate setting.

Account Management actually plays a significant role in the overall success of a business. Account management is an essential factor that can help coordinate multiple resources and work on client relationships that the company wishes to establish and maintain.

Let’s take a look at the primary roles of a successful key account manager and the tasks that they need to perform:

• They require communication skills to ensure they can effectively communicate with clients.
• They need to understand the client’s requirements.
• They are also responsible for developing relationships with the business’s clients to ensure these individuals trust the company.
• Internal communication and collaboration with various departments are also important. This can provide better fulfillment of the needs of key customers.
• Key managers also need to be able to analyze the data they collect to learn more about customer behavior and related details.
• Traditional account management teams used to work with paper and pens, but today, these individuals need tech-savvy skills.
• During account management, the individual must also thoroughly understand the current industry trends.
• Using trending factors, such as sales, is also helpful for these sales members.

Critical Skills and Roles of Account Managers

Account managers are pivotal in fostering strong relationships with clients and enhancing their overall experience. To excel in this role, account managers need to possess a unique set of skills and fulfill various responsibilities:

• Communication Skills:
  • Effectively communicate with clients to understand their needs and expectations.
  • Maintain open lines of communication with internal teams to ensure seamless service delivery.
• Client Relationship Building:
  • Develop and nurture trust-based relationships with clients to enhance loyalty and satisfaction.
  • Act as a bridge between the client and the company, ensuring client needs are met.
• Data Analysis:
  • Analyze customer behavior and sales data to gain valuable insights and tailor strategies accordingly.
  • Use data-driven approaches to identify opportunities for upselling and cross-selling.
• Industry Knowledge:
  • Stay updated on industry trends and incorporate them into account management strategies.
  • Leverage current market insights to provide exceptional service and gain a competitive edge.
• Technical Proficiency:
  • Utilize modern technology and tools to manage accounts efficiently and effectively.
  • Adapt to new software and platforms that enhance account management processes.
• Problem-Solving Abilities:
  • Quickly address and resolve any issues that arise, ensuring client satisfaction and retention.
  • Implement strategies to prevent potential problems and improve overall customer experience.

By mastering these skills and fulfilling these roles, account managers can significantly contribute to the success of their company, ensuring both new and existing clients are satisfied and engaged.

How do you set goals for Account Managers?

Setting goals requires a multi-faceted approach that balances maintaining existing clients, driving new business, and fostering the account manager’s own development. Here’s a framework for establishing effective goals for Account Management departments:

Sales leaders can track progress on leaderboards like Spinify’s to add a healthy dose of competition and motivate their team to strive for those targets.

SMART Goals: Ensure all goals align with the SMART criteria: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound.

Example: Instead of “Maintain existing relationships,” a SMART goal would be “Achieve a 95% client retention rate with quarterly check-ins for all accounts by the end of Q3.”

• Data-Driven Baselines: Before setting goals, analyze historical data on client churn, average upsell/cross-sell amounts, account manager performance, etc. This allows you to set goals that are ambitious yet attainable.
• Balance of Responsibilities: Account manager goals should encompass:
  • Client Retention & Satisfaction: Metrics like renewal rates or NPS scores are key.
  • Revenue Growth: Focus on upsell/cross-sell opportunities identified within their existing client base.
  • Professional Development: Set goals for skill-building (new product training, negotiation workshops, etc.). This investment in your team pays off in the long run.

Important Goals That Account Managers Need To Have

Goals should play an important part in your life regarding a successful career. Not having something to strive toward will leave you simply going through your daily routine. You don’t have something to be excited about. For example, a better position or landing a job at a company you have always wanted to work at.

Setting goals can be challenging. You need to ensure the goals you set are related to your abilities as an account management department in a particular company, but you also need to have a goal setup that focuses on your career in the long term.

We will discuss five of the most important goals you should set for yourself if you want to be a successful key account manager.

1. Personal Growth

If you want to set goals for your career, then it is vital to start with yourself. Personal growth plays a crucial role in how you develop yourself, as well as within your career. Personal growth targets require you to focus on your tasks.

One example of a personal growth goal is to increase sales that you can secure during the next year or financial quarter. You may be currently securing $125,000 in sales during each quarter. A personal growth goal might be to increase this to $150,000 for the next quarter.

Another example of a personal growth goal is to set a certain number of positive feedback or reviews that you want to get from the clients you deal with. For example, as the key account manager, you might set a goal for yourself to receive at least five positive feedback messages from clients every month or week. Then, as you achieve these goals, you can increase your expectations to ensure they continuously help you strive to do better and give you challenges to add more interaction to your job.

Utilize tools like Spinify to make skill-building more engaging. Spinify’s gamification features, like badges, points, and progress tracking, can turn learning new sales techniques or product knowledge into a fun challenge.

2. Professional Relationships

Maintaining relationships with the clients you get onboard for the business is essential. One of your goals should ideally relate to harboring solid relationships with clients, the sales team, and other internal departments.

Your goal may include several steps that would help you improve your ability to create a professional relationship with the key clients that the business serves.

For example, you can set a goal to communicate regularly with these individuals. Regular communication shows that the company you work for, and you, as the account manager, genuinely care about the client.

When you focus on relationships, set a goal to solve problems as quickly as possible. This goal has a mutual benefit for both the company and the client. Your goal could include taking up a course or reading up on strategies you can use to solve certain kinds of problems that you may face while dealing with clients. This particular goal can also help give the business an edge over the competitor, as you will be able to solve problems quickly – and this helps with the retention of customers.

3. The Ability To Identify Sales Opportunities

As the account manager, you want to create long-term relationships, which helps with retaining customers. You also want to ensure you have happy customers. It is, however, still important to focus on getting new customers to the business, which is why you should also set a goal to identify sales opportunities.

Research plays an important role here. Consider the existing top customers of your business and spend time identifying their traits. By learning more about them, you can orchestrate deals for new customers that help to increase sales and profit.

Be specific with this goal – and make sure you also consider timing. For example, aim for five new sales to customers who are not currently on the company’s database every month.

Spinify Your Sales Strategy Spinify can transform your lead generation and qualification process. Use it to create targeted contests or challenges around identifying new opportunities within specific industries or client demographics. Leaderboards and rewards add excitement, motivating sales professionals to go the extra mile in their research and outreach. Spinify can even integrate with your CRM, creating a seamless workflow where every qualified new lead earns points or progresses toward a meaningful prize.

4. The Preparation Of Reports

To offer more value to the company as a key account manager, you will need to compile various reports from time to time. Being prepared for these reports is essential. They should contain data related to the critical accounts of the business while also providing a good outline of the clients, inventory, and more.

Set a goal to prepare these reports ahead of time. Some key account representatives may find that the timing of reports requested by upper management staff can be unpredictable or come at unexpected times. This makes it hard to ensure you can prepare and present the reports while simultaneously focusing on account management.

5. Consistent Skill Development

Trends are constantly changing, and new technologies arise over time. This is why you should also aim to develop your skills consistently. This includes improving your skills and knowledge while also equipping yourself with new skills that can help you in the workplace.

You should primarily focus on skills related to communication, negotiation, and sales. Additionally, consider developing your presentation skills. How you present a service or product to a customer significantly affects how likely you are to sign them up or make a sale. For example, a profitable investment with significant value would only seem attractive to the client if you take the right approach to present it to them. You may want to learn more about sales gamification, a trending topic – you can easily take up a course to help you get equipped with the skills required to implement this strategy.

Steps To Create Your Own Goals As An Account Manager

Now that you understand the important goals that the account management team should set for themselves, you should create a plan for yourself. While these goals offer a good starting point to work from, you still need to consider your factors. This can help you develop goals from a strategic perspective and also ensure you can experience continuous growth within your career.

Using a classic SMART goal system when you develop your plan is a good idea. This can make it easier to decide upon outcome options that are appropriate for yourself based on what you wish to achieve in the long run.

Here is an overview of the SMART system and how it works to help you get better lifetime value with the goals you set for yourself:

• S (Specific): When setting your goals, ensure you are as specific as possible. You need to understand precisely what goal you are striving for and how you will be able to reach it. This can help make the process of actually striving toward the goal easier.
• M (Measurable): It is also important to ensure that any goals you set for yourself are measurable. This means there should be a way to measure your progress toward the goal. If it is not a measurable goal, you will not be able to see how close you are to reaching it at any given point in time.
• A (Attainable): There is no use if you decide upon the outcome of a goal, but it is not something you will be able to achieve. Make sure the goals you set for yourself are attainable – within the specific period of time you set for yourself. For example, if you wish to develop excellent communication skills, don’t expect it to happen overnight. It can take a while before your communication skills reach the point where closing sales become second nature.
• R (Relevant): Relevancy is also a factor you should consider. If you want to be a good account manager, reach for goals relevant to the specific areas of expertise you wish to focus on. Take a look at your career from different perspectives to help you understand what goals would be relevant to what you wish to achieve in the long run.
• T (Time-Based): Goals need to have dates attached to them. Consider each goal and when you want to reach it. If you do not set time limits on your goals, you may end up postponing the tasks you need to implement to achieve them.

By using this type of system, you should have an easier time building up the skills you require and achieving your goals in a timely manner. Be sure to set out a complete document with your goals and regularly refer back to it to ensure you can measure your progress. As you see the progress you make, you will find it to be motivating.

Account Management Examples and Main Goals

Account management is a strategic process that involves nurturing and maintaining relationships with key clients to drive business success. Here are some examples of account management practices and their primary goals:

1. Client Relationship Building:
   • Example: Regularly scheduling meetings and check-ins with key clients to understand their evolving needs and expectations.
   • Main Goal: Foster stronger client relationships and ensure high levels of client satisfaction and loyalty.
2. Data-Driven Decision Making:
   • Example: Utilizing customer behavior analytics to tailor account strategies and identify new sales opportunities.
   • Main Goal: Enhance customer satisfaction and increase upsell and cross-sell revenue by leveraging valuable insights.
3. Proactive Problem Solving:
   • Example: Implementing a system for quickly addressing and resolving client issues before they escalate.
   • Main Goal: Maintain client satisfaction and retention by providing exceptional service and minimizing customer churn.
4. Strategic Account Planning:
   • Example: Developing detailed account plans that align with the client’s business objectives and industry trends.
   • Main Goal: Drive long-term success for both the client and the company by ensuring alignment with broader business objectives.
5. Continuous Skill Development:
   • Example: Participating in workshops and training sessions to enhance communication and negotiation skills.
   • Main Goal: Equip account managers with the necessary skills to build relationships and drive revenue growth effectively.

By focusing on these account management activities, account managers aim to achieve the ultimate goals of customer satisfaction and business growth. These practices are essential for retaining existing clients, attracting new customers, and aligning with the company’s vision for continuous improvement and success.

Boost Your Account Management Performance with Spinify

Spinify transforms those important goals into an engaging and rewarding experience. Our gamification platform makes it easy to track your progress, visualize milestones, and celebrate success. Whether it’s client retention, revenue growth, or skill development, Spinify turns goals into a game your team will love to win.

In today’s competitive business environment, achieving account manager goals is more critical than ever. Spinify’s innovative approach not only enhances motivation but also fosters a culture of continuous improvement within your team. By integrating fun elements like leaderboards, badges, and rewards, the platform encourages account managers to engage more deeply with their responsibilities. This results in stronger client relationships, improved customer satisfaction scores, and increased upsell revenue.

Moreover, Spinify provides valuable insights into account management performance through detailed analytics. This data-driven approach allows sales managers to identify areas for improvement and tailor strategies to meet broader business objectives. With Spinify, account managers can focus on providing exceptional service and nurturing relationships with key clients, ultimately leading to long-term success.

By leveraging Spinify’s gamification features, account management teams can seamlessly align their goals with the company’s vision, ensuring that every effort contributes to the overall growth and success of the business. Whether you’re aiming to enhance client retention rates or expand key account revenue, Spinify offers the tools and support needed to achieve measurable goals and drive continuous growth.

Ready to see the difference? Book a demo today and discover how Spinify can supercharge your account management performance!