Hello and welcome to 2019 everybody, it's Warwick from Account Manager Tips
and I am so excited for this year. I really think it's going to be one of
the best yet for you and for me and look, I mean
I know I say that every year, but hey, you live in hope.
and dream big I say. Now here's a few things I think every
Account Manager should do in January to set themselves up
for success for the whole year.
Get your QBRs in the diary.
Not just your annual review, which is due any minute,
but all of your reviews, for the whole year.
Just set up a recurring appointment. Like the third Friday of every quarter.
You'll find that not only do you make sure the reviews happen
They get moved less often because they're actually in the diary so far in
advance that people make appointments around them
and you'll be one step ahead of yourself the whole year.
Have a look at your contact history from last year.
Run a report in your CRM or do an export from Outlook and just see who you
contacted, who you reached out to,
how many of your clients actually got in
front of? Did you have some favourites?
Were there some people that you really responded to and liked to hang out with
a little bit more than others? If there's some clients that you
neglected or some clients that you've put in that you know,
"no news is good news bucket" - have a look again.
Make sure you have a really solid contact plan for them this year because
you don't want to neglect them again. You know you want to make sure that you
share the love, even if you do have a few favourites,
We all do, that's OK.
But don't neglect some of those you may have avoided in the past.
Okay, so have a look at that.
Make sure you've got a really solid plan moving forward.
See which of your clients contracts are up for renewal this year.
You don't want to be the last to know, I promise you.
You want to start to build a capture plan and make sure that, again,
you're one step ahead.
That you're prepared for the conversation around renewing their
contracts and that you're ready to have a sort of commercial conversation and
you know when to anticipate that and when to start to engage with your client
about renewing their contract. If you get that list up front now
you're going to be (again) one step ahead of yourself all year.
Did you find yourself doing other
people's work last year? Did you find yourself doing workarounds
for your clients? Because well, you
wanted to help them out and maybe your product or your service didn't
quite meet their needs, so you just thought,
you know what? I'm going to do it.
This year, make a promise to yourself to not do
other people's work. To not do things for free just because
you feel guilty or you want to help somebody out.
Respect your time, respect the value that you bring and
make sure that you are focused very strategically on your clients and that
you're there to deliver and create value,
but not do the work of others. Right?
That's so important. Don't get so caught up in the trenches
in the day to day, in the reeds that you forget to think about the bigger picture
because that's what your clients' are looking for from account managers.
Also, have a look at your strategic account
plans from last year. Get them all out on the table.
See how well you did,
what you accomplished, what maybe you missed out on achieving.
Be really realistic about why you didn't get to where you needed to be.
And also celebrate some of those successes.
If you did achieve some of the things that you set out to do on your strategic
account plans, then great for you and make sure your
client knows about it too.
if you don't have a strategic account plan in place,
head on over to amtip.co/strategy where you'll find a template you can use and
you can also download my Ultimate Guide to Strategic Account Planning.
So there you kind of have it. They're my five tips.
Get your contracts sorted. See who's coming up for renewal this
year so you can start to build the plan.
Get your QBRs in the diary.
Have a look at your contact history last year
and make sure that this year you don't neglect the same people and that you're
on top of your meetings.
Don't do other people's work, right?
Start as you mean to continue. Do what you are supposed to do and let
others do their job and leave it at that.
And get your strategic account plans in order.
Have a look at what you did last year that went well,
what didn't go so well and get your plans underway for
this year as soon as possible. What about you?
What do you do to get a really good solid head start on 2019?
What do you do to set yourself up for success at the beginning of the year?
Any tips or advice for me? I would love to hear it.