The Top 3 Skills - How Major Account Selling Differs

Managing major accounts requires much more than the kind of selling usually associated with territorial or relationship-based selling. Overall, many more skills are needed to be successful as a major account salesperson.

These are the top 3 skills that strategic account planning pros say you need to be successful:

1. Business acumen.  No longer can you just know your product, service or solution. Major account customers expect that you will bring value-added expertise to the table to them and their business. They want you to provide a fresh perspective and offer insight into their most pressing issues and problems.
2. Thorough knowledge of your own organization’s resources.  Although you may be the single point of contact for your customer, you need to have a team behind you that you can intelligently leverage to meet your customer’s needs in all facets of their business…from strategic to tactical and from short- to long-term.
3. An ability to coordinate with multiple buyers.  No longer dealing with just one decision maker, major account managers need to relate to many sophisticated and experienced buyers within the customer’s organization.