Mistakes happen to everyone. Whether you are experienced or inexperienced, whether you have full mastery of your skills or just picking up new ones; you will always suffer a mistake. Although the sales world tries to be as immune as possible from mistakes, errors are inevitable.

In this article, Sales Ninja will share the most common mistakes account managers make in the world of B2B sales.

No Rapport/Relationship Building

Account Managers don’t always take their job too passionately. When you are given a set of fixed accounts, there is little to do but cater to the needs and inquiries of the client. But what happens a lot of the time is that there is little to no relationship building. Many AMs have become somewhat complacent and very comfortable in their jobs that they don’t bother with building trust between themselves and the clients.

A good AM would have their clients remember and refer to them even long after they stop being an AM or move on to another company.

Too Strict On Procedures

Regardless of the type of industry you are in, if you follow the book too much without any regard for the client, then the client will lose interest in you or worst, your brand. Although we must always adhere to rules and procedures but having little to no leeway for your clients means you lose favor thus you lose sales.

Always remember, your competitors will always be on the lookout for an opportunity to offer a better deal than you so take the time to go out of your own way for the client. A little extra mile driven can go a long way to close the sale and have them coming back for more.

Waiting For Inquiries

Account Managers have a lot of clients to cater to but eventually, that list will run out or be cut short. One engineering products company that sells to Oil & Gas has issues where sales engineers typically just handle inquiries and requirements but after analysis by our trainer, it isn’t enough to achieve the targets.

So, after our coaching on how to get ‘new’ requirements without waiting for customers, one sales engineer from East Malaysia increased 30 new opportunities after our training. Another senior sales engineer from Central hit 3 new opportunities in 1 day and another from East Coast identified 53 new opportunities.

Too many AMs make this mistake. They would normally wait for repeat sales to come in and if there is nothing in the pipeline, some would even play the blame game and not reflect on what they should be doing.

Account Profiling

Basically, it is being selective of whom AMs want to serve or want to conduct new business with. Instead of going all out for every client, they only choose specific clients mainly due to the mindset of:

“I know this client won’t buy from me or can’t pay very much so it’s not worth the time.”

There are other reasons as well such as the client is too grumpy or demanding or they would just choose your competitor over you entirely thus defeating the purpose of even trying to contact them.

Mindset & Account Management Training

Account Management may seem like it’s an easy-going, order-taking job, but the reality is that it’s much more difficult than one would think, and it’s mainly due to mindset. And that is the strength of the Sales Ninja: to not merely wait for inquiries but creating more opportunities through our Account Management training.

Click HERE to contact us and our Senior Solutions Manager will provide you with a fully customized training program designed to help your Account Managers to gain more sales and boost revenue!