Send me a personal email to sydney(at)elearnhero.com if you have any questions

The account management track

Account manager are responsible for:

Connecting the business with customers
Maintaining a good relationship with clients
Reach quotas and reporting to higher management

Businesses rely on the ability of the account manager to find client’s needs in order to coordinate technical and marketing aspects of the company. You’ll need to have strong capabilities to build build relationships and be able to listen and understand what your client needs.

This track is a guide for those who want to become account managers. We’ll show you what you need to be better qualified for the job. We are also always improving and updating the track with new material and content. Don’t hesitate to sign up for our newsletter at the end of this page to stay updated.

Introduction to account management

Course overview

Account manager need a set of skills to be successful, so we’ll cover them. In this track, no one else is responsible for your learning than you. In this course, you’ll:

1) Learn by doing. Do first, then look at the theory. It’s how you’ll learn the best and the fastest

2) Learn by yourself (create independence) and be self-reliant. You’re learning because you want to, not because someone tells you to-

3) Gain confidence! You’ll receive no diploma, but you’ll have a nice portfolio of skills to show. The market doesn’t need diplomas, it needs skills!

Note: This course is not a checklist, it’s a guide. It is made for complete beginners, but you are flexible to use it as you want.

With Account management expertise, you’ll be qualified for :

Account manager positions
Key account manager
Sales
Starting your own business

Account manager have a privileged link to key clients that runs a company. With the strong relationships created with the client, It is not rare that manager keep their clients even when changing company

Careers in Business development

With Business development expertise, you’ll be qualified for many jobs. It includes:

Business development positions
Business development team lead positions
Business development manager
Sales
Founder of your company

In business development you are the sole responsible for your personal growth. If you are successful in your job you’ll automatically be given more responsibilities. On the other side, if you don’t achieve your goals, you won’t have much job security.

Skills you’ll get

In order to be a great account manager you will also need to add the relevant technical skills or know how of the relevant industry you’ll want to work in. Here are some of the other skills you’ll want to acquire:

Listening
Networking and interpersonal skills
Sales skills, goal setting and knowing the sales funnel
Art of negotiation
Leadership and business skills
Managing your time and getting things done
Public speaking skills

Account manager communities

You will learn more by sharing with other people from the same profession. We highly recommend to get involve in those communities and participate as much as you can. You shouldn’t see other account manager as competitors but people that will help you being better at your job.

Meetups — Check out the communities on Meetup.com. Get together with other account manager enthusiasts and learn from each other!

Facebook — Check in your network if anyone is an account manager and hang out with them to ask them questions. There are sometimes group you can also join in.

LinkedIn — This group has 188,000 members. Join some groups in LinkedIn and share with other account manager enthusiast.

Chrome extensions

Assistant.to : schedule meeting easily
Yesware // gmail canned response: Email template tools
Grammarly: Grammar and spelling check
Boomerang: Follow up with people who haven’t answered you
Rapportive: Get Linkedin profiles and their email addresses right in your inbox

Organize and collaborate

Google drive: Excel, Powerpoint, Word free online.
Dropbox: Share files and get 2GB free storage
Evernote: Workspace of your life’s work

Personal time management

Getting things done: Read the book!

Information and news.

If you want to join a startup or a digital company (most companies are getting digital), you should always stay updated about the latest news and trends. Here is a small list of blogs and tech news. I suggest you make your own research about sites that will be relevant to your industry.

Tech news:

The Verge: Technology, science, art and culture

Wired: “Future technology trends”

VentureBeat: News and perspective about tech innovations

The Next Web: Internet technology, business and culture

TechCrunch: Latest technology news and information

Re/ code: independent tech news

Here are some of the resources I use on a weekly basis:

Growth Hackers: Crowdsource tips on growth

Email sales template: 101 sales email template from this blog post

Lynda: Online courses on any topic

Edx.org: Free online courses from top universities
Coursera: Free online courses

How to become an account manager

Account management is for people that have a genuine passion for building long term relationship. Great account manager are the one who can find out what a client needs and take relevant action to pursue it. To become an account manager you should as well be able to positively influence people within your company so that to align their work with customer’s need.

“The more you engage with customers the clearer things become and the easier it is to determine what you should be doing.” – John Russell, President, Harley Davidson
A comparative study found that key account used to represent 23% of a business in 1975 to 60% currently. Account manager is a popular job you can become part of.

#1 Read this book:

David Carnegie has made his life priority to get this guide together on how to deal with people. The book is more than 100 years old but they are principles that don’t change, and it has been adapted to today’s world.

Objectives:

#1 Read the book

#2 Learn about the 9 principles

#3 Pay special attention to the Listening chapter and apply it to your daily life.

If you liked this book I’ve also listed 20 business book worth reading. Here is the list.

> Download ebook for free 🙂

#2 Sales class from Lynda

Account management has to do with sales and how you should understand your customer needs to show them how your product best fits to its purpose and how you can make your product evolve. Jeff Bloomfield has valuable insight about the sales funnels and its principles. The class is only an hour long and will consolidate what you’ve learned from David Carnegie book.

Objective:

#1 Take the class apply the 4 principles from Jeff.

Sales class

Through Lynda

Sales Class

Click here and get access to the Lynda course and get 14 day trial

> Access Lynda course and get 14 day trial

#3 Make a change in your local community

Part of the job of being an account manager is finding out what the client wants in order to adjust your product or services to fit his need better. The best way to be good at it, is to practise, and to start practising now. There are many ways you can get involve in your local community, whether it’s in a sports club, in a local school, the church, red cross or any other club you are part of. Find out what the people expect from the club by carefully listening to each and see how you can influence the organisers to match people’s expectations.

If there is no club you feel you would like to be part of. Go and get a job at a local shop or restaurant, gather feedback from the clients. With feedback you’ll gather information about what people would like to have or how you could improve their experience.Share it with your boss. Bosses tend to like structure and simple explanations. Present your information in such as way, and you’ll be able to make an impact.

Make sure that you remember your clients name and their favorite taste so next time they come you could advise them on what they could like and upsell them towards more diversified products or services.

Objectives:

#1 Use and apply the tips and techniques from the TED talk. Make it a priority to use RASA on a daily basis.

#2 Get involved in a club, or in your local community and try to make a change from members feedback.

#4 Public speaking class

Whether you’re a business or a technical person, you need to understand who you are talking to, how you can relate to that person, and share something meaningful they will remember you for. I took this class from Lynda about public speaking. It will help you know how to communicate your ideas clearly.

Objectives:

#1 Go to networking events close to where you live (such as tech events) so that you can meet and connect with people that work in companies that attracts you. Meetup and Eventbrite have great selection of event.

#2 Meet people and inspire them so they will remember you.

#3 Get them to refer you for a job in the company they work for.

Public speaking class

Through Lynda

Public speaking class

Click here and get access to the Lynda course and get 14 day trial

> Access Lynda course and get 14 day trial

#5 Negotiation skills

When it comes to long-term relationships, negotiation is not about squeezing the other person so one can get as much as possible. Rather negotiation is about finding a mutual point of interest where both will benefit from the agreement. A good negotiation outcome is when both parties end up better than they did.

In the following course you should learn about:

Relationship building
Best Alternative to a Common agreement
How stretch goals can help you be a better negotiator
Unconventional way of negotiating

Objectives:

#1 Go through the course

#2 Invest in yourself and Read Getting to Yes written by Roger Fisher and William L. Ury.

#3 Negotiate at least one thing you buy every day.

Note here that it is possible to negotiate in established store. You’ll be surprised.

#4 Keep a memo of all the techniques you used and the one that worked for you.

Negotiating class

Through Coursera

Negotiating class

Click here and get access to Coursera free class

> Access the free course from Coursera

#7 Learn about customer loyalty

Customer loyalty should be one’s business number one goal. As Jill Griffin puts it well, if you manage to get one of your customer happy and give him value, he will become a brand ambassador.

Have you heard about the 80/20 rules? This rules states that 80% of your revenue comes from 20% of your clients. Knowing how to identify this 20% and create more value for them will make you business more meaningful and profitable.

Objectives:

#1 Take the course

#2 If you work in a shop // restaurant // business find out who are your key customers and make an excel sheet to see how much the represent of the total revenue.

#3 Learn from your best customer behavior. See how you can increase value for them and make it easy for them to try your new products.
#4 Learn how to gather feedback and start applying the principles.

Customer loyalty class

Through Lynda

Customer loyalty class

Click here and get access to Lynda 14 day trial

> Learn about outstanding customer service

#8 Get the tools to be more efficient

Working as an account manager involves being in contact with key people within another company. There are many browser extensions that can help you along the way. They will help you automate your daily task and makes your job easier. In this post, there is a list of extensions for Gmail to be used in a sales orientated way.

Objective:

#1 Update your LinkedIn profile. You can add the skills you are getting in this track

#2 Try and use extensions I have listed in the browser extension post.

#9 Analytical skills

Account management is not only about knowing how to talk to people, as we saw above it is a good thing to know how to analyse and understand data. If you are not too familiar with excel yet, this class from excel central covers it all.

“if you torture data long enough, it will confess” Ronald H Coase.

Objective:

#1 Know how to use Excel and use it in you work. Great Excel tutorials can be found here.

#2 Gather as much data about a particular business and try to identify with pivot tables who are the key customers and how much they bring to the business.

Learn excel

Through Excel central

Learn Excel

Click here and get access to Excel central

> Access the course from Excel central

#10 Start applying for jobs

Make sure you learn about each company you’re applying for. Use the techniques listed in this track to reach out and talk to the right persons. Make enough research so you would be ready to start your job tomorrow. Knowing who are the key customers of one’s business and how you would plan to increase value could set you apart from all other applicants.

There are two ways to talk to the right person in a company.

#1 is going to network events and getting to know one person from the company that can introduce you to the HR department, the CEO or other senior managers.

#2 is getting the HR manager or the CEO’s email or phone in order to reach out to that person directly. Also, make your research to know as much as possible about each company you’re applying for.

Knowing everything about the company you want to apply for is a huge time saver. First you’ll realize if you want to work for the company.It will also set you apart from other applicants because you will have something relevant to say.