Total Account Management

Anyone remember “TQM”?  If you do, relax, Total Account Management in the terms I’ve recently discovered it has nothing to do with such early-90s Quality drives.  ‘Phew’ I can hear you sigh.  Steady on, though, as some TQM problem solving techniques are awesome and deserve a second-chance…..but I digress…..

Two of my customers have recently implemented training programmes.  They’re in completely unrelated fields and at opposite ends of the price spectrum for average order values.  Yet they’re both in B2B solution selling and gave the current drive the self-same name; “TAM”.  And their definitions are remarkably similar:

customer one – how can we find and exploit every single sales opportunity within an account?

customer two – how can we ensure we talk about every single product/service grouping we offer and penetrate an account with as many as possible to lock out competition?

When I hunt down more answers, I’ll pass them on, but in the meantime the biggest issue they’re focussing on is how to extend their net so they talk to more individuals within such target accounts, typically occupying roles they’ve previously not been hot at establishing relationships with….