Account Management - How to Manage Accounts to Maximize Sales

Congratulations! You successfully sold one or more of your company's products or services to a business unit, department, or division of a large organization. Now your manager has tasked you with "account management". If you are not already familiar with account management, you are probably asking yourself the following questions:

What is "Account Management"? What skills and talents are required to excel in Account Management? What activities must be performed to maximize Account Management ROI?

Providing answers to these questions is the focus of this article.

What is Account Management?

Account management is actually a synonym for account penetration. Just because you have sold one product or service to one business entity within an organization doesn't mean your job is done. Think of all the additional opportunities that may exist in the account! For example:

Does your company offer additional products or services that might be a "fit" for this customer? How many other business units, departments, divisions, and subsidiaries are potential prospects for your company's offering(s)? Required Skills and Talents

A critical talent for successful account management is the ability to build relationships, as relationship selling is a very effective way to increase account penetration. Another critical skill/talent is organization. If you are going to manage large accounts effectively, you need to be willing and able to keep meticulous records.

What kinds of records do you need to keep? Picture a large, three-dimensional spreadsheet in your mind. In the left-hand column is a list of every product and service that you could possibly sell to a customer. Across the top of the spreadsheet are all of the business units, departments, divisions, and other business entities that make up your account's entire organization. Behind each business entity is every contact you know within that business entity.

Armed with this mental picture, ask yourself the following questions:

Which business entities are you doing business with? Which business entities are you NOT doing business with? Where are the various business entities located? Which products and services does each business entity already purchase from you? Which products and services are they NOT purchasing from you? Who do you know in each business entity? Which of these contacts have you already asked for referrals and testimonials? What referrals and testimonials have they given you?

Required Activities

Hopefully your organization has some type of CRM (Client Relationship Management) software application to help you keep track of your answers to these questions. If you don't have access to a corporate CRM system, here are some other options:

You can purchase a software package like ACT! Or GoldMine? You can subscribe to an online service like salesforce.com? You can track information using a spreadsheet, database, or e-mail program?

Next, plan your tactics for increasing account penetration by considering the following questions:

What process will you use to regularly expose each of your contacts in the account to your company's entire portfolio of products and services? Who can provide testimonials that will help you win business in other business units, departments, or divisions in the account? Who can refer you to new contacts in other business units, departments, or divisions in the account?

Why is it necessary to repetitively expose your contacts to your company's entire portfolio of products and services? Because they forget! I can tell you from personal experience that there is nothing more frustrating than finding out a customer has placed a large order with another salesperson...and the only reason they didn't give you the order was because they didn't know or remember that you could fill it!

Is There More to Account Management?

There can be, but activities focused on increasing account penetration make up the critical core. Account management does become more complex if a team of people is managing a regional, national, or global account, but most of the complexity pertains to coordinating the activities of the team members.

Don't make account management more complex than it needs to be! The basic goal is to maximize account penetration. Look for opportunities to sell every product and service in your portfolio to >every business entity (business unit, department, division, etc.) in the account. Make maximum use of referrals and testimonials to help you initiate new relationships. Regularly remind all of your contacts of the full breadth of your portfolio of products and services. Be organized and keep meticulous records. If you do these things, you should be amply rewarded for your efforts!

Copyright 2005-2008 -- Alan Rigg

E-Mail Marketing - Factors That Enable Effective Implementation

The objective of marketing is to reach potential customers and win them to the advantage of your business. Email marketing is an important aspect of the Internet marketing plan. Let us discuss the factors that make email communication more effective.

Email marketing is one of the most effective IM strategies Email marketing has emerged as one of the most powerful strategies in Internet marketing. This involves sending individual messages to each customer and get inputs therefrom later. It is a means to strike a relationship between seller and the buyer. As emails can be targeted personally, it is easy to reach the customers.

How to make it effective? Having recognized that email marketing is an effective tool in Internet marketing, you should use techniques to make it more effective.

To make this strategy more effective, personalize your emails. Use software that enables you to send mass emails. Include personal details such as name, address of your company, etc. Ensure that you give a clause saying that the email sent to you is not a spam generated by computer. Following are furthermore details given out on effective implementation of email marketing.

E-mails should be readable Important aspect of email marketing is the content therein. The content should be prepared focusing on the buyers needs. It should be relevant and intelligible to the buyer. The language of the text should be easy-to-understand, engaging and concise. There should not be any errors in grammar or punctuation. If you furnish any image in the mail, it should be relevant to the product/service that you are marketing.

Use a trustworthy sender name Your email should reflect your genuine interest in the customers and your desire to extend the relationship with them. For your customers to feel that you are genuine, you need to appear trustworthy and reliable. For this, you need to give information in your email that is authentic and verifiable. One of the sure ways of gaining the confidence of your customers is to have a trustworthy sender's name in your email. The email should detail the personnel (sender) involved in the business. Information pertaining to the company/person should be furnished in the email to enable cross checking, if anyone needs.

Subject should summarize the content The subject of the email should state the essence of the message in the email text body. Otherwise, people may not be interested either to open the mail or read it. The subject should also let the reader know what actually the email contains in its body.

It's not worth if your emails go in to spam/junk folder If the email you have sent gets dumped in the spam/junk folder, it will lose the attention from the potential buyers. Mention a request to make the email from your company/business to go neither to the junk nor the spam folder.

Make the links appear different While sending emails, let the prospective buyer have a glimpse of your business website or the specific landing page. Furnish the relevant links. While doing so, present the links in colored and underlined text to make it easy to locate. The link is generally presented in blue. The underlining is for showing that they are links. Further, keep the links separate from the text and in a white space to emphasize their importance.

Don't trap links in images If you send images in the emails, ensure that they are clear enough and not blurred. Further, do not furnish links, if any, in the image itself. This makes the image disfigured, especially when zoomed. It may cause readers/users to skip the mail. Excessive flashy images may annoy the readers outright.

Limit link density to drive clicks Do not present too many links in the email in one go. Such emails may be rendered as junk by ISPs. The links should be relevant to the product/service marketed alone. Links not related to the content in the mail should be avoided. Further, adding links that are related only to the product/services, discounts, offers, etc., presented in the email, would lead to the probability of increased click-through action.

Take help of experts in the field Email marketing is a highly specialized work involving expertise. It is, therefore, sensible to take the aid of experts in the field. Research the Internet for the purpose. There are numerous Internet marketing companies present in the online market space. You can find the price most suitable to you and hire them for your business.

Provided these points are followed scrupulously, businesses can leverage email marketing as a powerful tool of Internet marketing.

Music Business Contacts: Music Business Registry connects artists, managers, publishers, producers &

"The difference between success and failure is information," notes Ritch Esra, and he should know. Along with his partner, Stephen Trumbull, Esra is a leading part of the number one most-reliable source of information on "who's who" and "who does what" in the music business. Best of all, they can tell you where everybody is located.

FIVE VOLUMES OF DATA.

The Music Business Registry (http://www.musicregistry.com) publishes five directories: the "A&R Registry," the "Music Publisher Registry," the "Music Business Attorney Registry" the "Film and Television Music Guide," and the "Record Producer and Recording Engineer Directory." For many in the business, these are indispensable reference works.

"The directories give everyone vital, accurate and the most up-to-date information they need to contact the entire A&R, music publishing, legal and film/TV music communities," Esra states. From comparing notes with dozens of professionals in all of these areas of expertise, I can tell you that no one disputes his claim.

More than one music industry executive has told me that the Music Business Registry publications are worth their weight in platinum. Tess Taylor, president of NARIP (National Association of Record Industry Professionals), says "I couldn't get through one day without the directories from the Music Business Registry. These publications are the finest in the business."

Each directory tells you how to reach industry professionals by regular mail, e-mail, direct dial telephone and fax. The books provide each person's exact title, street address, the name of their assistant and the styles of music in which each executive specializes. Web sites are also included.

UPDATES? YOU WANT UPDATES?

The world of the A&R executive is exciting but ever-changing. Which is to say, there's a lot of turnover in this part of the industry. So much turnover, in fact, that the A&R Registry is completely updated and reprinted every eight weeks, whereas the publisher volume is biannual and the other books come out yearly.

NEED A PRODUCER? HERE ARE 1,700 OF THEM!

Created in partnership with RPM Direct, the "Record Producer & Recording Engineer Directory" presents 1,700 of today's leading Record Producers, Recording Engineers & Remixers throughout the US, Canada and Europe in every genre of music. Included in the book are:

(1) Complete contact information for every Producer, Remixer & Recording Engineer along with a list of their credits.

(2) Producer/Engineer/Remixer Management Companies including a complete staff listing as well as full client rosters.

(3) A Complete Index to easily locate any producer.

(4) Several Interviews and articles with today's leading Producers & Engineers.

No wonder you can find the Music Business Registry's publications in the offices of top record company executives, music publishers, artist managers, agents, music attorneys, recording artists, studios and other music business professionals everywhere from Los Angeles to London, New York to Nashville, Chicago to Copenhagen, Toronto to Tokyo, Stockholm to Sydney and Minneapolis to Munich.

YOUR SEARCH BEGINS HERE.

The Music Business Registry is located at 7510 Sunset Blvd #1041, Los Angeles, CA 90046-3400. Phone: 800-377-7411 or 818-995-7458. Fax: 800-228-9411 or 818-995-7459. E-mail: ritch@musicregistry.com.

What Is Google Pay Per Click And Why Is It Good For Your Business?

Google offers many services that can benefit your business and it is up to you whether you take advantage of it or not. Google is the second biggest website in the world only behind Facebook so it is definitely something that you should take advantage of. They offer a Pay Per Click (PPC) service which can help you grow as a business.

Google PPC lets you design your own small advertisement that goes next to the natural search results. The advert always relates to the search results so that you will be advertising to people are already interested in what you have to offer. The PPC service operates so that you only pay every time someone clicks on your link. So your link will be displayed but if nobody clicks on the link you are not charged. This can help save you money unlike other advertising like on the radio where you pay an extortionate fee no matter what. The fact that you only pay for the people that click on your link make this form of advertising more efficient than other forms. The people that do click on your link are likely to buy your products as they are probably of high quality. This then makes your return on investment high as when you do pay for a click that person is likely to bring in sales for your business.

Google PPC lets you choose your own ad so it can be more specific to your own business. By writing the ad yourself you can choose the message for certain times of year. For example when it comes to Valentine's Day you may want an advert about flowers saying get some for your loved ones. As well as this you can choose your own keywords and like the personalized advert it can let you target certain people so that the traffic you do receive on your website is quality traffic. This means the people that visit your website use your services by signing up or purchasing something as there is no point having people visit your website if all they do it look at the website then go; it leaves you where you are now.

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is the process of making a website appear more visible on search engines natural results. If you know what you are doing it is free and this is the more popular way of making your website appear on Google. The problem with this is that your natural rankings could change overnight and it could suddenly put you on page 10. Whereas with Google PPC you a control over where your advert appears meaning until your budget has been use the advert will appear and traffic will stay at a constant level.

Google PPC gives you control over the advert which is extremely important. If you feel you are receiving enough traffic for the time being you can simply turn off your advert so it will not appear anymore. The budget you have left will still remain and you can simply turn it back on when your traffic begins to dip. This allows you to keep a constant level of traffic as well as helping you grow when you want to. In addition to this you can make sure that the budget that you set is not overspent so you will not suddenly be left owing Google an extra £100.

Google PPC can help you take your business to the next level and with over 90% of the search engine market share there is certainly the potential. No matter how big or small your business is you can still benefit from this.

How To Generate More Money In 7 Days

We all need to know how to generate more money in hurry at one time or another. It could be that your house is screaming out for a makeover, your car needs new tyres, yet another school trip needs to be paid for, or you may even have just found the perfect low cost business to start but you haven't got the cash that you need. So is there really an easy way to generate money within 7 days?

To make money you generally need a product or service to sell but what if you haven't got a product to sell, can you still generate cash?

Yes and it's easier than you think.

There is an easy way to generate more money without having to source a product, without having to sell direct to customers and without having to pay for advertising and the great news is that we all have what we need to make more money already in our homes.

All of us have unwanted items lying around the house. Just taking a look in your attic, garage or even in your downstairs cupboards will reveal many items that can create some extra cash for you.

You could then raise money for these items.

But what if you don't want to set up a stall and have to wait for passersby to buy from you in a car boot sale?

There is an alternative. You could sell your items on the biggest online "car boot sale" on the planet... eBay.

The great thing is that you do not need any experience to sell on eBay and the site provides easy step by step instructions on how to sell on eBay.

The other great advantages of selling on eBay are;

You do not need to have direct contact with the person who buys from you.

The customers are more targeted to what you are selling i.e..they know what they are looking for and therefore will be diverted to your product.

People are looking for bargains and if you have what they are looking for at a reasonable price they will buy from you.

What items can you sell on eBay?

There is no limit to what you can sell on eBay... Ranging from clothes, CDs, DVDs, books, manuals, "how to" business opportunities for those opportunity junkies who have amassed numerous sets of the latest ways to make money, the list goes on and on.

Some people have even sold bizarre items like a Tupperware box filled with hurricane wind or a carrot that attracted a lot of bids purely by the seller asking for a good home for his carrot which he had even named.

eBay has also made individuals seriously rich.

Take for example Alex Tew. In August 2006, 21 year old British student Alex decided to use eBay to launch a one page website selling pixels as advertising space. His aim was to raise money for his university education to avoid having to pay off a huge student loan at the end of his studies. He very cleverly sold the pixels for $1 per pixel as he figured that the US had a larger online population.

In January 2006 his final 1000 pixels were put up for auction and closed on the 11th January with a winning bid of $38,000 resulting in a final $1037,000 in gross income! There really are endless ways to make money with eBay.

As previously stated, selling on eBay is really easy. If you need to know how to set up an eBay account, the site has easy tutorials for you to use to get started.

To sell an item on eBay you will need to:

1. Sign up as an eBay seller.

2. Take a photo of your items and provide a brief description of each. You could also cross reference other items that you are selling by adding something like "Don't forget to check out my other auctions for other great products on...

3. List the item

4. Detail prices, payment and postage information.

5. State the length of time for bidding. It is better not to have a reserve price in order to ensure that your item will be sold and the longer time you allow for bidding, the more money you will generate. However, to generate money quickly, within 7 days, you will need to restrict the bidding time to 7 days or under.

I have used eBay many times to generate more money and it really is one of the quickest and easiest ways to generate cash and can even provide project money for those of you wanting to start a business.

What Can Be Compensated With Travel Insurance?

A lot of people don't mind their safety when traveling abroad. They think it's all about fun and thrill. But that should not be the case. If you are traveling to countries with high kidnapping risk, for instance, it's just reasonable to contact kidnap and ransom insurance companies to seek for advice and to obtain the right insurance product for you. Obtaining travel insurance is essential. The worst can happen to people who fall into the trap of too much complacency. Travelers have been victims of theft, crime, accidents, and medical emergencies. Without insurance they could be vulnerable.

Do not think of travel insurance as an added and unwanted expense. Many people don't mind paying for their travel insurance as long as doing so gives them peace of mind. With this form of insurance, you are assured protection in case something goes wrong. For overseas vacations, travel insurance is extremely necessary.

Keep in mind that there are different forms of insurance. Travel insurance may include only compensation for medical costs and losses incurred during the trip. Many companies also provide travel insurance for kidnapping.

If you have travel insurance, the following can be compensated:

Medical Costs

Accidents and sickness can happen to travelers. If you get hospitalized in a foreign country and you have no insurance, you end up paying all the hospital bills. Many American tourists would have to return to the United States. Imagine paying all the travel bills if you have no insurance.

Loss

You may lose belongings when traveling. Cases of lost baggage at airports and terminals are high. For tourists loss of baggage is extremely inconvenient in an unfamiliar land. It could ruin a supposed to be happy vacation. If you are an insurance holder, your frustration could be eased.

Cancelled Flights

This is another common complaint of travelers. Canceled flights actually bring about annoyance and distress. Flight cancellation causes passengers to wait for several hours and even days for another flight. You could miss out on events you're supposed to go to or miss package tours and accommodations you have already booked and paid. Travel insurance covers this trouble.

Calamities

If you travel to Bangkok sometime in August or September, you may become a victim of flooding. Many travel destinations suffer from calamities at certain times of the year. Hurricanes sweep across the Caribbean. Bushfires happen in Spain or Australia. If you are unfortunate, you may become a victim of these natural calamities in the middle of your vacation. It is important to know if such acts of nature are covered by your insurance policy.

Kidnapping

Certain destinations in the world are known for cases of kidnapping. If you are traveling to other countries with some risk of kidnapping, it is practical to obtain travel insurance for kidnapping. This insurance could provide you benefits in case you fall victim of kidnapping. However, paying attention to travel advisories should keep you from becoming a victim yourself.

Emergencies

You may have to head back home because your mother fell ill or your associate notified you of a company emergency. These cases can cancel your vacation. Travel insurance may allow you to recover cost of canceled holidays.

Some people think that insurance policies are expensive. But if you want to put a prime on your security, getting an insurance product is not a bad idea. There are insurance policies that come at a reasonable price.