Sales Job

Sales Account Manager Job Skills and Responsibilities

Is customer churn becoming a serious mess? And amidst multiple roles, you solely are unable to focus on your customers. Or, Are you looking for an Account Manager job description that can take you through your interview? Then you are in the right place.

Well, whether you yourself are going to take up the role of an Account Manager or you are looking out for hiring one. This blog post will give you a complete idea of an Account Manager job description.

Basically, an Account Manager not only handles the company’s existing customer’s accounts but also develops strategies for customer’s success and lifelong healthy customer retention.

But before we dive into details of an Account Manager’s roles and responsibilities, let’s get a position overview of an Account Manager.

The Need For an Account Manager – Position Overview

To begin with, the role of an Account Manager is very crucial. He acts as the link between the customer and the entire team or organization and thus, oversees a portfolio of assigned customers. As said, building business strategies that make customers happy as hence customer retention is his prime focus.

The pivotal roles of an Account Manager are managing project briefs and client budgets, attaining sales quotas, building strategies for strong customer relationships, and several administrative functions. The functions may vary from one firm to the other as per their requirements.

Every organization, big or small, follows the goal of building a positive, and more importantly, a long and strong relationship with the customers. Properly maintained and updated accounts bring transparency in dealings. This leads to increased customer satisfaction.

An Account Manager has a thorough knowledge of the customer’s business and involvements. It is more of a client-facing role where they strategically carry forward and maintain the promising relationship that their Sales and Support team(s) has made so far.

Mostly, an Account Manager is answerable to the Director or Head of the accounts section or the Director of the agency regarding reports of clients’ accounts and transactions.

Accountability of an Account Manager – Key Performance Indicators

The task of an Account Manager is complex. As an interface between the Customer Service and the Sales team, they work with the Sales Executive and the Account Executive.

An Account Manager is accountable to several sections for the overall existing customer management, and not just their accounts. The key performance indicators that measure the efficiency of an Account Manager are mentioned below:

  • Being a trusted advisor to the customer for providing them with lifetime value – The Account Manager formulates strategies that keep the consumers satisfied and engaged in your products.
  • Focusing on customer relationship management– They monitor the calls and emails made by the support team, plus client success rates. Your performance makes your client a knowledgeable reference who steps out to proudly take your name.
  • Achieving the set financial client targets- The Account Manager takes count of all revenues generated, including upsells or cross-sells.
  • Having knowledge of clients along with the status of relationships maintained with them(through budgets and transactions).

Major Responsibilities of an Account Manager in an Account Manager Job Description

  • Manage a portfolio of clients
  • Forecast and track client account metrics(budgets, transactions, buying capacities, queries, negotiations)
  • Document knowledge about the clients’ businesses and their business/ product/service interest areas or queries
  • Keep an account of sales among client accounts, including upselling and cross-selling
  • Make sure clients receive requested products and services in a timely fashion
  • Maintain relationship and negotiate contracts and prices in accordance with the overall sales strategy
  • Administer certain sales processes like Orders, Assistance, and Invoicing.
  • Ensure that financial targets are acquired
  • Analyze all existing accounts within the organization
  • Manage conflicts within the organization regarding sales strategies, budgets, and transactions and concluding with effective negotiations whenever required.
  • Maintain good communication and collaboration with the Customer Service and Sales teams.
  • Confirm that client’s tickets are resolved professionally at the earliest  in compliance to the Service
  • Ensure that the set financial targets are achieved.
  • Develop and maintain long-term relationships with accounts
  • Manage projects within client relationships, working to carry out client goals while meeting company goals
  • Identify opportunities to grow business with existing clients
  • Coordinate with staff members working on the same account to ensure consistent service
  • Collaborate with the sales team to reach prospective clients
  • Service multiple clients concurrently and often meeting deadlines

When Recruiting for an Account Manager, Look for the Following Skills

Let us know about the key skills in an Account Manager job description.

  • Communication: Having excellent communication skills, both written and verbal
  • Good negotiator: Having a polite, friendly and diplomatic manner of conduct with customers
  • Good Listener: Ensuring that the other side feels heard and empathized with
  • Adaptability: Having the ability to frame client-focussed conversations with flexibility
  • Service-oriented: Being honest and consistent with clients, catering to customer’s smallest of needs, generating client-focused solutions
  • Detail-oriented and organized: Having the ability to handle client details and manage contacts with meaningful information
  • Fact-based: Asking meaningful and factual questions and bears good logical thinking
  • Handling Finances: Good budgeting skills and the ability to handle finances
  • Proactive: Having the ability to generate ideas and always ready to launch the next task
  • Multitasker: Having the ability to prioritize and handle several ongoing tasks
  • Motivator: Having the ability to motivate to effectively meet deadlines
  • Strategic: Building work strategies to  overcome pressured or stressful situations
  • Proactive: Having the ability to solve problems as they arise
  • Planner: Excellent planning abilities
  • Team player: Having the ability to work independently and as part of a team, promoting collaboration
  • Skillful: Bearing good IT skills
  • Prepared and Fearless: Having the ability to handle tough conversations, any client rejections or utmost cases as such.

Qualifications

An Account Manager must hold a Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration, Sales or a relevant field. But to increase earning potential or acquire an advanced position, a Master’s degree (such as an MBA) is typically preferred.

The knowledge of specific field concepts, practices, and procedures that the company expects you to know while applying for an Account Manager.

Typically, employers prefer the following :

  • Bachelor’s Degree in an appropriate field(Business Management, Communications, Accounting, and Finance or Marketing)
  • Knowledge of related software
  • Proven account management or other relevant experience
  • Digital knowledge

Companies also roll out the need for candidates having prior experience of specific software, as for an instance,

“If you are familiar with account management software (CRM), have a flair for client communication and understand consumer behavior, we’d like to meet you.”

“Solid experience with CRM software (e.g. Salesforce, Pipedrive, Zoho CRM or HubSpot) and MS Office (particularly MS Excel) is required”

The above mentioned specific requirements may vary from one company to the other, but basic preferences remain the same.

Work Conditions

The responsibilities of an Account Manager are majorly office-bound, but they may require to travel sometimes for meetings around important decisions.

An Account Manager adheres to the normal office hours. However, they may be asked to work additionally during intense-work situations or as per the company’s requirements.

Career prospective – Welcoming Further Opportunities

Account Managers are eventually promoted to senior positions, like Vice President of Business Development or Chief Operations Officer (COO). These positions involve working with high-profile clients on a case-by-case basis, but most of their time is spent improving the workflow of their company.

Further, Read Here:

Why Customer Success Matters 

How Sales and Customer Success Work Together

3 Proactive Customer Success Practices To Reduce The Churn 

FAQs

What is an Account Manager job description?

An Account Manager deals particularly in Business to Business(B2B) services. They act as a pivot between the Client and the Sales segment of the organization. An Account Manager ensures that the existing customers do not leave. Overall, Account Management is all about responsiveness, problem-solving efficiency, and relationship-building.

What does an Account Manager do?

Majorly, the Account Manager’s job is customer retention. Their responsibilities include monitoring calls, emails and all customer support approaches made by the Support team. An Account Manager focuses on client success. They handle all customer related issues like cancellation of a contract, contract expiration or renewal.

Moreover, an Account Manager also keeps a record of the rate of revenue growth as well as revenues generated from upsells and cross-sells.

How does an Account Manager differ from Account Executive?

Some companies hire one person for both positions. Other companies use these titles interchangeably. But in the actual terms, Account managers and Account Executives connect with clients to sell their company’s products and services. Whereas account managers work closely with existing clients, Account Executives acquire new clients.

What is a Key Account Manager job description?

An Account Manager focuses on all existing client accounts. But, Key Account Managers focus only on the high-value accounts.

Key Account Managers protect the revenue from and relationships with high-value accounts. Therefore, they take special consideration to protect key customers from the competition. Key account managers invest a significant amount of time into building these relationships. Their vital role is keeping these key accounts happy, and ensuring the service and pricing exceeds customers’ expectations.

Is Account Manager also a Relationship Manager?

An Account Manager handles customer relationships based on sales and services. On the contrary, Relationship Manager focuses on creating additional value for the client company that has nothing to do with sales.

Relationship Managers build a culture of relationships with clients based on trust and value and not only on price. In smaller companies, the Account Manager also plays the dual role of Relationship Manager. But as the company grows, functions become distinct.

What is a Strategic Account Manager?

A strategic account manager builds a relationship with significant customers. They deliver seamless customer service. Primarily, a Strategic Account Manager develops strategies and identifies opportunities to increase sales. Using an efficient CRM to track customer communications can help Strategic Account Managers retain valuable partnerships.

What is a Sales Account Manager?

What a Sales Account Manager should possess are good communication and negotiation skills. Sales Account Managers are the ones responsible for sourcing leads or following up with inbound ones, further bringing the business in. Once a deal has closed, the sales account manager will brief account managers on their new customers’ goals and current status.

Is Account Manager and Customer Success Manager the same?

Primarily, an Account Manager is a billing contact who completes, for example, a renewal transaction. Upon confusion, the Account Manager escalates the potential issue by dropping you to a separate department. This department focuses on resolving any potential issues.

On the other hand, a Customer Success Manager is available year-round and provides hands-on support whenever you run into issues and when you have general questions or want to improve or optimize any tools or processes. They also onboard and train new consumers on the use of new products or services.

Sandy leads the US Sales team at JustCall and he has been integral in growing JustCall’s ARR by 5X while bootstrapped. He is a big believer in using tech to enable sales and is the first person to try out every new feature in the JustCall stack. While he’s not writing high performance email cadences for his team, he dabbles in blogging about Sales Strategy, Sales Tech and Sales Training.

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