EXCELLENT ACCOUNT MANAGEMENT

Case Study

Learning solution:
Management Training

Industry:
Food/drink

Company Profile

In Q3 2019, STL Training engaged with an artisan coffee brand with an enviable reputation as both a newcomer and a disruptor with their dual offering of world class coffee on the high street and onsite roasting facilities for their growing partner network.

They had made a considerable impact on the Food and Beverages industry and their success is built on the people they choose to partner with, as well as the high quality of their unique and award-winning espresso coffee bean mix.

With 6 global locations and as a supplier to over 1000 independent café’s around the world, the brand required a Training Partner who could further enable their team during this period of growth.

Business Requirement

The Coffee Brand chose the Excellent Account Management training module in order to address the following challenges they were experiencing:
• An Increase in the volume of products being sold into their existing customer base
• A need for Improvement in Account Management skills and developing relationships
• To Identify new opportunities in the market and recruit new partners

Recently the Account Manager Team was working on a transactional basis model and was very aware of its ambitions to grow but required a Training Partner to provide direction and develop the team’s skills to be more commercially focused - whilst remaining customer-centric.

The Coffee Brand’s expectation was that STL Training would deliver an insightful, practical day of developing skills in Account Management for both their Account Management and Sales Teams onsite at one of its Café/Roastery outlets bringing together their regional teams for the training day.

Solution

STL worked collaboratively with the company’s key stakeholders to design Excellent Account Management which would address the many issues of increasing units of sales (measured in 1KG units), developing business relationships and the methodology in recruiting new partners into their network.


The bespoke training solutions put in place were to serve the following aspects:
• They had to be of high impact.
• They had to have a practical bias rather than theoretical.
• They had to serve the business needs of the company.
• And they had to be of benefit to those using the tools and techniques demonstrated.

SOLUTION

The solution to Excellent Account Management is to help account managers see and practice what it means to know your customer, know their challenges and to know how and when to help their business grow.

We started by focusing on identifying top accounts and using an account mapping process. Then we progressed into reviewing key contact information, looking at forming and building trusted relationships and becoming more adept in communications.

There was also an emphasis on respect for your customer: knowing also how to challenge when it comes to making business decisions.

Benefits

The outcomes achieved by delivering solutions to Excellent Account Management included:

• The first identifiable benefit was the new sense of confidence the team developed.
• A feeling of an immediate “eureka” moment across the team as they now had a toolkit of practical ideas they could apply immediately in their roles as Account Managers.

Over time, the team:
• worked more efficiently and saw an increase in units sold into their existing accounts.
• implemented a new strategy, post training, of preferential pricing with key customers.
• saw an increase in profitability of their key accounts through initial discounted pricing.
• drew some clear lines and set boundaries in terms responsibilities for those of the sales and of the Account Managers’ Team.

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