Is strategic account management a cornerstone for your company, or do you limit engagement to casual client interactions? Effective account management can leverage detailed sales metrics and sales to existing clients’ networks to drive up to 80% of a business’s total revenue. While not all companies will achieve this impressive result, it highlights the potential revenue growth I want to help you unlock.
In this article, I’ll guide you through the milestones of transforming account management from lackluster to highly effective, drawing on my experience as an account management executive and Wiseboard advisor. Let’s get started.

When you feel stuck in the grind…

Acting as an advisor for companies with around 100 employees and those scaling to 300 or more, I've noticed a persistent problem: business owners often struggle to meet sales goals. The root of this issue often lies in a lack of systematic engagement with existing clients. Instead, management frequently prioritizes KPIs tied to converting leads and acquiring new customers.

Why does this matter?

This misplaced focus highlights dysfunctional account management with senior management drives inbound marketing and outbound sales. Although acquiring new clients brings revenue growth, if existing clients hesitate to initiate new projects, you miss out on built-in opportunities to generate revenue. 

Stagnant relationships with existing customers mean that meeting KPIs for upselling and cross-selling and boosting ROI rely heavily on acquiring new leads.
So, how can you fix this? Balance is the key.

Account managers must sell to existing clients and tap into their network

New clients and existing accounts are equally important: Both are essential and valuable for driving business growth. To efficiently generate revenue from both new leads and existing accounts, we need to balance these two factors:

In my experience, long-term strategies that generate sales to existing clients can yield 80% of a business’s revenue, with the other 20% coming from new clients. The reasons for this ratio include:

Achieving this ratio indicates a sales strategy is balanced with an account management strategy. Let's explore how to achieve this balance.

80/20 Approach: How to balance account management and lead conversion

First, assess where the account management function fits within your company paradigm. Common scenarios include:

1. Business owner with account manager functions:

This might work initially but poses challenges for scaling, maintaining consistent client engagement, expanding service offerings, and managing increasingly complex client relationships.

2. Project manager with account manager functions:

Project managers understand client needs and how to satisfy them, but they prioritize project-specific duties, which are not sales-oriented. This limits their ability to be proactive with upselling and leads to neglect of long-term relationships.

3. Delivery manager with account manager functions:

Similar to project managers, employees in this role face a high risk of conflicting priorities between delivery management and account management responsibilities.

4. Sales development representative (SDR) with account manager functions:

Account management relegated to this role is especially typical for small companies that don’t have many departments or executive units but do have people responsible for lead generation and sales.

In my experience, placing the account management function under the sales umbrella works best, as it helps mitigate the drawbacks seen in the first three scenarios. However, there are special considerations.

Using the following tips, you can efficiently integrate a dedicated account manager into the sales paradigm:

KPIs for the Effective Client Management

"Knowing your customer" has always been considered a touchstone of effective account management. However, like many terms in business, its meaning can seem nebulous and vague. So, let’s examine it in terms of concrete metrics.

When you’re in the process of transforming account management in your company into a systematic function, you must focus on specific goals: