Account management is the strategic, post-sales process of nurturing relationships with existing clients to ensure their continued business and satisfaction. It involves deeply understanding a client's needs, acting as their advocate within the company, and proactively offering solutions to help them meet their objectives. This focus on building long-term, trusting relationships ultimately drives customer retention, loyalty, and revenue growth.
Account managers serve as the primary point of contact for clients, ensuring their needs are met and their relationship with the company remains strong. Their role is a blend of customer service, strategic planning, and sales, all aimed at fostering long-term loyalty and growth.
Effective account management hinges on a set of core principles that build trust and drive mutual success. By adopting these best practices, account managers can transform client relationships into strategic partnerships, ensuring long-term value for both sides.
While both roles are crucial for revenue, they focus on different stages of the customer lifecycle.
Modern account managers rely on a suite of digital tools to manage relationships and streamline their workflow. This technology helps them track interactions, collaborate with internal teams, and deliver exceptional client service.
A career in account management often begins with roles like account coordinator or junior account manager. Professionals also transition from sales positions like account executive after mastering client acquisition. These roles build a strong foundation in managing client relationships and supporting senior staff.
Advancement can lead to senior or key account manager positions focused on high-value clients. Experienced professionals may also move into leadership roles. This includes becoming a Director of Account Management or VP of Client Success.
How is success measured in account management?
Success is measured by client retention rates, customer satisfaction scores (like NPS), and revenue growth from upselling or cross-selling. The primary focus is on nurturing long-term value and partnership, not just single transactions.
What’s the difference between account management and customer success?
Account management is often more commercially focused, handling renewals, upselling, and the overall financial health of the account. Customer success centers on ensuring clients achieve their desired outcomes with the product, which in turn drives retention.
Can a small business benefit from account management?
Absolutely. While a dedicated role may not be feasible, applying account management principles helps any business retain its most valuable customers. It ensures key clients feel valued, leading to stable revenue and powerful word-of-mouth referrals.
Escalations are the process of moving a customer issue or sales opportunity to a more senior or specialized team member for resolution.
Feature flags let you remotely control features in your app without new code. This enables safe testing, gradual rollouts, and quick rollbacks.
A custom API integration is a bespoke connection between software, enabling them to communicate and share data to meet unique business requirements.
Customer churn rate is the percentage of subscribers or customers who cancel their service with a company during a given time frame.
Inventory management is the process of ordering, storing, and using a company's inventory, from raw materials to finished goods.
Learn about business process management, including benefits of implementing BPM, steps to effective BPM, common BPM mistakes to avoid, & BPM tools and software.
A sales strategy is a comprehensive plan that outlines how a business will sell its products or services to achieve its revenue goals.
Sales performance metrics are key data points that measure a sales team's effectiveness in achieving its goals and driving revenue.
A demand generation framework is a strategic process for creating awareness and interest in your product, ultimately driving new business.
Learn about B2B demand generation, including strategies for effective B2B demand generation, & key components of a demand generation program.
Phishing attacks are fraudulent attempts to trick you into revealing sensitive data like passwords or financial info by posing as a trusted source.
Funnel optimization is the process of improving each stage of the customer journey to maximize conversions and drive revenue growth.
An Account Development Representative (ADR) identifies and qualifies new business opportunities, creating a pipeline for account executives.
Learn about brag book, including crafting your outstanding brag book, essential components of a brag book, & brag book vs. resume: unveiling the differences.
A Search Engine Results Page (SERP) is the page displayed by a search engine after a user enters a query, listing results ranked by relevance.
A headless CMS is a back-end content repository that delivers content via API to any front-end, decoupling the content from its presentation layer.
Referral marketing is a strategy that incentivizes existing customers to recommend a company's products or services to their personal network.
Sales Performance Management (SPM) is a suite of tools and processes that help businesses monitor, analyze, and boost sales team performance.
Customer relationship marketing is a strategy for building lasting connections with customers to foster long-term loyalty and engagement.
Data enrichment is the process of enhancing raw data by adding missing information from other sources, making it more complete and actionable.
Sales objections are reasons or concerns raised by a potential customer as to why they are hesitant or unwilling to make a purchase.
Learn about buyer, including identifying your ideal buyer, understanding buyer's journey, & evaluating buyer decision processes.
Microservices is an architecture where apps are built as a collection of small, independent services that communicate with each other over APIs.
Email engagement measures how your audience interacts with your emails. It includes key actions like opens, clicks, replies, and forwards.
No Forms is a method for capturing lead data directly from your website visitors' profiles without requiring them to fill out any forms.
SQL (Structured Query Language) is the standard language for managing and querying data within relational databases.
CPQ (Configure, Price, Quote) software is a sales tool for creating accurate, configurable quotes for complex products and services.
A hybrid sales model blends traditional and digital sales methods to engage customers across multiple channels and buying preferences.
MOFU, or Middle of the Funnel, is the crucial evaluation stage in the buyer's journey where leads compare solutions to their known problem.
A digital strategy outlines how your business will use online channels, data, and technology to achieve its goals and connect with customers.
Learn about B2B marketing attribution, including challenges in B2B marketing attribution, & key metrics for effective attribution.
A product champion is an internal evangelist who drives a product's adoption and success by ensuring it solves real problems for their team.
A commission is a service charge paid to an agent for a transaction. It's typically a percentage of the sale, rewarding performance directly.
Sales enablement technology refers to software and tools that equip sales teams with the resources they need to close more deals efficiently.
The Challenger Sales Model is a sales approach where reps challenge a customer's thinking by teaching, tailoring, and taking control of the sale.
Pipeline management is the process of tracking and managing potential customers as they move through the different stages of your sales process.
Learn about batch processing, including benefits of batch processing, best practices for implementation, & common use cases.
Sales automation uses software to streamline and automate repetitive, manual sales tasks, freeing up reps to focus on selling.
A channel partner is a company that works with a manufacturer or producer to market and sell their products, software, or services to customers.
A freemium model offers a product's basic features for free, enticing users to upgrade to a paid version for more advanced capabilities.
A closed question is a type of query that elicits a simple, often one-word answer like 'yes' or 'no,' or a specific, factual response.
CRM integration connects your CRM software with other tools, creating a unified system for all your customer data and business processes.
Email deliverability is the ability for your emails to successfully land in your recipients' inboxes instead of their spam folders.
Learn about bounce rate, including understanding bounce rate implications, key factors affecting bounce rate, & reducing your bounce rate effectively.
Deal flow refers to the stream of business proposals and investment opportunities that a company or investor receives.
Economic Order Quantity (EOQ) is the ideal order quantity a company should purchase to minimize its total inventory-related costs.
X-Sell, or cross-selling, is a sales strategy of selling additional, related products or services to an existing customer base.
Webhooks are automated messages sent by an app when a specific event occurs. They push real-time data to another app's unique URL.
Content syndication is the process of republishing your web content on third-party sites to reach a much wider audience.
Expansion revenue is the extra money a business makes from its current customers via upgrades, new products, or additional services.
An Application Programming Interface (API) is a set of rules that lets different software applications talk to each other and share information.
Serviceable Available Market (SAM) is the segment of the total market that your business can realistically serve within its geographical reach.
A Value-Added Reseller (VAR) is a company that adds features or services to an existing product, then resells it as an integrated solution.
CRM analytics is the process of analyzing data from your CRM to uncover insights that help you better understand and serve your customers.
Personalization in sales means tailoring outreach to a prospect's specific needs, interests, and context to make communication more relevant.
Net 30 is a common payment term where a client has 30 calendar days from the invoice date to pay for goods or services in full.
A draw on commission is an advance payment a salesperson receives against future earnings, which is later repaid from earned commissions.
Data encryption translates data into another form, or code, so that only people with access to a secret key or password can read it.
Incident response is an organization's systematic approach to managing and mitigating the aftermath of a security breach or cyberattack.
Learn about browser compatibility, including understanding the importance, common challenges, best practices, & tools for testing.
Conversion rate is the percentage of visitors who complete a desired goal, like a purchase or sign-up, out of the total number of visitors.
Learn about brand awareness, including understanding its importance, building an effective strategy, key metrics to track, & examples in the real world.
Learn about brand equity, including understanding its importance, building strong brand equity, measuring brand equity, & real-world applications.
Software as a Service (SaaS) is a cloud-based model where users subscribe to an application and access it over the internet.
User-generated content (UGC) refers to any form of content, like images, videos, or text, created and shared by users on online platforms.
Intent data tracks a user's online behavior—like searches and site visits—to identify signals that they are ready to make a purchase.
Workflow automation uses rule-based logic to run a sequence of tasks that would otherwise require manual human effort to complete.
A follow-up is a communication sent after an initial interaction to continue the conversation, provide more value, or prompt a response.
Sales enablement content refers to the materials and tools that empower your sales team to engage prospects and close deals more efficiently.
Sales prospecting techniques are methods used by sales teams to identify, contact, and qualify potential customers, also known as prospects.
Sender Policy Framework (SPF) is an email authentication method that lets you specify which mail servers can send emails on behalf of your domain.
Customer Retention Cost (CRC) is the total amount a company spends to keep an existing customer over a certain period of time.
An elevator pitch is a short, memorable summary of what you do, designed to be delivered in the time it takes to ride an elevator.
A value chain is the series of business activities required to create and deliver a product or service, from conception to the final customer.
Inbound sales attracts interested prospects who've engaged with your brand, letting sales reps connect with warm leads instead of cold outreach.
Process automation uses technology to execute recurring tasks or processes, replacing manual effort to cut costs and boost efficiency.
Learn about business intelligence in marketing, including the role of data in marketing BI, key components of marketing BI, & marketing BI vs. market research.
Lightning Components is a UI framework for building dynamic web apps for mobile and desktop devices on the Salesforce Lightning Platform.
A/B testing is a method of comparing two versions of something, like a webpage or email, to determine which one performs better with your audience.
A nurture campaign is a series of automated messages designed to build relationships with potential customers and guide them toward a purchase.
A data pipeline is a set of automated processes that move raw data from various sources to a destination for storage and analysis.
An inside sales rep sells products or services remotely from an office, using digital tools like phone and email to connect with customers.
Event marketing is a strategy where brands engage directly with target audiences through live events like trade shows, conferences, or webinars.
A triggered email is an automated message sent to a user in response to a specific action or event, like signing up or making a purchase.
A landing page is a standalone web page created for a marketing campaign. It’s where a visitor “lands” after clicking an ad or email link.
Touches are the individual interactions you have with a prospect throughout the sales process, from emails and calls to social media messages.
Sales operations analytics is the practice of analyzing sales data to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the entire sales process.
Performance monitoring involves collecting and analyzing data to track a system's operational health and efficiency, ensuring it meets set standards.
Agile methodology is an iterative approach to project management and software development, focusing on delivering value in small, incremental steps.
SFDC stands for Salesforce Dot Com, a popular cloud-based CRM platform that helps companies manage their customer interactions and data.
An account is a company or organization that you're targeting for sales. It can be a prospective, current, or even a past customer.
Learn about B2B sales, including key strategies for B2B success, types of B2B sales models, & B2B vs. B2C sales: understanding the differences.
A persona is a semi-fictional profile of your ideal customer, based on market research and real data about your existing customers.
Regression testing ensures that new code changes don’t negatively impact existing features. It's a key step to maintain software quality after updates.
Cloud storage is a service model where data is stored on remote servers and accessed from the internet, rather than on a local drive.
Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are measurable values that demonstrate how effectively a company is achieving its key business objectives.
A trusted advisor is an expert who builds a deep client relationship by consistently prioritizing their best interests over any single transaction.
Lead scraping is the process of automatically extracting contact information and other relevant data about potential customers from online sources.
The Challenger Sales model is a methodology where reps teach prospects, tailor their pitch, and take control of the sales conversation.
Data warehousing is the process of storing and managing large sets of data from various sources for business intelligence and reporting purposes.