Most Important Skills For An Account Manager At ELREPCO
Aman, an Account Manager at ELREPCO, emphasizes that the most crucial skill is "general people skills," mastering the art of negotiation in numerous interactions. Further success hinges on strong business acumen for prioritization and strategic thinking that considers long-term relationship value, essential in sales cycles spanning "six months, 12 months, 18 months, two years long sometimes".
Communication, Negotiation, Strategic Thinking, Business Acumen, Prioritization
Advizer Information
Name
Job Title
Company
Undergrad
Grad Programs
Majors
Industries
Job Functions
Traits
Aman Sheth
Account Manager
ELREPCO
Purdue University Class of 2019
Currently pursuing MBA at UCLA Anderson
Engineering - Mechanical
Electronics & Semiconductors
Sales and Client Management
Immigrant
Video Highlights
1. Excellent people skills and the ability to navigate human interactions are crucial for account managers, as the role involves numerous negotiations with various parties.
2. Strong business acumen is essential for prioritizing potential customers and understanding their business objectives, allowing for efficient resource allocation.
3. Strategic thinking is key to building long-term relationships with clients and anticipating future needs, especially in sales cycles that can span several months or even years. Tactical thinking alone is insufficient for long-term success.
Transcript
What sort of skills are the most important for an account manager?
I think definitely the number one skill is general people skills. There's no one way to sell; everyone has their own way. But in general, you have to enjoy working with people.
That's a skill that's actually quite scarce. Not a lot of people have the patience and ability to navigate human interactions skillfully. The job is essentially dozens of negotiations with different parties.
It's not just convincing a customer to buy something. It's convincing the legal team to finish your NDA in one week instead of two, because you're trying to meet certain deadlines. Or it's working with business development to get them down to a price that meets the customer's needs.
Everything is a miniature negotiation. So being great with people and understanding how to add value to others is the number one skill.
Other beneficial skills include strong business acumen to understand your customers' business objectives. It's super important to generally understand how much funding a startup has.
You'll want to look up funding on Crunchbase to understand if they're a customer worth spending time on. Being able to prioritize based on business acumen and common sense is also super important.
So I'd say the second skill is prioritization through business acumen. Another skill is to think strategically. It's very easy to be tactical in all your interactions and have transactional relationships.
The key to being a great salesperson is to think strategically. It's not about one interaction, but the value of the relationship as a whole.
Especially in the type of sales I'm doing, where sales cycles are six, 12, 18 months, or even two years long, you need to be able to think about how to place yourself and what moves to make now in anticipation of a deal closing six months or two years in the future. That's probably a third major skill: being able to think strategically.