Global Account Management
Global account managers need to manage a complex relationship between a supplier and a customer. Global account managers tend initially to focus on managing the complexity of the customer to ensure ongoing sales and maintaining service standards, however the challenges of managing their own internal complexity to deliver a seamless service to the customer can be even more difficult for global account managers and their team members.
Traditional sales and service skills remain important in global account teams but a new level of skills are required to operate in this more complex world.
- The ability to bridge corporate and functional cultural differences. Global account teams need to be flexible to cultural differences between the organizations (corporate culture) as well as national and functional differences with their own organizations and the customer organization. It can become a complex mix.
- The ability to mobilize virtual teams. Global account teams often need to mobilize resources that they do not directly control – they have to put together bid teams or teams to solve a particular client problem. These virtual teams can include personnel form customers, supplier and other third party sources – and they are usually urgent.
- Complex organization structures – large suppliers and their global account customers often operate complex, matrixed organization structures where competing priorities and unclear accountabilities can get in the way of decision making – this can introduce cost and delay. Knowing how to navigate these complexities gives global account teams a competitive advantage.
- Building trust. People buy from people they trust, and global account teams need to build trust across boundaries of distance, cultures, timezones and through technology. This requires new skills in global account teams. In the absence of trust, it is hard to maintain any form of relationship and customers tend to begin to micromanage their suppliers. Once into this spiral of control and distrust it is very hard to rescue the account.
- Speed – global account teams need to deliver fast, we specialise in speeding up delivery and reducing costs.
- Managing global accounts with limited travel. In tough times even client travel needs to be prioritized, we help global account teams manage a relationship even when the opportunity to get face to face is limited.
Global Integration works with global account teams to build these skills and brings practical tools from our experiences with many of the world’s best managed organizations.
Listen to our global account management podcast
Read our blog posts about global accounts
Request a copy of our pdf document with an outline of these ideas and a skills needs analysis questionnaire
