How does your personality affect the results you have with your key account relationships?

If you are in tune with who YOU are, let me ask: how well can you read other people?

Do you use your knowledge and reflection to change the way you behave to better your chances of success? Or…do you act the same in every interaction you have with your customer contacts?

How does that sit with you? Can you see how the change in language brings a change in focus?

To be a practitioner, you must continue to practice. To practice indicates that growth, development and improvement is always possible and we cannot sit back and assume that perfection has been attained.

To be an effective Key Account Manager in today’s world means more than simply being a well-trained salesperson, adept with the skills to win more business and sustain relationships.

Whether you are a ‘hunter’ or, as with many Key Account Managers, a ‘farmer’, the playing field has changed, and we now work in an environment where it is less about ‘how you sell’ and more about ‘why the customer buys’

Some of the topics I share and discuss my views on in this episode cover:

Evolving old ABC to new ABC Consider updating Glengarry Glen Ross’ ABC - Always Be Closing, to a more modern KAM-related ABC of:

Analyse how the customer thinks and works

  • The impact your FILTERS have on your brain’s processing of information (Through our five senses, the human body sends 11 million bits of information per second to the brain for processing, yet the conscious mind seems to be able to process only 50 bits per second!
  • An account manager’s true roles is to influence with integrity and support the customer to CHOOSE the right solution for them.
  • Using a psychometric tool to help you to assess and analyse how you “show up” (consciously / unconsciously) - does not give you a ‘free pass’ to behave in ‘stereotype’. Rather, they are designed to help you to (honestly) assess yourself and design your own results through adaptation and flexibility. (I share more below about how we use the Lumina Spark Model we use with clients here at Front&Centre® - scroll down).
  • If Key Account Management was a little like speed dating, we would need to get pretty good at speed reading someone else’s personality if we are to stand a chance at ensuring we communicate and behave in a way that best suits them.
  • Reviewing the Visual, Auditory, Kinaesthetic (VAK) model for understanding preferences, on the context of KAM
  • Walk through the three types of buyer needs (and how these can vary when looking through the lens of the 4-colour energies of the Lumina Sparks Model

In essence what I reiterate in this episode, is that we all live in the same territory, but we all have a different map of the world. I’m sure you will agree that, in order to succeed in KAM, we must get better at really understanding the perception filters of our clients to identify their beliefs and fixed positions. To truly become aware of the customer, we must first become aware of ourselves. We must work at becoming a KAMeleon and learn how to dial up, or down, your different energies to enhance rapport and communicate in the customers language.

Looking at our individual personality traits using, what is known as ‘Big 5’ research. This helps us to understand our effective qualities and how these play out in the interactions we have with others. (It will also help us to identify where our less dominant ‘blind spots’ are and help us to consider what changes we may like to make when interacting with our psychological opposites)