How ‘in tune’ are you with the qualities, traits and characteristics that make up your personality?
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?
In this episode, we take a dive into an important topic in the world of building customer relationships: how well do you adapt your communication style with different customers?
I am going to challenge you to consider, for a moment, that rather than thinking of yourself as a classically labelled sales person… what if you were called a sales practitioner. In that vein…you could say: rather than being an account manager you were an account management practitioner.
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.
Think of this episode as a moment to pause, reflect and decide how you will practice this imperative skill of shaping your communications style and personality preferences to elevate your results with your most important customers.
This is a full episode in 30mins of pure notable and actionable takeaways – so get your pen and pad out (and be sure to look at the full show notes on the website - as I couldn't put all the graphics in here for you).
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:
Consider updating Glengarry Glen Ross’ ABC - Always Be Closing, to a more modern KAM- related ABC of:
Analyse how the customer thinks and works
Build a bridge to their world and
Communicate in their language not yours
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.
I hope you enjoy listening to this episode, do let me know what you have taken away from it and keep your request for topics and episode themes coming in!
Here at KAMGuru, some of the work we do with individuals and teams means that we need to do a little “uncovering” to dig into people’s strengths or blind spots. This is particularly useful when supporting teams to honestly evaluate their team and work towards a KAMCulture of inclusiveness and diversity of thinking and in value creation for customers.
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)
You might notice that I keep mentioning ‘blind spots’ and not ‘weaknesses’. The reality is that we are all capable of dialling up or dialling down our different psychological energies and therefore it is important to recognise any ‘low preference’ as a choice and not a weakness.
Many of the tools on the market will use a typical 4-colour model as the foundation to build on and, for ease of explanation and exploration of the topic, in this episode I walk you through the Lumina Sparks Model, which we often use with our clients.
In the episode I talk about the 4 energies of the model and how to recognise the traits of these energies in others and what that means in terms of how you relate to them. I also walk through how your customer’s buying needs may also vary when looking through the lens of the 4-colours. I have also provided some visuals below for you demonstrate these.
In the full shownotes on the website (kamguru.com/podcast/episode-24/) - I have included graphics that demonstrate what I talk about in this episode - so be sure to check those out.