article thumbnail

Back to the Future: F2F selling is returning, but virtual selling is here to stay

Strategic Account Management Association

COVID-19 has accelerated a trend already underway toward increased virtual interactions between customers and their suppliers. And we need extensive collaboration with potential suppliers to explore requirements and alternative technologies? As one executive explained, “Buy and sell widgets virtually?

article thumbnail

Turning lemons into lemonade: Five ways to reset on customer management fundamentals in a post-pandemic world

Strategic Account Management Association

In business, it has created an opportunity to reflect on how companies are managing customers, and it has given customers a window of opportunity to re-evaluate their supplier relationships to determine which partnerships are truly valuable. We’re seeing it first hand. The ecosystem: When creating value, think outside your own business.

article thumbnail

The Straightforward Guide to Value Chain Analysis

Hubspot Sales

The team tasked with creating the value chain analysis should brainstorm ways each activity provides value to customers and the business as a whole. This is how materials and resources are gained from suppliers before the final product or service can be developed. It sources suppliers for items like vegetables, meat, and coffee.

article thumbnail

What you Need to Know to Start an Online Retail Business

Hubspot Sales

Contact suppliers. Whether you choose to sell other people’s products or create your own, you’ll still have to work with vendors and suppliers. Perhaps your number one concern is keeping prices low — if that's the case, you will want to find the cheapest supplier of whatever it is that you need.

Retail 124
article thumbnail

25 Problems That Stop Key Account Managers From Doing Their Job

Account Manager Tips

It also includes chapters on how to brainstorm with teams and communicate your findings to convince your audience and get them to take action! I loved this book - it follows a 7-step technique to problem solving and uses a visual system to help you break down and understand all the moving parts. (I

article thumbnail

Here’s How to Keep Clients Interested In Your Proposal

Account Manager Tips

The buyer will get help from a different supplier (i.e. In the context of a deal, you bring your team together (product, sales, marketing etc) for a collaborative session and brainstorm how your going to save the deal. Through a series of conversations, each looks at the problem and how to solve it. not you) to solve the problem.

article thumbnail

Stakeholder Mastery 3.0 – The Six Steps You Must Take

Jermaine Edwards

It’s brainstorming time. They may come from a range of places: customers, their suppliers, your suppliers, managers, senior managers, employees, your immediate team, support functions e.g. What do they actually have to do? You’ll then use this as an internal and external conversation tool to apply to step No.3