By Noel Capon and Gus Maikish
This blog is an excerpt from an article in the Fall 2022 issue of Velocity Magazine.
In our book, Customers Win, Suppliers Win: Lessons from One of IBM’s Most Successful Strategic Account Managers, we share and analyze enduring best practices and principles of account and customer success management. We do so from our respective career perspectives as a researcher, teacher, and consultant (Noel) and an expert practitioner (Gus). Although account management has received significant attention — and is the rationale behind the growth of the Strategic Account Management Association (SAMA) — because of its obvious importance, our book takes a different tack by trying to understand what made one highly accomplished account manager consistently successful across more than three decades of change in technology, business trends, and boom and bust in the wider economy. What emerged were six skill sets, or acumens, that made this success possible. We believe our Acumen Sextet captures what account managers must master to do right by their own firms and their customers.
Strategic acumen
See the big picture for both the firm and the customer; engage in high-level resource-allocation decisions — for the firm and the customer — for both long- and short-term objectives. Strategic acumen requires a deep understanding of both organizations.
Continue reading “The Acumen Sextet: An Evergreen Framework for Account Management and Customer Success”