Account Management Fundamentals

Explore what buyers need, how retailers make money and how to communicate the value of your recommendations. You’ll develop practical skills to ask better questions, lead productive meetings and approach customer conversations with greater confidence. 

This course is for you if you’re: 

• Preparing for or relatively new to an account management or sales role 

• Working with customers and looking to strengthen your commercial foundations 

• A category manager or another commercial professional wanting to understand account management and work more effectively with sales teams 

No previous account management training is needed.

Successful account management starts with understanding your customer’s priorities and showing how you can help. 

This course helps you connect customer needs with commercial opportunities, so you can move beyond talking about products to building proposals that create value for both businesses. 

Discover the foundations of effective account management, from understanding the buyer’s role to preparing and delivering a compelling proposal. 

Explore customer priorities, commercial fundamentals and opportunity identification alongside the questioning, listening and selling skills that help you build stronger relationships. 

• Understand the roles of account managers and buyers, including their expectations and challenges 

• Use questioning and active listening to uncover customer needs 

• Translate product features into benefits that matter to your customer 

• Calculate gross and net margin and understand how retailers make money 

• Identify and assess short- and long-term commercial opportunities 

• Structure and deliver proposals around your audience’s priorities 

• Prepare, manage and follow up customer meetings with clear objectives and next steps 

Build your skills through practical commercial examples and opportunities to practise, including delivering a proposal. Connect the learning to your own customer conversations and identify improvements you can put into action. 

Use Fundamentals as a standalone grounding in account management or as the starting point for your full development journey. 

To complete the full account management journey, take Account Management Fundamentals followed by Advanced Account Management, building on your foundations to develop deeper commercial capability.