Selling to Major Accounts: Tools, Techniques, and Practical Solutions for the Sales Manager

by Terry R. Bacon

In most businesses, 80% of the revenue comes from 20% of the customers. Management of these key accounts demands discipline, direction, and purpose. Account managers and salespeople must be able to identify and capture key opportunities and use a systematic approach to growing the accounts. Here's where they'll find the powerful tools, processes, and techniques to succeed. Selling to Major Accounts is full of practical, proven approaches to account management. Loaded with examples, tables, charts, checklists, and real-life case studies from the author's vast consulting experience, it shows how * identify the major accounts with the greatest potential * progress from vendor to strategic ally * craft account plans that are geared for action * manage the customer relationship for greater results * develop winning account strategies.

Genres: Business

322 pages, Hardcover

First published June 1, 1999

About the author

Terry R. Bacon is a poet, playwright, and award-winning author of more than a dozen books, including The Elements of Power, Elements of Influence, What People Want, Selling to Major Accounts, and Effective People Skills. He is the co-author of The Shipley Associates Style Guide, Winning Behavior, The Behavioral Advantage, Writing Winning Proposals, and Adaptive Coaching. He wrote most of these books for Lore International Institute, an executive-development consultancy he co-founded and led as President and CEO. He later sold that firm to Korn/Ferry International and has since retired. Executive Excellence magazine named him one of the Top 100 Thinkers on Leadership in the World.

He has a Ph.D. in Literary Studies from the American University and a B.S. in Engineering from the United States Military Academy at West Point (Go Army!) and has studied leadership and management at Stanford University, the University of Chicago, the University of Pennsylvania, and Harvard University. In his working life, he developed dozens of educational programs, software, assessment tools, and simulations. He delivered educational programs to thousands of professionals and executives worldwide. Since retiring, he created a widely used website on power and influence (www.powerandinfluence.online), through which he offers online assessments of individuals’ sources of power (Power Sources Self-Assessment) and their effective use of common influence techniques (Influence Effectiveness Self-Assessment).

He has served on the boards of a number of non-profits in his hometown, including the Women’s Resource Center, Durango Steam Park, Music in the Mountains (chairman for two years), and Friends of the Fort Lewis College Theatre. He is past chair of the Fort Lewis College Foundation and currently serves on its governance and investment committees. He is also a co-founder of Durango PlayFest (a playwriting festival focused on new plays) and is currently chair of its program committee, which selects the plays to be presented each summer. The Leadership Center at Fort Lewis College is named in his honor.

A world traveler, he resides in the mountains of Colorado. He studies history and cosmology when he is not working on another writing project. Storm Warning in his first novel and the first in a series of Sonny Marshall thrillers. He has completed another novel, The Cerulean Ark, which will be published in the winter of 2023/2024.

He is married to Debra Parmenter. Together, they have three children and eleven grandchildren. He remembers everyone’s birthday but struggles to recall just how old they are.