Are you making these mistakes? I share five things every account manager needs to stop doing immediately and what to do instead.

NUMBER ONE on the list of mistakes account managers make is to stop giving it away. Stop discounting. Have the confidence that the solution you're providing, the service that you're giving and the impact that you're making is worth the price you're pitching at. Simple as that. Now if you do need to start to negotiate on price, make sure that you get some concessions. It needs to be a negotiation.

There's lots of different ways that you can make concessions, make the contract still profitable, protect your margins and still you know, offer your clients some concessions around pricing. So think about that. Never just be a oneway , "yeah sure I'll drop my pricing."

NUMBER TWO on the list of mistakes account managers make is modifying your terms. It becomes so complex if you have client by client, different KPIs, different SLAs, different terms, different termination agreements, different rollover agreements, different penalties and clauses. It becomes a minefield and actually really impossible for you to manage effectively the contracts.

Where possible, ensure you have standard and consistent terms across all of your client agreements. If you must modify them, make sure you're clear on those you do not touch. Things like liability, like term and termination. You want to make sure that they're there and lots of other things as well. Talk to your legal team obviously but make sure that you're clear that contracts are there for reason and need to be as standard as possible.

NUMBER THREE on the list of mistakes account managers make is modifying your invoicing terms, right? Make sure that if your invoicing terms are +14 +30 +45 or whatever they might be, make sure they're standard and you don't compromise those. It becomes a nightmare for your accounts receivable team, for your cashflow, for all sorts of things that can be impacted by modifying invoice terms.

NUMBER FOUR on the list of mistakes account managers make is giving your clients multiple equally viable options and then letting them decide.

Why?

Because that eliminates you as the expert. All you're doing is presenting them a smorgasbord of options and then saying, "You pick." You're deferring your expertise to them, right? So what you should be doing is having a very clear point of view. Give them two options along with a recommendation. And that's it.

So stop the multiple options. It might seem like, you know, you're being very flexible and very amenable and making their life easier, but what you're in fact doing is undermining your own expertise and kind of removing you as somebody that's integral to the decision of what choice they're going to make. Okay. Simple.

NUMBER FIVE on list of mistakes account managers make. More of a difficult one, but stop letting your clients figure out all the problems for themselves and just come to you for the boring transactional stuff. You want to be part of the problem discovery.

You want to go to them with things that they haven't considered themselves because that is again reaffirming your expertise, making you an integral part of their decision making cycle and their business processes rather than them figuring that all out for themselves and then just barking orders at you.

SUMMARY
1) Don't discount if you do. See what you can get in return for doing that.
2) Don't muck around with your terms. They're there for a reason. Consistency is going to help your manage your clients so much better.
3) Don't mess around with your invoicing, you'll cause so many problems for accounts receivable and yourself and potentially, you know, lose cash along the way.
4) Don't present to your client multiple options and let them decide because you're the expert. So have a point of view and get them the options one or two and then make your recommendations.
5) Don't let your client figure it all out for themselves. Muscle on that problem solving action and make sure they're clear that your part of this process as well, not just the person that runs reports and sorts out issues and that they can just crack the whip and bark the orders at.

Okay? What'd I miss? Let me know in the comments.



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