Top 15 Sales Account Manager Skills for Career Success

This post provides major sales account manager skills and qualities that you can acquire and improve upon to be successful in your sales account career.

To make a successful sales account manager career, there are skills and qualities you have to develop; these will help improve your effectiveness in carrying out the duties and responsibilities of your job.

This post provides major skills and qualities you need to have to get to the top of your sales account manager career:

Who is a Sales Account Manager?

A sales accountant manager is one hired in an organization to keep and manage accurate record of sales, as well as build and maintain the existing relationship between the organization and its customers.

Top 15 Sales Account Manager Skills and Qualities for Career Success

Here are important skills and qualities you need to have to excel in your sales account manager’s career:

1. Business acumen
2. Confidence
3. Service oriented
4. Understanding of sales performance metrics
5. Communication skills
6. Negotiation skills
7. IT knowledge
8. Vast experience in sales related issues
9. Time management
10. Relationship building
11. Organizational/multitasking skills
12. Empathy
13. Passion for the job
14. Listening skills
15. Goal oriented.

1. Business acumen

The goal and aim of every business is to make maximum profit while reducing cost to the barest minimum; that is why the sales account manager must know how business works. It is not a bad idea at all to be a business expert and still work in this capacity.

Sales are directly related to business and not having sufficient business acumen will not help you in your sales account manager career.

So, you just have to keep increasing your business acumen to help you keep up to the latest demand in your job and the business world entirely.

2. Confidence

The beauty of every employee is the confidence radiating all over them in their job.

You should know that your confidence affects your input and your output in your job. Don’t get it twisted; confidence is one of the things you will need in this job.

If people must have confidence in you, then it is important that you show a lot of confidence in your ability to handle your job.

You may not be at the level you desire to be but through hard work and confidence, you will surely get there.

Also, understand that this confidence will be needed if others around you must enjoy working with you.

3. Service oriented

The reason you are hired in the first place is to render services through your job description.

So, it is a reminder of what is expected of you and what you should try hard to accomplish in your job.

You should justify the trust of your employer on you through your keenness to render necessary services.

Two sets of people you will render services to are the hierarchies of the organization, which are your employer and other higher executives in the organization, and also the customers who might have access to you to make enquiries.

These are the two sets of people you will have to give your best to. Why?  Because they will always play a key role in your career, in determining how long you will last in your sales account manager job.

So, you shouldn’t ignore how they feel about you.

4. Understanding of sales performance metrics

This has to do with you understanding the movement of the market.

Sometimes, sales increase, and sometimes sales go below expectation.

It is required that you should be able to know what might be the cause of the market trend.

Frankly speaking, if you are able to detect market trends and why there are irregularities in sales, you will definitely become an important tool through which your organization will achieve its sales target both in the short and long run.

5. Communication skills

This will always pop up as one of the most important skills that is general to most job descriptions. Communication is a basic tool needed to keep in touch with realities within and outside the business organization.

You will need to have good communication skills to be effective in your sales account manager job.

There are people in the organization that need to know the state of the sales department and because of that you must make communication your thing.

You are expected to be fluent enough in your oral communication as well as clear enough in your written communication.

You shouldn’t be lacking in any of these aspects of communication else it can be a fault that you wouldn’t be proud of in your job.

6. Negotiation skills

Who doesn’t know that customers are capable of negotiating deals to favor them most times without thinking of how it will affect the operations of the organization they are patronizing.

This is because an average customer is interested in his/her gains, nothing more nothing less.

So, it is your duty as a sales account manager to negotiate deals which will not only be in the interest of the organization but also in the interest of the customers.

This is because customers remain the external driving force of the organization. So if they are happy it will tell positively in the sales of the organization.

You have to find a common ground to keep the customers happy as well as maintaining the sales target or goal of the organization.

7. IT knowledge

The sales account manager’s job becomes easier if you can only harness the benefits associated with the use of latest sales technologies to help boost the sales of your company.

This requires first the understanding of what technology can bring to your job.

It is not out of place first to learn some software tools that are necessary in the sales account job, such as the Microsoft Excel software.

This software is a powerful tool for you to have alongside the Microsoft Access.

In fact, you should get acquainted with all software packages in the Microsoft Suite.

Lay your hands on these all-important software tools, make use of them and also try to be up to date with the operations of the internet to help you work in the aspect of marketing and advertising the products your company can offer to the world.

8. Vast experience in sales related issues

You see, experience matters a lot in every job, no matter the industry one is in; experience gives you a huge advantage over your competitor.

That is why most employers go for people with minimum of 5 years working experience when hiring for the sales account manager position.

Experience helps employers save time. They don’t have to train or retrain staff from the scratch.

They also don’t have to endure mistakes by young inexperienced employees.

That is why you will need vast experience in sales related issues to be considered for the sales account manager job in the long run and build a successful career.

Experience may not come from working in a well-known or established company.

It could involve your marketing or advertising skills in a smaller organization that could lay the basic foundation for your career.

9. Time management

No employer wants an employee with a track record of laziness and procrastination with work.

This may not be detected in your resume because no one can include laziness and procrastination in their resume.

But this is bound to show up in the long run if it is inherent in you.

That is why you must learn to deal with those negative attributes for you to be able to manage your time in the organization.

No matter the kind of job you do, time management is a key factor for remaining in your job.

Time is everything to an entrepreneur, executive, and employer.

It matters because things are moving at a fast pace that only people who can manage time well can comfortably match the speed in the business world.

10. Relationship building

Building relationships in the organization and outside the organization is one thing you must learn to do as a sales account manager.

Relationship is one of the factors that determine how far people can go in business particularly.

Building a relationship starts with you understanding that the business is not all about you, neither can you operate on a full throttle except you engage the help and advice of other people in your job.

Building relationships with people in and outside the organization will demand that you are open-minded to what their opinions are about you and your job.

You know that virtually everyone wants to have their opinion heard. So, you have to make that room large enough.

11. Organizational/multitasking skills

The sales account manager of every organization does not have just one role to fill in. The job goes beyond managing the sales account of the organization.

It stretches to your ability to be an advertiser, a coach, and a representative of the organization.

That is why you should be able to handle different tasks in the organization and to some extents involved in some happenings in the marketplace.

You will need a good multitasking skill to be able to flourish in the role of a sales account manager.

You don’t have to be lazy or disinterested in other roles that may not be your direct or primary job.

Everything adds up to your value in the organization.

You could be involved in the online advertising process too to make things to keep moving in the organization.

12. Empathy

Empathy is your ability to understand how other people feel in a given situation.

It is most importantly directed towards the customers and the people working with you in this job.

Understand that there may be reasons for customers to be unhappy about the products of the company.

What you should do if approached by any customer to narrate the cause of their dissatisfaction, the first thing to do is to apologize to the customer and ensure that you convince them that such experience will not occur again.

And also, you should be able to empathize with the people working with you, or simply put your team members.

They are human beings and can find some discomfort doing their job.

They should be able to approach and explain their difficulties with the hope that you can help them through their struggles.

13. Passion for the job

Do you know that most successes people have experienced in their job is not majorly down to their salary but down to their passion for the job?

Sometimes, the joy and the happiness one derives in doing a job can be the reason such a person excels in their job.

This applies to you completely.

If you don’t have passion for the sales account manager job, you will find a million reasons to complain about the nature and stress of the job.

It is your passion that will keep you longer in your sales account manager career.

Your passion in your job will help you build confidence as well as creativity.

This is because, when you are interested in your job, you find more ways to be productive and make it fun to carry out your duties.

14. Listening skills

One of the things that can help you build a healthy relationship with customers is active listening skills.

Customers are so much endeared to people who give them full attention during discussions or complaints.

They want to be assured that you are interested in what they have to say.

So, this is one skill you should employ in your relationship with customers.

It will help the customers believe that they are being considered as the major pillars of the organization and this notion will help them stay put and contribute to the growth of the organization.

But, if you are not giving the customers a listening ear, they will safely assume that the organization does not have their interest at heart and this may be the reason your organization may lose them to your competitors.

15. Goal oriented

Wake up every morning and remind yourself why you are in the sales account job in the first place.

There are possibly two reasons why you are in the job. The first is to help the organization achieve its short and long term goals, and second is to also achieve your personal goals in relationship to your job.

Either way, bear it in mind that there is a reason or reasons you have the job, and until you achieve those goals, you should not rest on your laurels.

Don’t just give up on yourself and the organization.

Press forward despite the challenges associated with the job and make every day of your life in that organization count.

Be committed to the course of the organization and help it beat off competition from its rivals.

Competition is real and in the business world, it is the survival of the fittest.

Sales Account Manager Skills for Resume

If you are writing a resume or CV for a sales account manager position, you can create an effective Skills Section for the resume by applying some of skills and qualities provided above.

These are the skills and qualities recruiters/employers usually want candidates to have to be effective in carrying out the duties and responsibilities of the sales account manager role.

Therefore, if you have them, it will boost your resume/CV if you highlight them in the Skills Section to assure the recruiter/employer that you will be successful performing the sales account manager job in their company.

Conclusion

This post has provided some of the important skills and qualities you need to have to build a successful career as a sales account manager.