How many of your accounts take advantage of your full suite of products and services? How much more could you be selling to your existing accounts? 10%? 20%? 50%? More? What effect would that have on your bottom line? Growing existing accounts is a huge, untapped opportunity. In our research, we found that high performers in strategic account management have significantly higher revenue growth, profit growth, and client satisfaction compared to the rest. In 5 Keys to Maximizing Sales in Existing Accounts, RAIN Group Presidents Mike Schultz and John Doerr share what high performers do differently than the rest and 5 of the key areas where most companies have significant room for improvement. Download 5 Keys to Maximizing Sales with Existing Accounts Now.        

One of the biggest untapped opportunities to increasing sales and profit is growing your existing accounts. Consider: Retaining current customers is 6 to 7 times less costly than acquiring new ones (Source: Bain & Company) Repeat customers, on average, spend 67% more (Source: Bain & Company) 60% of companies believe they should be generating 25% or more revenue from strategic accounts (Source: RAIN Group) The question is not if you should be selling more to your accounts, it's how should you do it. Here are 6 tips to get you started.      

In our 5 Keys to Maximizing Sales with Existing Accounts report, we shared the ways in which high performers outdo the rest to grow their accounts and achieve their financial goals. At the top of the list? Providing value. The more value you provide your accounts, the more willing they'll be to buy, keep buying, and expand their relationship with you. Click here to watch the complimentary webinar now.      

75% of B2B buyers use social media to make decisions according to IDC research. Sellers who use social selling are 51% more likely to exceed quota1, and 89.9% of top sellers view LinkedIn as essential2. It's still the case, however, that many sellers are just getting started with LinkedIn. Mostly it seems they don't know what to do. Here are 15 ideas for spending 15 minutes a day selling with LinkedIn. I challenge you to do this for at least 15 days in the next month. After the 15 days you'll have a good sense of whether LinkedIn should be a part of your selling routine.      

Companies take lots of actions to grow accounts. Some work better than others. However, none of them work very well if you don't take care of one important action up front. We at RAIN Group studied more than 370 companies that engage in formal strategic account management, and published the results in the Benchmark Report on High Performance in Strategic Account Management. We asked: What ACTIONS do you believe contribute most to your efforts to maximize revenue from accounts? We then split the results into 2 groups: high performers and below-average/average performers in SAM. Here's what the high performers do to maximize revenue at their accounts.      

When it comes to growing accounts, challenges abound. In our Benchmark Report on High Performance in Strategic Account Management, we asked: Consider the challenges your company faces in strategic account management. For each factor indicate how challenging it is to your company's SAM efforts. Here are the results.      

Years ago, I was working for a company that had just made the decision to go public. After a lengthy deliberation, the company chose a particular big-five firm (at the time there were five) to handle the preparations for our public offering. Curious, I asked the chief financial officer how he made the decision. He invited me to his office and showed me a chart of all the qualifications and decision criteria and how each firm stacked up. It was obvious there was a clear winner. Then he asked me if I wanted to know how he had really made the decision. Of course, I said yes. He said, "Close the door." Intriguing...      

Retaining current customers costs 6-7x less than acquiring news ones, and improving customer retention rates by a mere 5% can increase profit per customer by 25%-95%. So it makes sense that top companies focus on building relationships, increasing loyalty, and selling more to current customers as a growth strategy. Based on our extensive research in strategic account management, we've identified 10 steps you can take to replicate their successes. View the infographic now.      

"It was like a phantom swooped in in the eleventh hour and killed the sale." We've all been there...You had a series of great meetings. You built rapport and developed a strong, trusted relationship. You uncovered (and got agreement) on the buyer's needs—needs that they didn't even know they had. You spent days working with your delivery team to scope the project and craft the proposal. You sent it off to your contact and called him at the time you had scheduled to review it: Buyer: "Thanks for putting this together. You've really hit the nail on the head outlining our company’s needs. I like the phase-by-phase approach you're proposing, allowing us to make adjustments along the way. I just need to have Brian take a look and give the green light." You: "Wait. Brian? Who's Brian?"      

Sales training is often approached with a car wash mentality: You're in, you're out, and you're ready to sell. But this isn't how real learning happens. This isn't how you help sellers raise the bar and change how they sell. It's time for an entirely new approach to sales education; an approach that overhauls the way sales training is conceived, designed, and executed over the long-term. An approach that drives real behavior change and results. In this white paper, Mike Schultz and John Doerr, Co-Presidents of RAIN Group, show you how developing a sales university not only builds sales team capability, but also enables sellers and transforms the way they sell. Download World-Class Sales Training: How to Build and Implement Your Own Sales University now.