Salespeople and new account managers routinely take over a set of existing accounts (see pp. 398–417). Taking over a set of accounts and managing the sales process for all these accounts provide a learning experience different from making a single sale to a single customer. While it is important for a salesperson to be able to make an effective sales presentation, equally important to sales success is developing the skills to move a large number of accounts through various stages of the sales process. This is definitely a “multitasking” process. You will be surprised at how this sales process of moving accounts successfully is very similar to the entrepreneur who is starting a business: working closely with clients to achieve those extremely important sales that provide the company capital to survive and become successful. This success is the basic motivating force behind a growing domestic economy, providing employment to millions of job seekers.

Today, it is common for the new account manager to take over the previous salesperson’s electronic database of prospects and customers. Regional account planning, which means learning to evaluate this data and to plan effective value-adding sales efforts for each step in the sales process, is a key factor in growing the expertise of regional account managers. Regional account management is often referred to simply as “RAM.” We will be using this reference throughout this case study.

The exercises in this Regional Account Management Case Study simulate this important activity by requesting that a “new account manager” extract, from an existing database, the information needed to take strategic actions to move the accounts through the sales process. The salesperson is asked to review the account data and create value-added regional plans designed to guide the salesperson toward capturing the potential orders that are found within the database.