In this Episode, Fred and John welcome special guest Elena Casal, Chief Client Officer for the Clearing House. The Clearing House is one of the US's largest payment networks.

In this episode, we cover:

- Embracing sales as an account manager

- 'Selling' vs. adding value

- Account plans

- Building relationships

- Asking for the sale

In this episode, Fred and John review how to handle outages or emergencies as an Account Manager, including:

• The First 15 Minutes: What to Say Immediately
• Communicate on the period you specified, even if nothing changes
• Decide communication mode and whether it needs to escalate based on the size of the client and the nature of the outage
• Internally align on messaging prior to later communications
• Things not to say
• Resolution message
• Subsequently, extra focus on building trust

In this episode, Fred and John discuss the top ten mistakes made by B2B account managers:

• Thinking some else is the quarterback
•  “I think”
• Not bringing recommendations along with problems
• Not being willing to be a pincushion
• Complaining about the client in the open
• Assuming not hearing from clients means everything’s good
• Referring to your internal team as ‘them'
• Waiting until renewal to sell the value prop
• No account plans
• Not answering the question directly - “Curse of Knowledge”

In this episode, we host special guest Tim Stoltenberg, the Creative Director of Dad’s Garage (www.dadsgarage.com) - the legendary Atlanta-based improvisation team.  From Tim we learn about:

• How improv skills are not about being funny, but about listening
• Using improv to solve problems together
• Listening to understand, instead of to respond
• Using “yes and..”
• Avoiding bulldozing
• Using silence

And a deep discussion of the meaning of the word portmanteau.

Be sure to check out Dad’s Garage!

In this episode, Fred and John discuss:

-Realities of the client executives you manage

And tactics to help:

-Be present

-Use the phone

-Answer the question

-Send an ‘industry update

-Storm the castle

-Send thank you notes

-Send a holiday gift or holiday card

And Pimento cheese

In this episode, Fred and John discuss:

• Negotiations Process: anchoring, leveraging interests, etc.
• Common negotiation mistakes
• Ethics in negotiations

In this episode, Fred and John review the initial stages of negotiation:1) Knowing the types of negotiations2) Preparation - ZOPA, BATNA, goal-setting3) Books we recommend

In this episode, Fred and John discuss using DISC as an Account Manager:

• Review of what DISC means and how to use as an Account Manager
• Fred and John's DISC profiles
• We attempt to guess famous people's profiles

Also a discussion of Pop-Tarts