Speaker 1: Hello and welcome to 2019 everybody it's Warry from Account Manager Tips and I am so excited for this year. I really think it's going to be one of the best yet for you and for me and look I mean I know I say that every year but hey you live and hope and dream big I say. Now here's a few things I think every account manager should do in January to set themselves up for success for the whole year. Here we go and in a particular order. Get your QBRs in the diary. Now not just your annual review which is due like any minute but all of your reviews right for the whole year. Just set up a recurring appointment you know like the third Friday of every quarter. You'll find that not only do you make sure the reviews happen they get moved less often because they're actually in the diary so far in advance people kind of make appointments around them and you'll be one step ahead of yourself the whole year. Have a look at your contact history from last year. Run a report in your CRM or do an export from Outlook and just see who you contacted, who you reached out to, how many people, how many of your clients you actually got in front of. Did you have some favorites? Were there some people that you really responded to and like to hang out with a little bit more than others? If there's some clients that you neglected or some clients that you put in that you know no news is good news bucket. Have a look again. Make sure you have a really solid contact plan for them this year because you don't want to neglect them. Again you know you want to make sure that you share the love even if you do have a few favorites we all do that's okay but you know don't neglect some of those that you maybe have avoided in the past. Okay so have a look at that make sure you've got a really solid plan moving forward. See which of your clients contracts are up for renewal this year. You don't want to be the last to know I promise you. You want to start to build a capture plan and make sure that again you're one step ahead that you are prepared for the conversation around renewing their contracts and that you're ready to have a sort of commercial conversation and you know when to anticipate that and when to start to engage with a client about renewing their contract. So if you get that list up front right now you're going to be again one step ahead of yourself all year. Now did you find yourself doing other people's work last year? Did you find yourself doing workarounds for your clients because well you wanted to help them out and you know your product or your service didn't quite meet their needs so you just thought you know what I'm going to do it. This year make a promise to yourself to not do other people's work, to not do things for free just because you feel guilty or you want to help somebody out. Respect your time, respect the value that you bring and make sure that you are focused very strategically on your clients and that you are there to deliver and create value but not to do the work of others right. That's so important you know don't get so caught up in the trenches in the day-to-day in the reads that you forget to think about the bigger picture because that's what your clients are looking for from account managers. Also have a look at your strategic account plans from last year get them all out on the table see how well you did where you are you know what you accomplished or maybe you missed out on achieving and be really realistic about why you didn't get to what you need to do and also celebrate some of those successes if you did achieve some of the things that you set out to do on your strategic account plans then great for you and make sure your client knows about it too. Now if you don't have a strategic account plan in place head on over to amtip.co slash strategy where you'll find a template you can use and you can also download my ultimate guide to strategic account planning. So there you kind of have it they're my five tips get your contracts sorted see who's coming up for renewal this year so you can start to build the plan get your QBRs in the diary have a look at your contact history last year and make sure that this year you don't neglect the same people and that you're on top of your meetings don't do other people's work right start as you mean to continue do what you are supposed to do and let others do their job and leave it at that and get your strategic account plans in order have a look at what you did last year that went well what didn't go so well and get your plans underway for this year as soon as possible. What about you what do you do to get a really a good solid head start on 2019? What do you do to set yourself up for success at the beginning of the year? Any tips or advice for me? I would love to hear it comment below. you