Account managers are the backbone of Visterra Landscape Group, based in Rosemont, Illinois. Because these team members are critical for retaining customers and increasing margins, the company decided that one of their core focuses will be providing their account managers with more resources.
“I think as an industry as a whole, we have lacked providing the attention or resources to account managers,” says Brook Haygood, vice president of sales for Visterra. “I feel like they’re neglected at some point because they wear a bunch of different hats.”
Haygood says they traveled the country and interviewed their account managers, asking what resources they needed to be successful. Overwhelmingly, their response was specific sales training.
“They’ve all had operational training, time management training, but they said the one thing that they don’t have and a big part of their bonus structure and their commission is based on sales,” Haygood says.
Because bidding on contracts is so competitive, Visterra opts to make up some of their revenue in enhancement sales. Haygood notes that when their account managers are equipped with the necessary personal skills, they are able to maintain customer relationships better and bring in more sales.
In response, Visterra recently launched comprehensive account manager and business development sales training that lasts the entire year.
Haygood says they opted to work with Lushin to provide this sales training after hearing of them from a peer in the industry.
“There’s a limited number of industry-specific trainers for our industry for sales,” Haygood says. “They had a pretty decent resume. They work with some of the bigger landscape companies in the country, so that’s why we went with them. We probably interviewed six or seven companies, and for what we were trying to accomplish, they were the best fit.”
The structure of this program is a full day for the initial kickoff and then two-hour bi-weekly meetings throughout the year where the account managers meet with their trainer. Haygood estimates it may be 100 hours total throughout the year.
“They have a talking point every other week,” Haygood says. “They also individually talk about their sales goals, what’s in their hopper, what is their forecast. So there’s also a layer of accountability there. They get to publicly and privately talk about how they’re personally performing with their peer group.”
Haygood is hopeful that this may also spark a competitive nature in their account managers as well.
He acknowledges that they have to prioritize this training to have time for it.
“I think in our industry where we fail is, it’ll always be better next week,” Haygood says. “We had to identify what’s important and if it’s important, then we have to make time and move scheduling around to make sure it’s important. It’s easy to push things off. The expectation is that you will be attending all of these. This is an investment in you.”
One of the main areas the training will focus on for account managers is how to ask hard questions and gain confidence in asking them.
“The big thing is just the question asking, understanding it, reading the room,” Haygood says. “Those kinds of things that I took for granted, just being in sales for a very long time, but it seems like some skills that some people just don’t inherently have.”
Everyone on Visterra’s business development and account management team will go through this training.
“This is absolutely just another tool you can put in your belt to help be better at your job,” Haygood says.
The response from their team has been overwhelmingly positive so far. As they continue with the program, Visterra will monitor certain KPIs to determine if this investment is showing a return.
“How much out of your portfolio were you able to penetrate from an enhancement goal standpoint?” Haygood says. “One other big KPI is retention, your book of customers. How many did you retain this year? So those are the two big KPIs for account management. It’s going to be your retention, and then essentially your sales.”
Visterra had their branch managers also attend the initial training, as they are the ones responsible for reinforcing the training throughout the year, along with the regional sales directors.
“We all have the same talking points,” Haygood says. “We all are tracking everyone’s goals, and we’re all aligned. There’s going to be a mix, but traditionally, it’s going to be self-accountability. These account managers have to be accountable for themselves, and then they’re going to work with the sales team and the branch managers to make sure they’re staying on track.”
While there are Q&A tests after each training session, Haygood says the ultimate test is if the account manager is improving and hitting their goals.
Visterra pays Lushin a fixed price every month based on their headcount. Haygood warns that there is some sticker shock to pay for a program like this.
“I think the dollars might scare some people, but ultimately, if you’re keeping your customers and you’re making additional revenue off of those customers, you’re going to grow, and you’re going to have a better product,” Haygood says. “Your quality is inherently going to go up if property managers are buying from your account managers.”
