Sanjee

No day is ever the same when you are an Account Manager. You speak with different customers and partners every day, come across unique challenges during the sales process and are constantly learning how to solve problems to achieve mutually beneficial outcomes for all the parties involved. 

Here’s what a typical day looks like as an Inside Account Manager at VMware… 

6:00 AM

I head over to the beach for a quick walk to catch the sunrise. 

7:00 AM 

I am getting ready for work and having breakfast (usually in a rush) in time to catch my bus and train into the city on the days I am working from the Pitt Street office. 

8:45 AM

I make my way up to level 9 and claim one of the desks. After putting my stuff down, I head to the kitchen to help myself to a cup of coffee (and a tim-tam while I’m there). 

9:00 AM

I use the first 15 minutes of my day to plan, write up a to-do list for the day and respond to urgent emails. During this time, I am responding to customer emails, answering any follow up questions from previous meetings, or responding to partners and our internal teams that are supporting me with quoting. 

9:15 AM

I meet with my aligned Solution Engineer, my much smarter second half who is the technical lead for all of the customer accounts in my territory. We plan for the meetings we have for the day by looking through what we already know about the customers (what they do, their current IT environment and VMware Install Base) and discussing what outcomes we want from the meetings. 

9:30 AM

My Solution Engineer and I host three discovery meetings with three different customers in the Healthcare, Law firm and Entertainment industry. We use discovery meetings to get an understanding of the customer’s current IT environment, their IT priorities and strategy for the coming years and challenges they are facing. From here, the Solution Engineer recommends some potential solutions to explore, and I set next steps – a follow up meeting that is a deeper dive into the solutions discussed and sometimes introduction meetings to partners who are strong in the relevant solution areas. 

12:00 PM 

We head out to the food court across the street to get some lunch together. My go-to is Pasta Pantry or Bành mì.

1:00 PM 

After lunch, I go through my current quarter pipeline report in Salesforce. This report shows me all the open opportunities I have in my territory, the aligned partners and next steps. I spend one to two hours every day on accelerating the opportunities I have in play – this includes working on quotes for customers, following up with customers during their decision-making process to see what additional information I can help with and following up with partners for updates on opportunities they are leading and stepping in to assist them as needed.

3:00 PM 

I grab my second coffee (or hot chocolate) for the day and some snacks from our kitchen. 

3:15 PM 

Time for some prospecting – I use LinkedIn Sales Navigator and ZoomInfo to find the contacts for my target accounts and reach out to introduce myself via email as a first touch point. I generally follow this up with a phone call the next day. 

4:00 PM  

I meet up with the Networking and Security Specialist aligned to my territory. We discuss the current open opportunities and assign ownership on next steps. We also go over customers and industries we want to jointly target and make an action plan.

4:30 PM 

I focus on updating opportunities Salesforce with next steps, expected close dates (if there are any changes) and adding new opportunities from the morning meetings. A big part of my job is ensuring that upper sales management have an accurate representation of the opportunities in current and next quarter so that they can forecast as accurately as possible. 

5:00 PM 

I have a quick catch up with my colleagues before wrapping up for the day and heading home. 

6:30 PM 

After contemplating just lying on the couch and watching Netflix for the rest of the night, I push myself to go out for a run or a gym session. I come back home and have dinner and shower. 

9:30 PM 

I get ready for bed (in reality I will be up reading or scrolling through my phone for a few hours before sleep kicks in) and prepare for another busy day the next morning.