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AKAM Workshops & Conferences

A general manager in position, a Key Account Manager at heart

Is senior management engagement always a good thing? Not necessarily, though certainly the right kind of involvement is very powerful: senior managers can be coaches, advocates, high-level ambassadors with customers, barrier removers and boundary spanners. But they don’t always want to take on these roles, and sometimes they don’t know how – and sometimes they seem…

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AKAM Workshops & Conferences

Key account retention in a service business – 1st AKAM Annual Conference

For Marco Reijntjens from Tenacity Europe in the Netherlands value lies at the centre of retention in service businesses. As services are intangible, their value depends more on the customer’s perception than does the value of products. The perception of value erodes with time unless the supplier is very vigilant in creatively renewing it the eyes of their…

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Papers and articles

Key account selection and categorisation process

Many suppliers have continued to select their key customers on the basis of historical sales results, in spite of a considerable amount of research that says this is not the way to do it. Suppliers seek to invest in those customers who will give the best return on investment in the future, and deciding who they are should…

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Papers and articles

Integrating science – metrics – into the SAM/KAM process

Metrics are predictors: they provide key insights and calibrations to a cross-functional team on performance, value, adaptability, and alignment to accounts and markets. They enable organizations to take the right actions now and institutionalize excellence. In this article Denis Chapman proposes 5 key metrics and 7 tips for implementing a metric-generating approach, plus a litmus test on…

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Papers and articles

Three level model of KAM metrics

‘Who cares?’ is a great question to kick off the development of a KAM metric system. Because if nobody wants to know and is ready to act on the information, there’s no point in collecting the data. This question and ‘What would they want to know about KAM?’ drove the development of this three-tier model…

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Papers and articles

The dark side of close business relationships

Close and strong business relationships potentially have many positive effects. However, researchers Nima Hierati and Yumen Zhang of Queen Mary University London identified the possibility of forces of destruction building below the surface. This short report on their pilot study revealed alarming developments such as risky reductions in partners’ monitoring and safeguarding activities, and the dangers…

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Papers and articles

Selling v KAM: what’s the difference?

Key Account Management and selling are not the same thing. Key Account Management does not mean selling to big customers – it is not just a higher form of selling or a synonym for selling to the C-Suite. KAM is very likely to engage with the customer’s C-Suite, but the process will involve much more than the…

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Papers and articles

Performance in Key Account Management

Defining performance in key account management is not simple. As a first step, companies should articulate what they want and expect KAM to do for them and link the required performance of key account managers to it. Some companies introduce KAM in order to retain their most important customers but then frustrate their own intention…

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Papers and articles

Are you really managing key account risk?

Risk awareness has always been in the long list of skills required of key account managers, but it is rarely high enough on the list, and awareness is not enough anyway. Being in business is about managing risk as well as making profits. Most risk is considered as financial, and while the ultimate impact may…

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Papers and articles

Rewarding Key Account Management

Rewards tend to change behaviour and activity, as indeed is the intention. It is not clear, however, that rewards necessarily achieve the desired objective: in some cases, companies may be rewarding what would have happened anyway, or even generating negative and potentially damaging behaviour. Does ‘management by results’ work? Should key account managers be rewarded…

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