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Many key account managers have a background in sales, but training may be quite some time ago – maybe even never! It’s worth (re)visiting some higher-level fundamentals and reviewing what aspects of selling are still relevant to KAM in today’s environment. What kinds of approaches to selling exist, how do they differ, which should you…
AKAM would be the first to say that KAM is not a cure-all, and Olivier Rivière picks out two organisational capabilities that must underpin any KAM initiative: Complex Sales and Account Management. Companies often don’t recognise that deficiencies in these areas are contributing to their underperforming KAM programme. Complex Sales focuses on generating and closing…
Dr Diana Woodburn highlighted the principal issue, i.e. that the role of the key account manager is broad, cross functional, complex and long term, whereas they are predominantly rewarded for sales – which is sharply focused, functionally narrow, relatively simple and short term. Hence often poorly matched to the customer’s needs and timelines. Dr Diana…
In case anyone was in any doubt about what is required in a key account manager, Gintarė Bėtaitė’s experience as a recruiter with Amrop Executive Search enabled her to make the expectations very clear. And the answer is – hopefully no surprises to any AKAM member – that it’s not about sales history. Companies are looking for…
For Lufthansa Systems, key account manager leadership is an obligation, not an option. For over a year the business has been working hard on this issue. Alistair Thursfield, Head of Key Account Management, explained why and how the whole organisation had been driving three core attributes critical to the kind of leadership it wants to…
Many companies are still unclear about what KAM is and what it takes to implement it successfully. Richard Ilsley starts with the basics and identifies the essential elements of KAM programmes, which still go beyond the minimal changes that many suppliers think will suffice – they won’t!
Companies frequently ask whether they have the right people for key account management (the answer is often ‘no’) and how they can tell if they are right people. In fact, the question should really be ‘What job do we want them to do?‘ If you start with the wrong job description, you are not likely to find…
Chris Gregers, Senior KAM with Circle K Norge AS, traced the evolution of the sales role in the Norwegian fuel industry from basic sales through value based sales, relationship based sales, and what is called challenger sales. From the last two approaches KAM processes began to appear focusing upon value creation, joint ventures and developing…
Changing the reward system is one of the adaptations to KAM that organisations are most reluctant to change, but poorly focused reward schemes – usually sales volume based incentives – are not merely an unfortunate detail that will need to be sorted out at some stage: they can be a major driver in the wrong direction…
Join Richard Ilsley and Dominykas Cibulskas as they discuss what key and strategic account management really means. Account management comes in many forms these days. We hear terms like key account management, strategic account management, national account management, and more. To add to this growing list of labels, the emergence of disciplines such as customer…
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