Key Account Management, the customer-centric approach to ensuring strategically important accounts are controlled effectively and remain with you as strategically important buyers.
The process by which you employ long-term relationship management to focus on understanding the customer, meeting their needs, and building the relationship.
Whilst the Key Account Manager is supporting the objectives of their buyer, by what process do we support the Key Account Manager? What must the organisation do to ensure the Key Account Manager operates to maximum effectiveness? What is it the Key Account Manager needs? If we have someone whose role is to focus on the strategically important clients and second-guess their possible problems and be ready to work with them to solve (or better still, to predict and prevent) those problems, what will that person need from their own organisation?
The support required from their own organisation will be sought from many areas, such as, finance, marketing and logistics, amongst others. There are essentially a number of ways this can be supplied:
1. the Key Account Manager works in a matrix relationship with colleagues to get the help, information, education, training materials - whatever is required, through internal relationships and networking. This matrix management is what we also see in project management - where the project leader might have to manage the input from several colleagues, none of whom report to them in a line relationship.
2. customer teams are established with membership coming from the specific departments needed to supply data and advice and teams are dedicated to a number of customers.
3. customer teams are established whose members take on the responsibility of internally networking to find the answers to questions directed by the Key Account Manager - they may themselves not be department experts but they take on the challenge of solving customer problems and dealing with Key Account Manager issues through their own research within the organisation.
A significant issue for the Key Account Manager is selling in an environment where customers are looking for constant price reductions (to meet their own capped budgets) but where they (the Key Account Manager) has to regard price as being non-negotiable. How do you sell to the price sensitive? If we do not sell on price we have to sell on another basis and that for many is 'value'.
Value-selling or value-added selling is a technique that relies on building the inherent value of a product or service and requires the Key Account Manager to adopt a customised selling approach that fits individual customers. When the Key Account Manager is considering the utility of the product or service it is imperative the ease of integration into the customers' operations is fully understood - how can we do that if we do not fully understand the customers operations?
The Key Account Manager has to construct an attractive 'story' for the customer in which they can relate essential commercial or professional or organisational aspects to the customer, that influences decision-makers. This is not easy, since the decision-makers in complex organisations are growing - and that is one reason we had to invest in Key Account Management. Getting the final buy signal involves many more cautious decision-makers than before.
It also suggests the Key Account Manager must get to know all the important players within an organisation and what their motivations are and how best to influence them. It suggests the Key Account Manager must be adept at reading people and must be equally adept at establishing and maintaining relationships with everyone in the food chain.
So what does one need to be an effective Key Account Manager? We can see from the short description above that some key considerations stand out, such as:
· relationship building (both within own organisation and with the customer organisation)
· planning, organisation skills, prioritising
· problem solving and creativity
· high-level presentation skills
· business acumen
· value-selling knowledge and skills
· financial understanding
Just as the fish decide what the bait is - the customer decides who to contract with. Key Account Managers will not be successful if they pursue certain behaviours. For example, buyers don't want to be your friend; they don't want to be sold to; they don't want to be ignored until you are ready to re-contract. They want Key Account Managers who work with them to solve their problems; they want the Key Account Manager to be in regular contact and they want to feel they are important; they want good quality customer focus; they want the Key Account Manager to be someone they can trust and someone who has credibility.
The effective Key Account Manager will deliver on commitments, demonstrate a belief in their products/services and will demonstrate pride in their organisation.
