Sep 11 2007
The Complete List Of Success Factors In Key Account Management & Development Revealed
So, just what are the success factors in Key Account Management & Development?
This list, whilst not exhaustive, is not far off and will certainly provide you with an excellent guide and prompt.
• Successful Development Of The Role:
o Effective working relationships with other members of the team.
o A continuing drive to improve account team productivity.
o Management commitment to the account team’s role with opportunities for career progression.
o Re-enforcement of the role through authorised career structures, job descriptions and core training programmes.
• The Key Skills:
o Understanding the financial and legal requirements of the account.
o Understanding of the company’s business objectives.
o Understanding of the company’s commercial policies.
o Build high levels of product awareness.
o Understanding of the customer’s business objectives.
o Identify the decision makers.
o Understand the customer’s purchasing strategy.
o Assess competitive activities.
o Put together an account development plan.
o Ensure effective sales order processing.
o Build the right levels of revenue and profitability.
• The Core Skills:
o Delegation
o Interpersonal skills.
o Consultancy.
o Financial control & analysis.
o Project management.
o Man management.
o Initiative & creativity.
The Secondary Skills:
E.g. Industry knowledge, competitive knowledge, product knowledge etc.
Success Factors In Key Account Development:
• The Stages Of A Long Term Process
o Pre-sales.
o Contract negotiation.
o Implementation / Delivery.
o Review.
o Exploitation.
• Objectives For An Account Team
o Ensure that the customer is presented with a coherent and professional image of your Company as a business partner.
o Secure a long term business relationship with the customer as the basis for growing business.
o Penetrate the customer’s organisation and decision making unit creating new opportunities that can be exploited to accelerate account growth.
o Understand and document, on an ongoing basis, the customer organisations strategic business direction and organisation.
o Provide the company’s senior management team with feedback on the long term growth potential in the customer’s market sector and on critical success factors for exploiting it.
o Ensure that the company’s solutions are technically solid and based on a proper understanding of the current requirements and re-inforce the customer’s perception of the benefits of the company’s market focus.
o Ensure that the company’s total resource is delivered in a way that satisfies customer requirements and supports the objectives of the account plan.
Conclusion:
An effective Key Account Management strategy depends on selecting your key accounts intelligently, creating a strong, consistent, flexible way of working with both major accounts and other customers and then implementing the plan in a disciplined, effective, efficient manner.
One of the successes of our Key Account Management programme has been the creation of common models and language that facilitate discussion and planning across units and departments. It has also stimulated a commitment for our clients to plan long term for key relationships. Key Account Management has many implications for individuals, departments and the business as a whole. It will always be demanding, but done right it will be highly rewarding.
Today’s News: Over at Top 10 Sales Articles we are beginning to plan for the grand finale on New Years Eve - “Top Sales Article Of The Year”. Typically, we will logically have twelve finalists, ie the monthly winners, but of course this year there will only be nine as we launched in April: The prizes are going to be fantastic but we need to consider how we decide on the winner and our two options are: A poll, where visitors can vote for their favourite piece of work or we follow our normal procedure and let the expert panel decide………. or a combination of both - what do you think? Let me have your thoughts.
Tomorrow:The all action Leanne Hoagland-Smith - the Chief People Officer and ”Queen of Article Writing” - so you can be assured of a very high quality post.
