I came across an interesting article on Harvard Business Review by Lynette Ryais (link) detailing how implementing Key Account Management programmes can be crucial for strategic selling and thought it would be helpful to share.
The article cites that although it can be tough to “demote” accounts, for a programme to have a sense of exclusivity and therefore convey the idea of an ‘elite’ opportunity, only select customers can be deemed a “Key Account”.
If we think back to the earlier post this week regarding the Account Categorisation Triangle and how this can have a great positive impact on your account base, you could implement your own Key Account Management programme within your own customer base – whether your company has this or not. For developing customers who are on the cusp of becoming an account where you are the main supplier, explaining to these customers that you have a number of accounts, but a certain set are deemed as key accounts and therefore will get more of your time and resource investment – could enable you to move them into your top tier of customers, and avoid competition in the accounts.
This comes back to the fact that you need a clear strategy for each account type which we will explore further over the coming posts, but please review the Account Categorisation posts here and here for more info on how to segment your account set and focus on the right opportunities.
To read the original post at HBR, please see here.
