Key Account Management (14 hrs) by MDIS

• Learn to develop a customer-centric organisation
• Understand the defensive versus offensive strategies
• Ability to examine the client’s strategy with the Ashridge Mission Model
• Learn to apply the Kaplan and Norton Balanced Scorecard to the sales organisation
• Construct a comprehensive client information systems
• Develop key business performance metrics
• Capability to anticipate client’s actions with the Rumsfeld cognitive framework
• Learn to service the client using the RATER framework

Developing a customer-centric organisation:

• This first step underpins the other principles of key account management. The emphasis is that the account manager is not a single salesperson, but the marshal of his company’s resources to grow revenues from the client. The purpose is to farm the account and to raise defensive barriers to prevent competitive entrants from infiltration.

Understanding defensive versus offensive strategies:

• As an incumbent in the client organisation, defensive planning is crucial. The customer’s regularity of purchase provides cash flows which have to be protected. The focus here will be the priority areas to fortify, and how to build switching barriers. On the other hand, offensive strategies cannot be ignored. These will be used to enlarge the share of wallet at the expense of rival incumbents.

Examining the client’s strategy with the Ashridge Mission Model:

• This framework provides a four pronged view of the client organisation’s structural makeup. The customer’s position in their industrial ecosystem will be examined, along with their core commercial strategies. This will then be translated into actionable points in the engagement calendar by the account manager. In addition, the vendor firm must also have a sense of the customer’s values and subsequent conduct will affect its procurement approach.

Applying the Kaplan and Norton Balanced Scorecard (BSC) to the sales organisation:

• The BSC is a long standing framework that the vendor must adopt in its key account management approach. The main focus areas include marketing, human resources, logistics and finance. As an extension of the customer-centric organisation discussion, this approach further emphasizes the need to assemble a holistic client strategy when managing accounts.

Constructing a comprehensive client information systems (CIS):

• A well developed CIS need not involve expensive customer relationship management (CRM) software. Rather the key tenets of what needs to be monitored will be emphasized and basic tools such as Excel and Word can be used. However, it must be noted that some data cannot be readily documented. Some basic aspects of knowledge management will be discussed and used to maximise the goal of thoroughly understanding the client organisation.

Developing key business performance metrics (BPM):

• An important extension to the CIS is the setup of a BPM framework to use within the sales organisation. This framework will utilise visual tools to allow key managers within the firm to monitor vital sales statistics closely. A variety of graphical tools will be discussed.

Anticipating client’s actions with the Rumsfeld cognitive framework:

• We examine the client account through the lens of the predictability-time dimensions. The management of a key account should be strategic in nature. We need to consider a longer term perspective without forgoing short term monitoring. The use of known-unknowns and their sibling factors will allow the sales manager to conduct account planning more strategically.

Servicing the client using the RATER framework:

• Even if the vendor organisation were to sell only proprietary hardware to the client, the element of service is inevitable. Considering that the significance of a key account to the vendor organisation, it is crucial that a proper, time tested services framework be used. Parasuraman’s RATER framework, with its strong empirical underpinnings will be employed in the service strategy for the client.

This will be a hands-on course where the participants are expected to select an actual key account which they are currently managing. The participant will be provided details of a hypothetical customer to work on. The sales concepts described above will be comprehensively applied for a thorough understanding of the customer’s buying process.

This course is designed for account managers and sales directors who manage either a singular or a handful of key client accounts. It focuses on farming rather than the hunting function in the sales process.