Roles and skills of key account managers
It was surprising to say the least, that little was known in 1996 about the roles and required skill sets of key account managers. Among other things, we supervised a major doctoral thesis on this topic, so we can speak with great authority on what world class key account man- agers should be doing and what skill sets they require.
Most companies still do product
profitability and marmalade their
fixed costs to customers.
The good thing about not having a
strategy is that failure comes as a complete surprise
and is not preceded by a long period of
worry and depression!
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Rewards and performance
This intuitively simple topic becomes extremely complex in the con- text of the kinds of rewards that are appropriate for success in dealing with different types of key accounts. This is dealt with in Chapter 11.
Transitioning to KAM
The cultural and behavioural issues over time involved in changing from a product- or sales-orientated organization are extremely complex and need to be carefully planned for. This is dealt with in Chapter 13
Other issues
Other areas for our research efforts included the role of IT, organiza- tional structures, measuring KAM effectiveness, communications and cultural issues, all of them covered extensively in this book.
The point we are making is that the material presented in this book is based on 15 years of in-depth research into global best practice KAM and is therefore unlike most other books on the topic, which tend to rely on anecdotal or second-hand evidence for the assertions that are made. This is the reason why we feel comfortable in describing this book as ‘the definitive guide for practitioners’, as the research club has been sponsored over the years by some of the most famous companies in the world and over 3 million euros have been invested in it.