roy

Process refinement:Company activities have shifted away from producing predefined products or services towards having the capability to produce creative solutions for customer requirements Company activities have shifted away from producing predefined products or services towards having the capability to produce creative solutions for customer requirements. Companies must be flexible, not just to raise customer satisfaction, […]

Transitioning to KAM in the public sector The Electricity and Construction Industry Training Board is tasked with increasing competence within the Engineering Construction Industry, from apprentices through to technicians and managers. Its key customers are companies and contractors who employ trained people, but when the Board decided to embark on KAM, people inside the organization

Rapid change:Time has become a major determinant of competitive advantage. Time has become a major determinant of competitive advantage. The drive towards lean production systems has increased interdependency in supply chains. Any company that is complacent will be quickly overtaken. Ironically, the shorter the opportunity for success, the more important it becomes for companies to

Pressures that have led to growth in customer power As we have indicated in our introductory comments, while sales and marketing strategists have for some time been convinced that effective KAM leads to increased sales, heightened profitability and improved sales productivity, the characteristics and techniques of KAM were not extensively explored, apart from the need

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

Strategic planning for key accounts This latter point is obviously related to the issue of preparing strategic plans for key accounts. The authors were recently running a key account management (KAM) workshop for a blue-chip supplier of expensive equipment for hospitals. On being told that one hospital had a multimillion pound budget for such equipment,

Customer needs analysis Readers would surely agree that suppliers must really understand the needs of their customers and amend their approach accordingly. Alas, this certainly was not the case back in 1996 and is still largely untrue today. When key account managers are trained to sell volume and are paid accordingly, they have little interest

Key Account Management C01 12/01/2010 9:8:5 Page 5 customers insisted on daily, just-in-time, store-by-store delivery, result- ing in major stock-holding and delivery problems. They also insisted that the salesforce called daily to carry out merchandizing. Finally, they took about 145 days’ credit. The other retailer, taking a similar amount of products, asked for stocks to

Module 7 Discussion:How is LinkedIn moving into the Podcast Network? After reading the following article(s) or watching the following video(s), use this forum to contribute to the discussion. LinkedIn Launches New Podcast Network to Provide More Professional and Career-Related Content (Links to an external site.) Writing Prompt/Question: How is LinkedIn moving into the Podcast Network? Before

Discussion Board 4:Explain three relationship traps and how to avoid each. Please answer these two questions from Chapters 4 and 5: Explain three relationship traps and how to avoid each. List five of the forces that influence B2B customers’ purchasing behavior. Are these the same for consumers?  If there is a difference, explain why you