Workshop on Advanced Key Account Management

Program overview:

Key Account Management (KAM) relates to managing your clients effectively and successfully and nurturing a healthy relationship with them. Learn the practical approaches to planning, analyzing and implementing closer relationships with your strategic accounts. This program will equip account managers with the skills and tools to develop and implement detailed dynamic account strategies and plans for their key accounts. Using their own customers as case studies, participants will establish how ‘best practice’ principles can be applied to managing their own key accounts whilst adding immediate value into their own organizations

For whom:

This program is designed for those managing face-to-face relationships with customers that have a significant impact on achieving the organization’s business objectives. The course is also valuable for account managers, sales managers and directors intending to implement a key account management strategy within their organizations.

Learning objectives:

At the end of the course, participants will be able to: 

*             recognize which customers are key accounts;

*             define the functions of key accounts and their importance to commercial organizations;

*             define the scope of the key account management role;

*             identify and prioritize key accounts to measure their profitability and qualify their strategic importance for their company;

*             classify the different levels of customer relationships to enhance the way they interface with customers;

*             develop customer focused plans and strategies needed in the development of key accounts; and

*             build core key account competencies to meet the ever-changing challenges in the market.

Course outline:

Day 1: Key account relational development model

• Business partnership defined
• The partnership skill set
• The KA relational development model
• Pre-relationship stage
• Early relationship stage
• Mid-relationship stage
• Partnership relationship stage
• Synergetic relationship stage
• Reasons for divesting partnerships 

Day 2: Understanding Key Account Management (KAM) Objectives

• Definition of key account management
• Criteria for qualifying Key Accounts (KA)
• Strategic accounts versus key accounts
• Objectives of KAM
• Managing customer profitability and Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
• Definition and goals of CRM: The value of loyalty
• Acquisition costs and life time value (LTV)

Day 3: Account analysis: defining and selecting KA

• KAM: best practice actions
• Account analysis insights
  • Account analysis methods
• The single factor models,
  • The portfolio models
• The decision models:
  • Important ‘KPIs’ for KA qualification
• Computing the cost per call,
  • Break even sales volume

Day 4: The Key Account Planning process (KAP)

• Two layers of planning
• Prioritizing efforts
  • important business analysis
• Customer analysis
  • Using past business analysis
• Competition analysis
  • identifying opportunities
• ‘SWOT’ analysis,
  • Developing account strategy,
  • ‘TOWS’ analysis

Day 5: The critical role of key account managers

• Understanding the role and responsibilities of

key account managers

• Harnessing daily to-do-lists to optimize

sales productivity

• Identifying and working with different personality styles
• Presentation skills for key account managers

Training Methodology

Lectures, discussions, exercises, case studies, audio-visual aids will be used to reinforce these teaching/learning methods.