Handbook of Strategic Account Management: A Comprehensive Resource

The influence of personality on the job performance of strategic account managers

by Tommi Mahlamäki, Olavi Uusitalo and Toni Mikkola

Abstract

Strategic account management (SAM) is a current and relevant topic in the business-to-business marketing context. SAM is a management process that consists of identifying and serving strategically important customers of a company, which aims for a company to have a cooperative relationship with its customer with a unique value proposition. One key determinant of the SAM process's success is the strategic account manager. This paper focuses on the job performance of the strategic account manager, more precisely on the influence of such a manager's personality on job performance. The paper reports the results of a survey study whose purpose was to examine the relationship between personality traits and strategic account managers' job performance. The analysed data consists of the responses of 143 account managers. The results show that three personality traits – extraversion, conscientiousness and agreeableness – have a significant relationship with job performance.

Introduction

The financial performance of a large number of companies is dependent on their customers who are strategically most important – in other words, their strategic accounts. Strategic accounts are assigned a manager, often called a strategic account manager or key account manager, who works as a contact point between the customer and the selling organization. It can be ...