Key Account Management, 6th Edition

10

The good, the bad, the sad and the ugly

This chapter shares five examples of real experience: two good, one bad, one sad and one ugly. They are all genuine cases, but for reasons that I hope are obvious some details have been changed.

It is usually easier to come up with the bad, sad and ugly stories than it is to come up with the good ones. This is not because there are more failures than successes, but because the failures always seem to have more that we can learn from – hence my ratio.

Having said that, the ‘good stories’ are very good, and will be kept till last. The ‘bad’ is bad because KAM was never considered in a circumstance that cried out for it. The ‘sad’ is sad because the supplier was trying hard to forge a true diamond relationship, ...