Malcolm McDonald on Key Account Management

The role of the key account team is by its very nature boundary spanning, requiring the team to ‘sell’ in two directions – the obvious selling of their employer’s services into the key account, and perhaps the less obvious – selling the merits of the key account internally within their own organization. This is one of these fine lines that needs to be carefully navigated within the context of KAM, especially in relation to the aggressive ‘selling’ of the key account into their own organization. Being over-zealous in pushing the case of the key account internally can be met with comments such as ‘Remember who you work for! ’, or ‘Remember who is paying your salary! ’ In extreme cases the key account team can be described as having ‘defected ...