Tài liệu Key Account Management doc

PETER CHEVERTON

Key Account

Management

A complete action kit of tools and

techniques for achieving profitable key

supplier status

Third Edition

First published in Great Britain in 1999 by Kogan Page Limited

Second edition 2001

Third edition published in Great Britain and the United States in 2004

Reprinted 2004, 2005

Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or crit￾icism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988,

this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by

any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of

reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms and licences issued by the

CLA. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside these terms should be sent to the

publishers at the undermentioned addresses:

120 Pentonville Road 525 South 4th Street, #241

London N1 9JN Philadelphia PA 19147

UK USA

www.kogan-page.co.uk

© Peter Cheverton, 1999, 2001, 2004

The right of Peter Cheverton to be identified as the author of this work has been

asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

ISBN 0 7494 4169 0

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Cheverton, Peter.

Key account management : a complete action kit of tools and techniques

for achieving profitable key supplier status / Peter Cheverton.-- 3rd

ed.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 0-7494-4169-0

1. Selling--Key accounts. 2. Marketing--Key accounts. 3. Customer

services. I. Title.

HF5438.8.K48C47 2004

658.8'04--dc22

2003024861

Typeset by Saxon Graphics Ltd, Derby

Printed and bound in Great Britain by Cambrian Printers Ltd, Aberystwyth, Wales

Contents

Foreword vii

Preface ix

Preface to the third edition x

Acknowledgements xi

And it was all going so very well… 1

PART I DEFINING KEY ACCOUNT MANAGEMENT

1 What is a key account? 5

So, what is the right answer? 6; The key account ‘investment’ 7;

Does everybody know? 8; Why key ‘account’? A justification 9

2 Managing the future 10

Where to start? 11; The importance of balance 12; Guessing the

future – certainty or drift? 13; How fast do we expect the future to

arrive? 14; What KAM is not 14

3 Assessing the opportunity 15

PESTLE analysis 15; Porter’s analysis 16; A secure future through

competitive advantage? 19; Understanding the market chain and

where you sit 22; The ‘opportunity snail’ 30; Long-term

competitive advantage? 33

iii

4 Key account management – its purpose 35

Why Kam? 35; Three simple purposes 37; Sales and business

objectives 38; Sanity checks 38; Implications of KAM 40; So, what will

KAM ‘feel’ like? 41; Good practice? 42; Is there a KAM process? 43

5 Developing the relationship 45

The milk round 45; The hunter 46; The farmer 47; From hunter to

farmer 48; The key account relationship development model 49;

Some pros and cons of each stage 56; Some things to watch out

for 64; Avoiding frustration 67; An update to the KAM process 69

6 The good, the bad, the sad and the ugly 70

The bad story 71; The sad story 72; The ugly story 73; The good

story 74; The second good story 76

7 KAM profitability 78

The tale of the National Health Service 78; Will KAM be profitable? 79

PART II THE CUSTOMER’S PERSPECTIVE

8 Purchasing professionals 93

Hold on a minute, why should they let you in? 93; The purchasing

‘revolution’ 93; Supply chain management 96; Supply side

management 99; Spend intelligence 102; Purchasing strategy 105

9 Supplier positioning – becoming a key supplier 107

Supplier positioning models 107; The risk/significance/spend

model 108; What relationships, what activities? 112; So, who’s the

key supplier? 116; Is there any escape for suppliers? 118

10 Measuring value 120

Weaknesses of the spend model 120; Measuring value 121; The

risk/significance/value model 123; Open book trading 125

11 Measuring trust 128

The risk/significance/trust model 129

12 Supply base optimization 134

Reducing supplier numbers 134; Rationalization & centralization￾control and profitability 137; Developing suppliers’ capabilities 138

13 Culture and values – becoming a strategic supplier 140

What are they up against? 140; Business strategy 141; What to

sell and where? The Ansoff matrix and risk 142; What to sell and

where? The Product Life Cycle 146; Why will people buy? Porter

and competitive advantage 150; What makes your business hum?

Treacy and Weirsema’s business value drivers 151; The cultural

match 156

Contents

iv

PART III PREPARING FOR KEY ACCOUNT MANAGEMENT

14 What will it take? Goals and obstacles 161

Goals 161; Obstacles 162

15 What will it take? Skills 165

The changing requirement 165; The team’s skills and abilities 167;

Attitudes and behaviours 168

16 What will it take? Systems and processes 171

Customer classification and customer distinction 172; Information

systems 172; Communication 178; Operational systems and

processes 180; Performance measurement 181

17 What will it take? Organization and resources 186

Organization 186; Human resources 192

18 What will it take? Making it happen 200

Alignment and managing the change 200; The change equation 201;

Critical success factors (CSFs) 203

PART IV IDENTIFYING KEY ACCOUNTS

19 The 10 step process 209

Step 3 – assemble the selection team 210

20 Segmentation 212

The problem for support functions in an unsegmented business

213; What is segmentation? 214; The benefits of segmentation 216;

Methods for segmentation 217; Market mapping 217; Who buys

what, how, when and where? 220; Making the cut 222;

Segmentation and KAM identification 225; Benefits of

segmentation for KAM 227; A new type of marketing plan? KAM

and relationship marketing 228

21 Identifying your key accounts 230

An identification and selection process 231; Is all this really

necessary? 234; The perfect investment portfolio? 236;

The selection factors and the selection process 238; The selection

process 241; How much effort and how much detail? 243; Key

accounts and multiple business unit suppliers 244

22 Customer distinction 246

Determining distinct strategies 247; Some comments and

advice 249

v

Contents

PART V ENTRY STRATEGIES

23 The customer’s decision-making process 255

Entry strategy 255; The buying decision process 256

24 Selling to the organization – the DMU 259

DMU – the decision-making unit 259; Interests and influences –

entry strategies 261; The buyer’s role 261; Other interests and

influences 266; Levels of seniority 271; Entry strategies 272;

The contact matrix & GROWs 273; Contacts over time 276; Avecia –

a live application 277

PART VI MEETING THE CUSTOMER’S NEEDS

25 Meeting the business needs – beyond benefits 283

Where are you with your customers? 284; The customer’s total

business experience 287

26 Positive impact analysis (PIA) 291

The value chain 292; Some hints on using positive impact

analysis 304

27 Key account management and the e-revolution 305

Some useful terms 307; Steps towards the revolution 308;

E-commerce and supplier positioning 309; Some more terms… 311;

Getting into e-commerce… 314; E-commerce, threat or solution? 316

28 Making the proposal 321

Open to change? 322; Proposal analysis 323

29 Selling to the individual 326

Logic or emotion? 327; Ensuring rapport 328

PART VII KEEPING ON TRACK

30 Getting there – timetables and performance 333

Timetables for implementation 334; Training development

tracks 336; Regular health checks 338

31 Writing the key account plan 341

The plan’s purpose 341; A key account template? 342; Some

‘must haves’ 343; A few tips 345; A sample running order 346

32 Getting further help 349

References and further reading 350

Index 383

Contents

vi

Good books on key account management are rare. One of the reasons for this

lies in the past, in the way that key account management (KAM) has been

defined and described. The past 40 years have been characterized by a view

that KAM is mainly a selling task, albeit at a high level, and that the respon￾sibility for its implementation rests almost entirely with the sales team.

Yet all our research at Cranfield School of Management indicates that,

above all else, it is this mentality that prevents the forging of mature, trust￾worthy and profitable relationships. Key account management is not a sales

initiative, it is not something you do to customers, and key account strategies

will require the full support of the business.

Key account management is a team effort and, more than that, it is a

business-wide effort. Our research has shown repeatedly that major clients

want more than a sales–buyer interface and they want more than a tradi￾tional salesperson managing the relationship. If suppliers and customers are

to forge significant relationships, as businesses, then both sides must look to

new ways of managing those relationships.

Relationships are at the very heart of KAM. They provide the source of

information and understanding that can be built into added value activities.

They also provide the foundations for long-term business based on mutual

trust and confidence. If you care about customer retention then you should

care about KAM.

So let’s escape the trap of the last 40 years – KAM is not something we do

to customers, it is something we do with customers, and perhaps the greatest

vii

Foreword

viii

Foreword

single motivation for developing key account strategies is that the customer

is looking for new ways of working alongside key suppliers.

Purchasing organizations are looking more and more to the techniques of

supply chain management as a means of prioritizing and managing rela￾tionships with significant suppliers. Those suppliers must respond with

customer-sensitive strategies that will touch on everything, from the people

involved to the systems and processes used, and even to the structure and

organization of the supplier’s business.

Key account management provides the strategic base, the processes and

the disciplines to handle this situation, alongside those other common chal￾lenges – globalization, market maturity and customer power.

The purpose is clear – the pursuit of competitive advantage. The days are

long gone when major customers would tolerate average, overpriced

products and services. Being a ‘pimply me too’ just won’t work any more.

Just stop to consider for a moment – whoever heard of Alexander the

Mediocre?

Competitive advantage puts you in a position to succeed, but there is

more that you need to do. There is the question of profit. Most companies, if

they are honest, are not able to measure the profitability of their key

accounts. Many companies, once they determine to measure these things,

often find their largest customers to be their least profitable. Very few

companies measure the long-term returns of customer retention – annual

results are often all that count. Key account management should be seen as

the route to profitable key supplier status – the challenge of understanding

profit must be taken head on. This book will provide the help required.

Peter Cheverton has used the Cranfield research to great effect. I have

worked closely with him for many years and have respect and admiration

for his work as a trainer and consultant with major clients. The task of imple￾menting key account strategies is far from easy, and Peter brings a combi￾nation of clarity, experience, enthusiasm and common sense to the task. This

book is an excellent distillation of his experience, building on the Cranfield

research and producing the essential guide to global best practice.

Please be assured that reading this book will be a rewarding experience.

Professor Malcolm McDonald

ix

This book is designed as a practical guide to implementing key account

management strategies. Wherever it has been helpful to use real examples of

good and bad practice to illustrate important points, this has been done.

Many of these examples come from my own experience in working with

clients of INSIGHT Marketing and People, an international training and

consultancy firm. Wherever possible the companies involved are openly

discussed, but, for reasons that I hope are obvious, this is not always the

case. In some of the more anonymous cases, details may have been altered

slightly, either to aid clarity, or to protect the not so innocent!

I am pleased to be able to say that my training and consulting work brings

me in contact with far more examples of good, than bad, practice, but the

purpose of this book has not always permitted such a ratio. I hope that my

own clients will forgive me for not filling these pages with more stories of

their undoubted excellence in this field.

Please regard examples of good practice as merely examples, not role

models, and those of bad practice as ways of illustrating the warning signs

that line the route towards key account management (KAM).

Preface

x

The preface to the second edition opened with the words – time marches

on…, and so it is with the third edition.

It seems that each year that passes a new set of challenges arise, largely for

two reasons – customers grow more sophisticated and more demanding,

and competitors grow more challenging.

The section on selecting key accounts has been enlarged quite dramati￾cally, as it becomes clear that this is not a simple one hit exercise but some￾thing that must be understood and sanctioned right at the top of any

supplier organization.

Following on from selection, a whole new chapter on customer

distinction has been added. This discusses the need to develop separate

sales and service strategies for each group of customers – whether key, key

development, maintenance, or opportunistic – and most importantly it

recognizes the need for the sales team to free up the energy spent on non key

accounts before it can properly turn its attention to the key accounts them￾selves.

Many of the examples and case studies have been updated to take account of

developments – many of them still being ‘work in progress’.

The CD ROM has been upgraded, with new tools and models, and an

improved software package for the all important key account identification

and selection matrix described in Chapter 20.

Preface to the third edition

xi

Acknowledgements

Without doubt the biggest thanks must go to the excellent clients of

INSIGHT Marketing and People with whom I have worked as a trainer and

consultant on Key Account Management over the last 10 years. I feel sure

that I have learnt as much from their experiences as from any other source.

Professor Malcolm McDonald of Cranfield University School of

Management has been as generous as ever with his support for this book,

providing access to his own researches as well as encouraging me with my

own.

My colleagues at INSIGHT have been kind enough to allow me the time

to complete this book, and I thank them for their endless suggestions and for

putting up with mine!

ALSO FROM KOGAN PAGE

Key Marketing Skills

Peter Cheverton

Not just another ‘introduction to marketing’, Key Marketing Skills contains

information, advice and guidance on the marketing issues of the moment,

including key account management, customer relationship marketing and

the impact on marketing of the e-revolution. Using real-life examples of

good and bad marketing practice to provide insights and warnings, this

book covers:

• how to conduct a market audit;

• developing a marketing plan;

• writing a marketing plan;

• segmenting your market;

• marketing and the e-revolution;

• strategies in the marketing mix;

• delivering value.

The If You’re So Brilliant… Series

Series Editor: Peter Cheverton

IYSB: How Come You Can't Identify Your Key Customers?

IYSB: How Come You Don't Have an E-strategy?

IYSB: How Come You Don't Understand Your Accountant?

IYSB: How Come Your Brand Isn't Working Hard Enough?

IYSB: How Come Your Marketing Plans Aren't Working?

A provocative and challenging new series that tackles the major ‘blind spots’:

• fast but not quick-fix;

• more ‘why aren't you?’ than ‘how to’;

• definitely not for the faint-hearted novice, but for all thinking profes￾sionals who want a short, sharp boost to their business skills.

The above titles are available from all good bookshops. To obtain further

information, please contact the publisher at the address below:

Kogan Page Limited

120 Pentonville Road

London N1 9JN

United Kingdom

Tel: +44 (0) 20 7278 0433

Fax: +44 (0) 20 7837 6348

www.kogan-page.co.uk

xii

And it was all going so very well…

1

Have you ever found yourself in front of a new customer and, after 10

minutes of conversation, realized that you are speaking to the wrong

person?

It could be all sorts of things that are wrong – too junior, too new, too

hung up about your price rather than your value.

And worse, you’re starting to think you know who the right person is,

but try going behind your first contact now and they’ll cut you off at the

knees.

If nothing like that has ever happened to you then maybe it’s because you

plan your sales calls well, or maybe you’re just lucky. . . unlike Ken Reilly.

Ken Reilly is in the chemical business. The products he sells are far from

the cheapest, but he knows they are the best. His customers are mostly

manufacturers of high-quality goods, and most of them rate Ken’s products

highly. Ken is new, and he’s learning, but sometimes it’s the hard way.

What makes Ken’s products so good is the money they save the customer.

They make the customer’s process faster, they reduce wastage and they

reduce harmful emissions. A dream sell, if you know how to go about it –

meaning, whom to see and what to say.

Ken is calling on a new customer – a potential key account. He doesn’t

know the people at all, but he has managed to make an appointment with

one of the buying team. He puts that down to his persuasive skills with

secretaries and, of course, his natural charm.

He’s led into a small office; the walls are bare, the carpet is frayed and the

desk has been the site of a hundred spilt coffees – but that is not the real

problem. The real problem is the buyer, a nice enough man, but the wrong

man.

Ken has been talking for 10 minutes, and he’s getting nowhere. The buyer

is writing things down but, for all Ken can tell, it might be the man’s

shopping list, or a letter to his mother.

This is a junior buyer, a very junior buyer. He has been with the company

for three months, knows next to nothing about the business, still less about

manufacturing, and spends most of his time, or so it seems, meeting sales￾people who leave him their brochures.

Ken realizes that all this buyer sees is an expensive product – 20 per cent

higher than their existing suppliers. He also realizes that he should be

talking to someone else – perhaps a more senior buyer who would under￾stand the proposition, or maybe someone on the plant who needs his kind of

help, but how can he go past his current contact? He can’t just ask to see the

boss.

The interview is coming to an end, and the buyer makes a suggestion.

‘Why don’t you look me up again, in six months, once I’ve got my feet

under the table a little bit?’

Six months! He could be out of a job by then.

‘Perhaps I could see someone on the plant, someone who might…’ but

Ken’s voice tailed off as the buyer got to his feet.

‘Oh no, they’re very busy down there, and we can’t have reps running

about the place. I’ll see you in six months.’

And that was final.

Key account management

2