Whether you’re looking for a new challenge or need to understand who you’re hiring to manage your accounts -you’re in the right place. Key account management requires various skills. From closing sales to nurturing relationships, excellent communication skills and market expertise. But it doesn’t stop there. Below, we’ve outlined the 9 attributes of a successful key account manager.
Everything to Know About the Key Accounts Manager
What is Key Account Management?
Key account management, or strategic account management, is a long-term strategy for delivering significant value to “key accounts.” It’s a systematic approach to managing, retaining, and growing your most valuable customers. As well as maximizing mutual value alongside achieving mutually beneficial business goals.
When key account management is effective, it can be an even more profitable investment than creating new sales. Your “key accounts” are the clients who bring in most of your revenue growth.
As the saying goes, “80% of your revenue comes from 20% of your clients.” So, it’s essential to ensure that the 20% is well taken care of to generate long-term revenue.
Key Account Management Vs Account Management
In short, while both roles involve managing customer accounts, Key Account Management involves deeper engagement, strategic planning, and collaboration with a select group of crucial clients.
Let’s explore their differences:
Key Account Management (KAM) and Account Management are two distinct approaches to managing customer relationships within a business setting. While they share similarities, they differ in their strategic focus and scope.
Account Management typically involves overseeing a portfolio of clients or customer accounts, ensuring top-notch customer service and satisfaction, and maximizing sales opportunities.
On the other hand, Key Account Management focuses on a select group of strategic accounts that generate significant revenue and have high growth potential.
KAM entails building long-term partnerships, understanding the unique needs of key clients, and developing tailored strategies to meet their specific requirements.
The primary objective of Key Account Management is to foster mutually beneficial relationships that drive customer loyalty, retention, and substantial business growth.
It requires a more personalized and strategic approach compared to the broader customer management approach of Account Management.
Key Account Manager vs Account Manager: So What’s the Difference?
Although the skills and responsibilities of traditional account managers and KAMs are mostly the same, the roles are different.
Key account managers have a lot more at stake than account managers. They work with high-revenue clients to build and maintain relationships. Both roles focus on post-sale relationships and repeat sales, yet the account manager usually deals with smaller revenue.
Next, the account manager will treat every customer the same. In contrast, the key account manager must know how to customize products for each customer’s unique needs. Since the key accounts bring most of the revenue, the KAM needs to understand their customer’s company. As a result, they offer products and services to fit those needs.
The main difference between an account manager and a key account manager is their responsibilities in the sales process. The key account manager has more to lose (and gain) than a traditional account manager.
Why is Key Account Management Important?
Revenue generation is the lifeblood of any organization. As a result, Key Account Management seeks to increase revenue by retaining top-earning accounts.
Moreover, KAM’s importance links to the 80–20 Principle. This suggests that 20% of your accounts are responsible for 80% of the outcome (revenue.) This fact is true for most companies. Yet, there are a lot more reasons to focus on key account management; discover the benefits below:
- Increases customer satisfaction: Not only do satisfied customers become repeat and loyal ones, but they recommend your products and services to their peers and other industry connections.
- Helps gain competitive advantage in the marketplace: By building strong relationships with key accounts, KAM provides a strategic advantage to businesses over their competitors, which leads to superior financial performance.
- Increases lifetime customer value: The more value you show to your customers, the more they’re willing to invest in your relationship.
- Builds better customer relationships: By getting to know your customers, you’ll build trust and better relationships, allowing you to meet their needs and solve their problems easily.
What Does a Key Account Manager Do?
Some business accounts will always be more valuable than others. Most organizations usually use a Key Account Manager (KAM) to manage these accounts. They’re skillful, personable individuals who ensure key customers stay loyal to your business.
A typical Key Account Manager’s role is to build long-term relationships with valuable accounts and turn buyers into business partners. They keep top customers by nurturing relationships over time, usually by providing dedicated resources, unique offers, and periodic meetings.
Over time, they become strategic advisors to the customer. Working to discover new opportunities to work together for mutual benefit.
But, they are not only responsible for sales. They’re also for planning and managing the entire relationship between the company and customers. Key account management is a more profitable investment than chasing new sales when done well.
As a result, they are often one of the company’s most valuable investments. Hence, why is their compensation often reflected in this?
Also read: A Guide To The Key Account Planning Process
The 6 Roles of Key Account Management
Aside from the blanket definition, account managers must fulfill several roles to keep and grow key accounts. Below are examples of the roles they need to play for successful key account management:
1. Results Driver: All successful KAMs strive for growth and are often anxious to drive things along to see and achieve the result. They’re obsessive about growing accounts and really don’t need to have the fire lit under them to make things happen.
2. Relationship Leader: Successful KAMs are relationship leaders who create and strengthen relationships while helping defend against competitor intrusions.
3. Visionary: Also known as innovators, visionaries must articulate what changes your company can create for clients and the value they can co-create with clients.
4. Collaborators: Internal team builders that create bridges of trust and help to involve the right people at the right time to produce the most favorable outcome.
5. Technical Expert: Helps technical buyers understand new ideas by facilitating deep-dive solution discussions.
6. Project Manager: Organising the process of capturing revenue from the account by getting the necessary resources in place and formulating an account plan alongside tracking actions and their outcomes.
9 Must-Have Key Account Management Skills
To be a successful key account manager, it’s important to be knowledgeable, efficient, and a great communicator. Here are the 9 attributes you should have to succeed in this role.
1. Expert Communication Skills
The top soft skill any key account must have is excellent communication abilities. So, if you’re an expert communicator, you will make a great key account manager. Anyone in this sales role needs to have a knack for verbal and non-verbal communication to interpret how the conversation is going.
They must also be comfortable addressing the C-suite and be confident in their company and demeanor, as they often work directly with other business executives. Moreover, because Key Account Management is a process that doesn’t just include sales, KAMs will have to liaise with other departments to meet customer expectations across the board.
If your confidence or communication skills are lacking, it’s a good idea to improve them to succeed.
2. Market Expertise
If you’re going to be a successful liaison between your major customers and your company, you must know how to help your customers.
Think about it this way. If you were purchasing a product and your primary contact had no idea what you were talking about. Would you continue to use that company? Most likely not.
Hence, you must master your industry and ensure you know the ins and outs of your company and your clients to help keep these accounts long-term. Since key accounts are usually customized clients, knowing what they are all about is essential. That way, you can offer products that might better suit their needs.
3. Strategic Perspective
The ability to strategize is where the responsibilities of Key Account managers and Account managers differ. Account managers focus on short-term gains.
In comparison, Key Account managers create strategies. Those that promote long-term revenue by retaining customers.
KAMs juggle many moving parts to orchestrate deals with long-term plans. They do so by identifying beneficial arrangements between their company and the clients.
As a result, most salespeople aren’t the best fit for Key Account Management positions. While selling skills are essential, KAMs must prioritize long-term relationships rather than prioritizing opportunities over short-term gains.
Also read: How to Work with Channel Partners to Maximise Sales Volume
4. Leadership Skills
Key Account Managers are visionaries. They don’t only envision different products and services for their clients. They keep everyone in the organization excited about what’s possible.
That’s why individuals in these roles need to create an environment of respect between their company, clients, and staff. Yet to do this, they must have impeccable leadership skills.
Did you know that there are eight types of leadership styles? We’ve curated a summary of each type of leadership style – check it out now to find out what type of leader you are!
5. Masterful Negotiators
The ultimate goal of any successful KAM is to build the lifetime value of their customers. To achieve this, they must have honed negotiation tactics and know the ins and outs of closing a deal.
A significant detail, as you will need to ensure that your key account manager can close deals that benefit both parties.
Overall, this requires understanding the importance of an adequately timed offer, persuasive presentation skills, and the confidence to push forward or fall back with a sale
6. Value Providers
Customers want to know that they are getting the best deal possible. So it’s crucial to offer them a deal they can’t refuse.
While ensuring that they know they are getting the best deal possible, of course. Statistically, customers you can sell on value are 25% more likely to be repeat customers.
Hence Key Account managers should understand your industry and business, otherwise, they won’t be able to communicate why the product they offer is the best deal. More so, be able to back it up with facts and statistics to drive their point home).
7. Relationship Savvy
Key Account managers’ primary focus is building an intricate web of relationships. One between the client’s people and their company.
Hence, they are incredibly socially savvy and understand when to lead relationship development. But also know when to leave it to another professional.
Moreover, key account managers understand that partnering is the highest quality selling relationship and know that success depends on the following:
- A relationship is born on shared values
- Everyone clearly understands the purpose of the partnership and is committed to the vision
- Shifting their approach from selling to supporting
8. Lifelong Learners
All successful key account managers should have a keen appetite for learning. However, key account managers understand that markets, industries, and trends constantly change.
As a result, becoming more complex and creating a competitive landscape that requires constant learning to keep up.
For this reason, they’re always open to ideas of training and development in the workplace – creating even more trust and respect from others who see they are consistently improving their abilities. That’s why you’ll often find these lifelong learners looking for opportunities to improve in areas they have identified as necessary.
9. Results-Oriented
Successful key account managers are laser-focused on the end goal -getting results for the customer. For this reason, they often possess a “fail fast” mentality to ensure they are always ahead of customer expectations.
To achieve their goals, they must coordinate multiple resources to reach the decided-upon outcome – and will often take the blame for failures and give credit to their team for successes because they prefer results over inflating their ego.
Also read:
- Why Relationship Selling Is Essential For Increasing Sales
- 9 Tips For Developing An Effective Follow-Up Sales Cadence
- Building a Referral Network: How To Generate Leads Using Connections
Tips to Landing The Role of a Key Accounts Manager
Becoming a Key Accounts Manager takes dedication and skill. You can earn a bachelor’s degree in business or a related field to gain the necessary knowledge. Next, you can dive into account management through an internship, where you learn the ropes and apply your skills in a real-world setting.
As you gain experience, you can work your way up from a Junior Account Manager, developing important industry connections along the way. Success in this role comes from building and sustaining long-term business relationships and consistently meeting or exceeding business targets. With a strong track record and a portfolio of satisfied clients, you can advance in your career, possibly reaching senior positions like Vice President of Sales.
How to Improve Key Account Management Skills
Clearly, developing and improving your key account management skills is crucial for effectively managing and nurturing your most valuable client relationships.
With that said, here are some steps you can take to enhance your key account management skills:
- Develop a strategic account plan: Create a comprehensive account plan for each key account, outlining the objectives, strategies, and actions needed to drive growth and strengthen the relationship. Continuously update and refine your plan based on evolving circumstances.
- Be proactive:Â Anticipate your customers’ needs and proactively offer solutions and value-added services. Stay updated on industry trends and provide relevant insights and recommendations to help your accounts stay ahead.
- Collaborate internally: Work closely with other departments in your organization, such as sales, marketing, and customer support, to ensure a seamless and coordinated approach to serving your key accounts. Foster a culture of collaboration to deliver exceptional customer experiences.
- Customer success mindset: Adopt a customer success mindset, focusing on achieving long-term customer satisfaction and retention rather than just closing deals. Regularly review and measure customer satisfaction and address any concerns or issues promptly.
- Practice continuous learning: Stay updated on industry trends, best practices, and new technologies related to key account management. Attend relevant conferences, participate in webinars, read industry publications, and seek opportunities for professional development.
- Seek feedback: Regularly seek feedback from your key accounts to understand their perception of your performance. Use this feedback to identify areas for improvement and take necessary actions to enhance your skills and better meet their needs.
- Embrace a growth mindset: Maintain a positive attitude, be open to learning from mistakes, and continually seek opportunities to grow and improve as a key account manager. Embrace challenges as learning experiences and use them to refine your approach.
Grow Valuable Accounts to Protect Your Competitive Market Advantage with SOCO®
Key Account Management training supports account managers in developing the application skills needed to review and grow their most valuable accounts systematically while also helping them create actionable plans to cultivate long-term relationships as trusted advisors who provide immediate, measurable, sustainable business results to key clients.
