Four Important Rules for Key Account Management

Key (or Strategic, or Global) Account Management is a complex process managed by highly skilled professionals in many industries. Here are four rules that I have learned are essential to a successful account Management Program.

1. Treat your customer as they want to be treated, not as you want to be treated, or as you want to treat them. This requires that you understand their drivers, culture, and needs.

2. The customer is not always right … that may be why they hired you.

3. Don’t do something for, or sell something to a customer if you know it’s wrong for them.
• Don’t let your sales teams ruin a long term relationship to win a deal for this quarter.

4. Be accountable to your customer and hold your customer accountable to their organization and your relationship.

• When you have to go to the contract, recognize you are in a problem zone. Not that you shouldn’t, but understand it is a red flag. When you are assigned a new customer, read and thoroughly digest the contract, and build some crib notes on key SLAs, billing information, and governance plans. Then put it in a drawer and work hard to never have to bring it out in anger.

• It is personal. Saying "it’s just business" doesn’t cut it. All strong business relationships have a personal element… some more than others. We don’t deal with companies or departments, we deal with people. Success and failure reflect on the people not the department. If you intend to keep your customer for a long time … for life, you have to keep the best interest of your customer at the forefront of your thinking.