Key Account Management and Planning: The Comprehensive Handbook for Managing Your Compa - Softcover

Capon, Noel

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1451624239 ISBN 13: 9781451624236

Verlag: Free Press, 2001

Inhaltsangabe

The vastly increased level of competitive intensity faced by corporations and the increased costs of selling have radically changed the nature of the traditional selling process. Key or "strategic" accounts have now become a company's most important asset, in some cases supplying in excess of 80 percent of a firm's revenues. Here, in one powerful volume, key account management expert Noel Capon provides the most comprehensive treatment of key account management and planning yet published.

For the first time, Capon introduces his breakthrough four-part "congruence model" of key account management -- a new, thoroughly researched approach to optimally managing your key account portfolio. First, the author shows how to select and conceptualize the key account portfolio; second, how to organize and manage key accounts; third, how to recruit, select, train, retain, and reward key account managers; and fourth, how to formulate and execute strategy and issues of coordination and control. This congruence model serves as a backdrop as Capon takes the reader step-by-step through the vital functions of key account management including identifying key account criteria, considering the threats and opportunities for the key account, and understanding the roles and responsibilities of critical players. Capon backs up his points with extensive research, real-life stories of successes and failures at a variety of companies, and clarifying figures. Special chapters are devoted to partnering with key accounts and in-depth information on global key account management, an increasingly important weapon for staying ahead of the competition.

Timely, important, and essential, Key Account Management and Planning is the only reference handbook those with key account responsibilities will ever need.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Noel Capon is the R.C. Kopf Professor of International Marketing and consults to leading companies throughout the world. Professor Capon is one of the world's leading experts on key account management. He has published more than eighty articles, book chapters, and books and won the Chazen International Innovation Prize in 1996. He has taught in France, Hong Kong, and the People's Republic of China.

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Chapter One: The Rationale for Key Account Management

On August 21, 1998, it was announced that telecommunications supplier Ciena would not be receiving an expected $100 million worth of business from key account AT&T. As a direct result of this news, Ciena's stock price plunged 45%, from $56.78 to $31.25. On August 28, a planned merger between Ciena and Tellabs based on a one-for-one stock swap that valued Ciena at $7.3 billion was being renegotiated at $4.7 billion. Shortly afterwards, Ciena announced the loss of a $25 million sale to key account Digital Teleport. On September 14, the merger was abandoned with Ciena's share price at $13.19.

On January 4, 2000, General Motors announced that it was ceasing participation in B2B auctions managed by Freemarkets Inc. Freemarkets' share price dropped from a high of $370 that week to $164, two weeks later.

In August 2000, AT&T's stock price hit a fifty-two-week low. An article in The Wall Street Journal attributed the decline to problems in the Business Services Group, responsible for over half of AT&T's 1999 revenues and profits. Among the causes: lack of service to major customers in part due to severe downsizing and layoffs to meet short-term profit targets.

Securing and retaining customers is increasingly recognized as the fundamental requirement for improving shareholder value, the primary objective for many corporations around the world. All firms develop their own methods of communicating with customers, but typically in business-to-business marketing, an on-the-road sales force is a critical element in this process. However, in recent years significant pressure has been placed upon the traditional sales force system. As powerful forces have raised the perceived importance of sales and customer management, many firms are reevaluating their sales force processes. As a result, the traditional sales force system is fragmenting and many corporations are developing key account management programs as a new way of organizational life.

In this chapter, we discuss traditional communication systems, the pressures facing them, and the nature of the resulting fragmentation. We see that the development of key account management is a natural response to these pressures, with benefits for both supplier firms and key accounts. We also raise a series of cautions. Finally we present a structure for guiding those firms wishing to invest in key account management; this also doubles as the structure of the book.

ORGANIZATIONAL OBJECTIVES

The critical objective for most publicly held corporations is increased shareholder value. To increase shareholder value, the organization must survive and grow. However, survival and growth are possible only if the firm both makes profits today and is perceived as likely to make profits tomorrow. Profits are earned only when the firm outperforms its competitors in securing and retaining customers.

Over the years, corporations have developed numerous forms of nonpersonal and interpersonal communications in attempts to influence both the purchase and recommendation behavior of current and potential customers. Nonpersonal communication embraces such methods as advertising, direct mail, publicity and public relations, and, more recently, the Internet, in which an individual or group within the firm typically controls the firm's message. Interpersonal communication, by contrast, has traditionally been largely under the control of individual sales representatives. In many industries, the sales force is the principal vehicle for contact between the supplier firm and its customers, and has historically enjoyed the sole responsibility for managing long-term customer relationships.

THE TRADITIONAL SALES FORCE SYSTEM

The traditional sales force system typically comprises a hierarchical organization in which a number of "on-the-road" salespeople report to a first-line sales manager. First-line managers in turn report to more senior managers, for example, regional or zone, ultimately to a national sales manager. The number of managerial levels varies from firm to firm and depends on such factors as sales force size and management's philosophy regarding decentralization and salesperson empowerment. In recent years, downsizing efforts have led to increases in managerial spans of control and a flattening of the hierarchy in many sales organizations.

Furthermore, in any particular sales force, the responsibilities of individual salespeople differ according to whether or not they are specialized in their tasks and the type and degree of specialization -- for example, by product, market segment, channel member, or maintenance-new business. Specialization often makes more effective use of individual salespeople but also leads to reduced flexibility and increased sales force costs. The decision of whether or not to specialize the sales force and what form of specialization to employ is typically governed by judgments regarding the balance of effectiveness benefits versus increased costs. Several major options are available for organizing the sales force:

Geography. The simplest and most cost efficient way of organizing the sales force is geographically. Individual salespeople are responsible for sales of all the firm's products and services, in all applications, to all customers, in a defined geographic area.

Product. In a sales organization specialized by product, an individual salesperson is responsible for the sales of some portion of the firm's (or division's) products, in all applications, to all customers in a defined geographic area. Another salesperson or group of salespersons is typically responsible for sales of some other portion of the firm's products, in all applications, to all customers in the same or an overlapping geographic area.

Market segment. In the market segment-based organization, an individual salesperson is responsible for sales of all the firm's (or division's) products to all customers in a particular market segment, for example, industry or product application. Another salesperson is typically responsible for sales of all the firm's products to all customers in another market segment, in the same or an overlapping geographic area.

Channel member. In the channel member-based organization, one salesperson is responsible for developing and maintaining relationships at a specific level in the channel system, for example, distributors; another salesperson is responsible for developing and maintaining relationships at another level, for example, wholesalers or retailers.

Maintenance/new business. In the maintenance-new business sales organization, a distinction is made between existing versus new accounts. Salespeople responsible for generating sales to new accounts and initiating firm/customer relationships later hand these customers over to a maintenance sales force.

Although these various methods of managing sales force effort have served supplier firms well, increased competition is giving rise to a series of pressures that is transforming this traditional system into a new system for managing firm/customer relationships.

Pressures on the Traditional Sales Force System

We conceptualize pressures on the traditional sales force system as comprising three types: increased competition, internal pressures from the firm's sales organization, and pressures from customers.

Increased Competition

Today, virtually all business organizations around the world face vastly increased levels of competition, making the task of securing and retaining customers ever more difficult. Competition has grown in both depth and scope as separate national economies have become more closely integrated. These linkages have...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Free Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2001
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1451624239
• ISBN 13: 9781451624236
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 482
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Van Ditmar Boeken, VDB Sales; sales@vanditmar.nl; ; Hondiuslaan 44; Utrecht; 3528 AB; Niederlande