What Does a Key Account Manager Do?

Key account marketing is a series of marketing combinations targeted at key customers. Large customers are relative to ordinary consumers, generally referring to corporate customers or channel dealers, whose value is relatively large, and requires one-to-one customer management and marketing strategy implementation.

Key Account Marketing

Key account marketing is a series of marketing combinations targeted at key customers. Large customers are relative to ordinary consumers, generally referring to corporate customers or channel dealers, whose value is relatively large, and requires one-to-one customer management and marketing strategy implementation.

Chinese name

Key Account Marketing

Is for

A range of marketing portfolios for key customers

Relative to

For the average consumer

Generally refers to

Is an enterprise customer or channel dealer

Key accounts (Key Account / KA, also known as key accounts, major customers,

One-to-one marketing strategy

Personalized marketing strategy

First, you need to understand

Key account marketing is different from ordinary marketing. It is much more complicated than ordinary marketing. Given the characteristics of large account marketing projects, large customer participation, and long customer decision cycles, this determines its difficulty. . Mr. Su, is there a general principle in key account marketing to regulate the behavior of key account managers?

Key account sales are known for their complexity and influencing factors. But excluding a lot of objective factors, the subjective success factor of big customer sales is actually very simple: it depends on sales attitude and sales skills. Here, I summarized some mistakes in sales for reference.

Can't really listen

Novice salesmen are used to using a lot of narrative to ease the tension and anxiety in sales, or they mistake the customer's silence as acceptance and endlessly. So listening is easily overlooked in sales. Excessive statements can easily arouse the customer's dislike, on the other hand, they also lose the opportunity to obtain internal information of the customer. It's even worse if you make a lot of mistakes and disclose information that should not be leaked.

According to statistics from many professional sales research institutions, in a sales activity that makes people feel at ease, customers should spend about twice as long as sales. This is relatively easy to form a good communication atmosphere, and helps sales to tap customer needs.

Eager to introduce the product

The most likely result of "rush to introduce the product" is to say the wrong thing to the wrong person at the wrong time. We often see that sales and the first person to answer the phone or touting the features and advantages of their products, regardless of whether or not this person has an influence on purchasing decisions.

We know that different functional departments and different levels of people in the client organization have different key purchasing factors that they focus on. The finance department is most concerned about the purchase price, the technology department is most concerned about the advanced nature and compatibility of the technology, the user department is most concerned about whether it is convenient to use, and the operation and maintenance department is most concerned about the stability and failure rate of the operation. And after sales service. Even the same level of people in the same department, their most important factors are different. For example, for the purchase of laptops, some people prefer thin and light, easy to carry

100% customer satisfaction

In the previous market competition, companies often formed a corporate culture with the sole purpose of maximizing the company's own interests. This corporate culture is because it can effectively make the company's various resources around how the company can obtain more profits. Promoted the development of the enterprise for a long time. Therefore, taking profit as the sole goal has become the golden rule of the enterprise. Under the guidance of this ideology, many enterprises consciously or unconsciously damage the interests of customers in order to obtain profits, resulting in low customer satisfaction and loyalty. In key account marketing strategy, we regard key customers as important assets of the company. Therefore, companies should pay more attention to customer satisfaction, customer loyalty and customer retention. After the company has many loyal customers, it will continue to upgrade related services. At the same time that the customer has been 100% satisfied, the company has also achieved great profits, truly achieving a win-win situation for both the customer and the company.

Integration of foreground and background resources

Under the specific economic environment and management background of traditional enterprises, the focus of enterprise management is on internal resource management, that is, the background part of enterprise management. For the front-end part, which directly faces external resources that are mainly customer-oriented, there is a lack of corresponding management. In the marketing strategy of major customers, it is necessary to pay attention to the use of front-end resources, and require companies to focus on the five operating elements of marketing, production research and development, technical support, finance, and internal management. , To achieve comprehensive management of front-end resources and background resources.

One-to-one marketing strategy

With the continuous accumulation of social wealth, people's consumption concepts have transitioned from the era of rational consumption in the pursuit of quality and cheapness to the era of emotional consumption. One of the most prominent characteristics of the era of emotional consumption is that consumers are more in pursuit of consumption. A kind of fulfillment of the soul, the pursuit of a kind of individuality. Therefore, if an enterprise wants to win more customers, it must be able to provide personalized products and services to large customers to meet the needs of different types of groups. For example, for pipeline natural gas, for different large customers, real estate developers need to be profitable and resident. Central agencies need convenience. To achieve the transformation from traditional large-scale culture to one-to-one culture. Such as the mobile company's virtual network for different group units, banks' customized financial management services for large customers, etc.

Make the most of your social capital

Customers become the arteries of corporate development. When this unique asset of the customer conflicts with other assets, the enterprise should retain the customer's assets. Because customer assets will bring long-term effects to the company, as long as she is continuously given sufficient satisfaction. By implementing the marketing strategy of key accounts, the reputation of key customers and its social network, the company further optimizes the management of corporate customer resources, thereby maximizing customer value.

Cultivate a corporate culture centered on large customers

Key account strategy is defined as how a company establishes and manages key accounts. A key account strategy includes at least four elements: (1) customer understanding; (2) customer competition; (3) customer affinity; (4) customer management. A customer strategy must be able to answer: Who are the customers? What do customers want? How are customers managed? Only with a long-term corporate customer strategy in place can it be possible to form a customer-oriented culture in the company. On the other hand, when implementing customer strategies, enterprises cannot do without organizational change and cultural change.

Key account marketing strategy is based on large markets and serving key customers. Through customized customer solutions and comprehensive services, the interactive platform is used to provide quick and convenient green channels for key customers. The purpose of key customer service is to provide high-quality, efficient, The principle of convenience provides three customers with priority, high quality, and preferential services. The scope of services includes consulting, promotion, acceptance and maintenance of products for major customers. The large customer service center or the large family room serves the large customers on behalf of the company and requests the internal customers, which is the bridge between the company and the large customers.

SPIN means:

Situation question

Background issues: tap into existing customer backgrounds

Problem question

Difficult point: guide customers to understand the implied needs

Implication question

Hint: The urgency to amplify customer demand

NeedPay off question

Demand-benefit issues: reveal the value of your countermeasures to customers

To be precise, SPIN is a set of shallow, deep, guided, heuristic, and associative question-and-answer systems for customers' questions. It starts from some basic questions and leads to the depth of pain. Finally, it asks questions based on the benefits of the product or service Way to solve the problem for customers, note that its characteristics are to guide customers to say their pain points, to guide customers to speak for you the benefits of your solution, rather than the traditional way we are used to A sales representative "sucks" a narrative model of product interests.

The so-called big customers are the customers that the seller considers to be of strategic significance in the market. Key accounts are different from general customers, and key account managers are also different from general salesmen. What big customers value is not how powerful a certain product is, but whether they can need an overall informatization solution. What they need to see is whether they can help him, solve the problems at work, and how much benefit can be generated.

So, what kind of customers are the big customers we need? Is it high sales? Is the gross profit margin high? Is it powerful? Or are our customers with a large area of operation space our big customers? What is the standard for our flexible packaging industry? I don't think there is a standard to judge here. Because although the sales are high and the gross margin is very low, this is not the big customer we need. We concentrated our energy on them, and we could only make a meager profit. Even one day he turned his face and switched to the competition, which is also your strong opponent. Similarly, the gross profit margin is high, but the sales are not low, so the financial strength cannot be my big customer. The author summarizes the steps to find and identify large customers as follows:

1. Determine research goals

Through the collection and analysis of customer data, identify key customers, implement personalized management of key customers, track their services, improve services in a timely manner, and maintain their loyalty.

2. Expand information sources

Resellers should establish multi-channel information sources, such as sales centers, telephones, call centers, e-mails, dealers' web sites, customer forums, etc., to facilitate communication between large customers and dealers.

3. Collection of information from major customers

Collect information from the above sources, including: personal information such as name, gender, age, occupation, address, telephone, email, etc. Including customer purchase frequency, purchase amount, last purchase time, purchase variety, customer bargaining power, focus, purchase habits and other purchase history information.

4. Analysis of key customer information

The analysis of the purchase amount allows dealers to understand the cost of each major customer's investment in the dealer's products or services during the cycle. This indicator is the backbone of all indicators. Mr. Jia Changsong said that in practice, we often use the following methods to identify and screen large customers:

1. With advanced business philosophy;

2. Have good financial reputation;

3. Customers who can provide higher gross profit;

4. Customers whose sales share accounts for most of the share.

These customers are the objects we want to focus on, as well as the customers we want to focus on and serve. I have to remind you that big customers are not static. This year is our big customer, but next year is still our big customer. Small customers can help them become our big customers. In addition, large customers play a decisive role in the size of the company's sales and profits.

According to the theory of American sales scholars Reichhead and Suther, if a company reduces its customer churn rate by 5%, profits can increase by 25% to 85%. Also as Dilbert's Law (80/20 Rule) states, 20% of large customers bring 80% of profits to the company. Therefore, from this point of view, large customers have become the lifeblood of enterprises, especially small and medium-sized enterprises. "Big customers, get the world" has been the consensus of many bosses. Here we mainly discuss a question-how to prevent large customers from sedition? How to stabilize large customers? How to reduce the "customer turnover rate"? The author believes that there are the following points:

I. Investigation

Enterprises can directly determine the satisfaction of major customers through regular surveys. In specific operations, you can randomly select samples from existing large customers, send them questionnaires or call to inquire to understand the large customers' impressions of the company. The tests can be divided into: high satisfaction; general satisfaction; no opinion; some dissatisfaction; extremely dissatisfied. The good reputation of large customers for the company means that the company has created high customer satisfaction, and it is better to understand the major customers' dissatisfaction.

Analysis

Managers can obtain a lot of information from customers who have changed jobs to improve sales. However, due to various reasons such as cultural and psychological factors, many managers are reluctant to understand the real reason for customers to change jobs and cannot really find out what is wrong with sales (In some companies, summing up experiences and lessons may also affect the career of sales managers).

Third, consistent

There is a motto in the United Kingdom that goes well: "There are no permanent friends, no permanent enemies, only permanent interests." Therefore, if managers want to increase the loyalty and reduce the defection rate of big customers, they must start from big From the perspective of customer interests, we make full use of strategies and tactics to solve this problem. According to Mr. Jia Changsong's experience, the measures to prevent major customers' defection can be summarized as: one communication (always maintaining in-depth communication with major customers), and two guarantees (guaranteeing service quality and maximizing benefits).

Fourth, culture

In the course of business operation, the issue of cultural connotation is rarely raised.

From the perspective of competition, the first level of competition is also the most primitive and most common means of competition, that is, price competition, the second level of competition is quality competition, and the third level of competition is cultural competition, cultural competition It should be the highest level of quality competition.

V. Brand

The first of brand management is the problem of the formation of corporate brand. Now a considerable number of companies have begun to pay attention to it. This is also a trend to make consumers identify with the company, identify with the company's brand, and have a close sense of the service of the company. There is a sense of trust so that it can stand up in the market.

In general, key account work refers to collaborative activities that are carried out by cross-functional teams in accordance with certain procedures. The company's large customers may be managed by a strategic customer management team composed of cross-functional personnel, the members of which are fixedly serving a customer and often stay in the customer's convenient office. For example, Procter & Gamble has arranged a strategic account management team to work with staff at Wal-Mart's headquarters in Bentonville, Arkansas. P & G and Wal-Mart have saved tens of billions of dollars in cooperation through cooperation and have increased their gross profit by approximately 11%.

If a company has several or more major customers, it may form a major account management department to operate. Large companies like Xerox usually manage about 250 large customers. In addition to the key account representatives, Xerox also arranges a centralized executive officer for each major client. The centralized executive officer maintains a close relationship with the executives of the client company. In a typical key account management department, each key account manager manages an average of 9 key accounts. Key account managers report to the national sales manager. National sales managers report to the vice president of sales and sales. The vice president reports to the CEO.

In short, key account management is not only a sales management method, but also a concept of customer sales. It will become more and more important in the management of the company. No matter who it is, it should pay attention to key account management. With the increasingly fierce market competition and abnormal market environment changes, the company's business can develop better only by fully grasping its major customers. In the future competition, it can be foreseen that key account management will become the most important strategic sales method for enterprises.