Key account

Developing key account management

management competences competences

Tony Millman and Kevin Wilson

7
Introduction
In an earlier article published in the Journal of Marketing Practice Vol. 1 No. 1,
entitled: “From key account selling to key account management” (Millman and
Wilson, 1995), we proposed a relational model for the development of key
account management (KAM) over time. This model was based on exploratory
research and identified six stages of development as follows:
(1) pre-KAM;
(2) early-KAM;
(3) mid-KAM;
(4) partnership KAM;
(5) synergistic KAM;
(6) uncoupling KAM.
Our title was chosen to capture the essence of relational development after
noting a discernible shift from the relatively narrow focus of key account selling
to the broader, complex and more demanding requirements of key account
management. Further, we associated this shift with a process of strategic
realignment, expressed as a requirement on the part of the selling company to
address three orders of customer need – product need, process need, and
facilitation need (Wilson and Croom-Morgan, 1993). Facilitation need was
described as “the way in which business is done”, rooted in joint problem
resolution and mutual adaptation.
That we observed selling companies finding this shift problematic is hardly
surprising, although we did identify some of the critical issues arising in selling
companies setting their sights on the moving target of KAM best-practice.
Prominent among these issues were:
• the definition of key accounts;
• the receptivity of both buyers and sellers to KAM and their differing
perceptions of what partnership entails;
• buyer/seller strategic and operational fit; and
• the implications for management practice.
Subsequent research and observations have reinforced the importance of these Journal of Marketing Practice:
issues and have enabled us to refocus our work towards organizational and Applied Marketing Science, Vol. 2
No. 2, 1996, pp. 7-22. © MCB
managerial competences. University Press, 1355-2538
JMP: This article, therefore, addresses the development of key account managers
AMS and is based on our combined experience in three interrelated areas:
2,2 (1) empirical research in the field of industrial sales management in 12
selling companies (sales turnover below £100 million);
(2) a subset of ten buyer/seller dyads, which form part of a larger ongoing
8 empirical study of KAM systems in multinational companies; and
(3) “action research” involving over 130 account managers participating in a
series of in-company management development programmes.
Empirical research primarily involved conducting in-depth interviews with
senior managers in a judgemental sample of ten companies in which managers
in the selling companies believed that they had reached a mature stage of KAM
systems development.

What is a key account?

Our definition of a key account is that of a customer deemed to be of strategic
importance by the selling company (Millman and Wilson, 1995).
We offer this simple definition in the knowledge that it is gaining wider
currency, although often qualified by managers in ways that suggest
inconsistency and question their meaning. When eliciting managers’
definitions, many described key accounts as:
• “customers that represent large volume business”,
• “customers that fit the 80/20 rule”,
• “any customer with whom we have a close long-term relationship”,
• “any customer where an opportunity or a threat (from the competition)
exists becomes a key account”, and so on.
These kinds of responses tend to suggest that while individual managers view
some customers as “key”, their importance could be transient and tied to
tactical rather than strategic considerations.

Literature review
There is no established body of literature covering the training and
development of key account managers. The vast number of textbooks on
marketing and sales management invariably refer to KAM activities under the
guise of national account management; but this is often rather fleeting coverage
in view of its critical importance to company performance, and the approach
has tended to be largely descriptive (e.g. Dalrymple and Cron, 1995; Gross et al.,
1993; Hutt and Speh, 1985).
Literature relating specifically to KAM is fragmented, ranging from surveys
carried out by the US National Account Management Association, to
prescriptive books of the “How to do it” variety (e.g. Burnett, 1992), and more
thoughtful process-based approaches with conceptual, analytical and empirical
underpinning (e.g. Araujo and Muzas, 1994; Millman and Wilson, 1995; Pardo,
1994; Pardo et al., 1993). For linkages with management development, it is Key account
necessary to turn to burgeoning literature in the field of management/ management
organizational learning and development (e.g. Garratt, 1990; Gouillart and competences
Kelly, 1995; Senge, 1990).
In the literature on sales management and selling, KAM has its origins in
consultative selling to major accounts in industrial and business-to-business
markets (Melkman, 1979; Miller et al., 1988; Rackham, 1991; Shapiro and Posner 9
1976). Adversarial approaches to negotiation and “winning the sale” pervade
much of the early writing and this continues to be reflected in the course
offerings of some sales training organizations. There are signs that training
providers are introducing relational approaches, especially in the areas of sales
development and systems selling; but most management development
programmes in the sales area await a catalyst to shift thinking and behaviour
from transactional to more collaborative forms of exchange.
Convergence of three perspectives may already be providing the catalyst for
change: relationship marketing, supply partnerships, competence.

Relationship marketing
The concept of relationship marketing has found a receptive audience among
marketing academics and practitioners because it appeals to their intuitive
feeling that long-term relationships are an integral part of the product/service
offering and presents an opportunity to improve customer retention rates
(Christopher et al., 1991; Jackson, 1985; McKenna, 1991; Millman, 1993; Payne,
1995). Emphasis in relationship marketing is now switching from
conceptualization to operationalization, with KAM likely to play an
increasingly important role in customer retention and development strategies in
the latter half of the 1990s (Millman, 1995).

Supply partnerships
The trend towards supply-chain integration and lean supply/manufacturing
has forced buying companies to examine their cost effectiveness, reduce lead
times and find ways of continuously improving efficiency and productivity
(A.T. Kearney, 1994; Lamming, 1993). Supply partnerships have emerged as a
means of stabilizing operations and there is increasing interest in supplier
evaluation, choice and development (Carlisle and Parker, 1989; Cousins, 1992;
Macbeth and Ferguson, 1994; Rajagopal et al., 1995; Sako, 1992; Spekman,
1988).

Competence
The so-called “competence movement” is an approach alluded to in the early
work of Ansoff (1965, 1984) and more recently associated with the work of
Prahalad and Hamel (1990), and Hamel (1994). This aims to define “core”
organizational competences underlying competitive advantage, and is
complemented by attempts to define managerial competences (Boyatzis, 1982;
Burgoyne, 1989; Silver, 1991) and continuing professional development
JMP: programmes (e.g. Chartered Institute of Marketing, 1995; Engineering Council,
AMS 1994; 1995). As will be seen later, standards of key account management
2,2 competence are currently being pioneered in the UK in the form of national
vocational qualifications (see Management Charter Initiative, 1991; Marketing
Standards Board, 1994; Sales Qualification Board, 1995).
From the foregoing it is clear that key account management and supply
10 partnerships can be seen as two sides of the same coin, i.e. the buyer/seller dyad,
embedded in a network of co-operative and competitive relationships which
form the immediate business environment. Understanding the nature of the
buyer/seller relationship and its setting, therefore, becomes as important as
understanding the characteristics of each participant. This has significant
implications for the development of key account managers. Simultaneously, it
raises hopes of a more balanced and integrated view of KAM systems which
increasingly mirrors the principles long advocated by the Industrial Marketing
and Purchasing (IMP) Group of researchers in Europe.

Key account management organizational competences

Competence is a construct-finding application at several levels of aggregation.
The bulk of our action research related to management development
programmes has focused on the organizational (macro) level, at which we have
identified five KAM competences for elaboration in this article. We will then
provide a short critique of current attempts in the UK by the Sales Qualification
Board to identify KAM competences at the managerial/occupational (micro)
level and their incorporation into a national framework of vocational
qualifications.

Strategy formulation/implementation
A recurring theme emerging from our research is that KAM must be driven
strategically and collectively by the top team in the selling company. This
means developing competences in three main areas:
(1) evaluation of the strategic importance of a portfolio of current and
potential key accounts;
(2) formulation/implementation of strategies for each key account which are
consistent with those of the many other customers which are not
designated key accounts and consistent with achieving overall business
objectives; and
(3) allocation of resources to the relational mix appropriate to the stage in
the relational development model outlined earlier.
Most selling companies have a good feel for what constitutes a key account. As
one chief executive in a microelectronics component company put it: “To lose
customer x (one of the top five computer systems companies), permanently or
temporarily, would be unthinkable. We become hysterical if our share of their
purchases falls below 40 per cent”. Surprisingly, his account review procedures
involved little more than a conventional sales analysis and business planning Key account
systems were, at best, rudimentary. management
Key account planning competences were not well-developed in most competences
companies in our sample, irrespective of size. Account plans often resembled
sales plans which target account sales in the short term; together with
indicative cost estimates, profit projections, and a statement of priorities.
Among these items, customer account profitability analysis and activity-based 11
costing offer considerable scope for enhancing the planning process. Alas, it
must be noted that most companies’ internal accounting systems are
unsophisticated and the use of computer-based diagnostic support tools is in its
infancy. Overall, however, the weakness of these companies would seem to lie
less in their inability to treat key accounts as a segment of one and in tailoring
their approach accordingly, and mainly in their lack of a proactive approach to
medium/long-term key account growth and development.

Systems and process design

When a selling company has decided to adopt KAM, it must evolve the
appropriate internal systems and processes. This goes beyond exhortations by
senior managers to become more customer-focused and the appointment of key
account managers. Companies can migrate some way along the key account
relational development continuum by making only minor adaptations to their
organizational infrastructure, but eventually a point is reached when internal
processes, even with the support of information technology and an enormous
amount of goodwill on the part of staff, become strained and external customer
relationships are threatened.
To facilitate relational development from thereon, companies must take the
kind of multi-level multi-functional approaches which transform rather than
merely extend traditional organization structures/processes. This places a high
premium on co-ordination skills and teamwork.
Such changes must encompass the sales function, which has long been
regarded as the “natural home” of major accounts, and the customer
service/support and distribution functions which often need to take a more
prominent and proactive role in achieving customer satisfaction. Indeed, we
observe that, once it has been recognized that the last two functions perform an
important boundary-spanning role, they can provide the catalyst for greater
customer accessibility through end-to-end customer service process redesign.
The tricky question of how far should selling companies “match” their
internal structures, systems and processes with those of their key accounts has
proved to be the most difficult to answer and almost defies generalization. Our
research suggests that the answer probably lies in the trade-off between “core”
processes and achieving flexibility to satisfy bespoke demands of individual
key accounts. This may not seem a startling observation; but it is grounded in
our experience of selling companies exposed to a range of disparate customers,
each with their own idea of what processes underpin a successful supply
relationship. Asymmetry of power between buyer and seller in some industries,
JMP: for example, often results in the imposition of procedures which the weaker
AMS party ignores at their peril. In other industries, closely matching processes with
2,2 those of individual key accounts may be neither possible, nor desirable, given
the latter’s inefficiency or their high propensity to reorganize.

Communication
12 When key account status has been conferred on a customer, there is an implied
promise, and an expectation, of special treatment. The precise nature of this
treatment must be communicated and promoted throughout the selling
company so as to ensure an integrated response. Simultaneously, there is a
much-forgotten requirement for external communication – namely that the
adoption of KAM is a signal of strategic intent to both competitors and
customers that an élite band of customers has been targeted and ground is
being staked out.
Key accounts require a clear picture of which communication channels in the
selling company are open to them, the access points, and for what purpose.
While the key account manager is a major player at the buyer/seller interface, it
must also be recognized that the presence of a human element presents the
opportunity for significant funnelling and filtering of information as well as
vulnerability to relational breakdown (Millman, 1993). Building a web of formal
and informal communication channels, as might be found in the mature stages
of KAM, enhances interaction and reduces the risk of breakdown. Not
surprisingly, we have also found that formal communication via joint planning
exercises, performance review meetings, joint product development, and
regular exchanges of commercial/technical information can greatly strengthen
the bond between buying and selling companies.
An interesting inhibitor to inter- and intraorganizational relationships was
noted early on in our research in the devastating impact of downsizing and
delayering on middle management. Given that these managers occupy the role
of “information broker” in their respective companies and their departure or
relocation creates potential voids in the communication network, it would be
useful to hypothesize a range of detrimental effects on those who survive the
upheaval of lean supply/manufacturing (Millman, 1996).

Building trust and commitment

There is widespread belief among academics and practising managers that co-
operative behaviour is predicated on trust. Nevertheless, as a construct, trust
remains ill-defined and under-researched – probably due to its dynamic nature,
its tendency to be surrounded by emotional connotations and its apparent
dependence on critical events rooted in antecedents (see Huemer, 1994; Morgan
and Hunt, 1994; Young, 1993).
In the context of buyer/seller relations, trust is often portrayed as the seller
earning the trust of the buyer, along the road to the kind of mutual
accommodation and commitment normally associated with the mature stages
of our model. This one-sided process emerged as a salient feature of the KAM
research on buyer/seller dyads. Although our research to-date has been limited Key account
to only ten dyads, trust received the highest number of citations of all relational management
dimensions among buying-company managers and has been conspicuously competences
absent from the citations of selling-company managers.
Trust, often expressed as honesty, openness and integrity, is typically
associated with particular events stretching back over many years. Buyers have
long memories and can often recall individuals and companies who were 13
sympathetic and sensitive to their predicament when times were tough. In
common with earlier IMP work, we have uncovered many “episodes” of this
kind, such as when one buying company was under intense pressure on cash
flow during economic recession and outstanding payments were rescheduled;
and in another buying company which had a production line down and their
supplier of machinery pulled out all the stops to assist them to outsource
manufacture in support of a crucial order. These events over the duration of a
relationship reinforce perceptions of trust/commitment and form strong
relational barriers to entry. The opposite is also true. There is, for example,
tentative evidence of a “negativity bias” in buyer/seller interaction whereby
greater weight is given to a few bad experiences which work against
trust/commitment beyond their economic impact. Case studies 1 and 2, set out
below, are pertinent examples.

Case study 1
A major customer placed a large order for specialized cartons with a small
packaging manufacturer. The agreement was that an order would be completed
over 12 months with deliveries in equal instalments on the first day of each
month. Despite the fact that the salesperson had impressed on manufacturing
the importance of the order and its cumulative effect on turnover, in the first
three months of the contract deliveries were consistent only to the extent that
they were always three weeks late. On investigation it was found that
production planning had repeatedly moved the monthly factory order to the
bottom of the pile. Judged on its own, the monthly order was considered “small”
and set aside to make way for “bigger” orders which they deemed more
important. This had been the traditional way of prioritizing orders. No account
was taken of the potential importance of the customer or the long-term impact
that their actions would have on the business. The order was cancelled in month
four and the customer went elsewhere.

Case study 2
The same small packaging supply company as in case study 1 had been doing
business with a major UK manufacturer of hand tools for over nine years and
enjoyed all that customer’s business. The sales engineer had worked hard to
build the relationship and had enjoyed considerable success. The buyer was so
pleased with the service that when he was approached by a competing
packaging firm he even refused their offer of an alternative quotation.
JMP: “I’ve been doing business with company x for nine years now. They give me
AMS excellent service, good prices and above all I can trust them not to let me down.
2,2 I see no reason to even consider changing supplier”.
The salesperson from the competing supplier, however, ignored what the
buyer said and sent in an estimate anyway. The price quoted was 40 per cent
cheaper than the existing supplier. The buyer investigated the reason for such
14 a large difference and found that in the past year there had been a near halving
in the price of a raw material – corrugated card. Company x had, in his view,
been overcharging him.
“Why didn’t they tell me? We’ve been doing business regularly for nine years
and I thought I could trust them. I wouldn’t have expected them to lower the
price we had agreed for this year, but if the cost of raw materials had stayed low
I would have expected to share the savings with them on the next contract. As
it is they’ve lost all my business. I felt as though I’d gone home and found my
wife in bed with the milkman! I felt that let down about it”.
On investigation, it was found that the buying department in company x had
not informed the salesperson of the new cost savings on raw materials. Their
attitude was that it was the salesperson’s job to sell, their job to secure raw
materials at the lowest possible cost, and customers certainly had no right to be
informed of any changes.

Understanding the customer’s purchasing context

Four competences are relevant to understanding and characterizing the
customer’s purchasing context:
(1) identifying the composition and dynamics of the decision-making unit in
the immediate purchase situation and tracking these over time;
(2) defining the purchase situation (e.g. routine, low involvement; extended
problem solving, high involvement), together with any special
procurement procedures;
(3) assessing the degree of centralization of strategic purchasing decisions
within large groups of customer companies and the extent of integration
across decision-making units, divisions and countries; and
(4) monitoring trends towards globalization of customer industries.
Despite the first two competences being widely acknowledged as important in
business-to-business and industrial marketing, it is clear from our research that
a much deeper knowledge of customers’ value-adding and decision-making
processes is required in order to achieve strategic advantage (Wilson, 1993). The
last two introduce the international dimension, which requires urgent attention
in companies operating in rapidly globalizing industries (e.g. motor vehicles,
computer systems, pharmaceuticals). Managers in several multinational key
accounts in these industries said that they were seeking suppliers who could
provide access to commercial/technical know-how beyond the immediate
supply situation and wished to be plugged in to a regional/global network.
 The main benefit of building these four competences is to prevent surprises Key account
and allow discretion in decision making. Complacency or failure to recognize management
their importance may be to invite competitors to gain a foothold when there is a competences
potential discontinuity in the KAM relationship or change in the external
environment. Anecdotal evidence of discontinuities emerging from our research
is not hard to find, and includes: new product/process introductions, technical
breakthroughs, price changes, specification changes, appointments/ 15
departures of senior executives, and a host of uncontrollable events further
up/down the supply chain. Each of these events raises the spectre of
opportunistic behaviour and tests the robustness of the KAM relationship. Case
study 3 illustrates the precarious position in which some selling companies find
themselves through neglect of customer industry intelligence and delaying
adaptation to external change, and case study 4 traces the exemplary total
customer focus in KAM and building organizational competences.

Case study 3
The machine tool industry exhibits a high degree of internationalization, with
approximately 40-45 per cent of world production entering the export market. It
is also a highly cyclical industry. Although overall concentration is increasing
globally, its products are diverse and there is extensive specialization among
companies and countries.
Company y is a multinational manufacturer of machine tools and automated
assembly equipment, traditionally supplying a wide range of customers in the
engineering and manufacturing industries. It has built an international
reputation for high-quality standard machines and customized flexible
manufacturing/assembly systems. Though it has felt extreme competitive
pressures on price/delivery of standard machines for over a decade, particularly
from the Far East, it has only recently become worried about price sensitivity in
customized systems.
Since the onset of economic recession in 1990, the company’s order mix has
shifted dramatically towards supplying customized versions of standard
machines and sophisticated high value flexible manufacturing/assembly
systems to a smaller number of large multinational customers. During this
period, the composition of the technical team has changed to reflect the
emphasis on systems design and software, whereas the direct salesforce and
service support activities continue to operate in roughly the same way as they
did pre-recession.
The commercial director’s anxiety about future orders is captured in the
following comment in the context of a major customer:
“Motor vehicle component manufacturer z takes a long time to decide what
they want and they buy sporadically. But when they do buy, the order is usually
large and could represent up to 20 or 30 per cent of our sales for the year … The
trouble is, it’s difficult to keep up with their investment programme and
specifications, and I’m never certain precisely when an order will be placed”.
JMP: The commercial director, somewhat belatedly, is considering setting up a key
AMS account management system.
2,2
Case study 4
Marriott International is an $8 billion multinational company operating hotels,
golf courses, contract catering services, business travel services, the Marriott
16 Vacation Club and senior citizen housing in 22 countries.
Key account management initiatives in Marriott began five years ago when
the company noticed the growth in buyer/supplier partnerships in the USA and
recognized that travel and entertainment was the third largest element of
corporate expense and subject to increasing levels of management attention.
Marriott base their KAM process on five guiding principles:
(1) Choose key account customers wisely.
(2) Build customized research into the value proposition.
(3) Lead with learning.
(4) Invest in the customer’s goal-setting process, not yours.
(5) Develop a relationship strategy with high performance values.
Target key accounts are chosen on the basis of profit potential and cultural
synergy, and allocated to a key account manager on the basis of who is closest
to the account. A joint research process is established with the customer which
aims at learning about the customer’s business, gaining customer commitment
to the research and problem resolution process.
Investing in the customer’s goal-setting process adopts a true customer
orientation and not only requires complete understanding of the customer’s
value creation process, but also demands the realignment of systems.
The Marriott relationship strategy is based on teamwork with the customer
in order to develop trust, a sense of purpose through joint leadership and
effective processes in a continuous learning environment.
Information in case study 4 has been provided by Marriott International and
reproduced with permission.

Key account managerial/occupational competences

Over the past decade, various publications have examined the type of
marketing education, training and development underpinning effective
managerial performance (Foxall and Driver, 1982; Marketing Standards Board,
1994; Pickton, 1994; Thomas, 1986). Recommendations have ranged from
comprehensive “wish lists” of traits and attributes required of
“supermanagers”, to genuine attempts to balance transferability against the
mix of knowledge, skills, experience and personal qualities appropriate for
particular jobs in particular organizational/functional contexts. Unfortunately,
despite good intentions initially, the UK managerial competence movement is
cocooning itself in new jargon and administrative bureaucracy, and may be
losing credibility as it struggles with the detail of setting occupational
standards and implementing assessment procedures for national vocational Key account
qualifications. management
The lead body for developing the KAM national vocational qualification is competences
the Sales Qualification Board, which has already introduced sales qualifications
in selling and telephone selling at level 2, selling and sales supervision at level
3, and field sales management at level 4. The new KAM qualification, therefore,
is firmly in the sales camp and will be pitched at level 4 alongside field sales 17
management.
Level 4, it should be noted, is touted as “a junior management qualification”
(Bryan, 1995) and “just below the equivalent of a university degree
qualification” (Sales Qualification Board, 1994). Level 5 is rated as a middle
management qualification which, controversially, has been equated with the
status of membership of chartered professional institutions, thereby
resurrecting the acrimonious debate on “profession versus occupation”.
The Sales Qualification Board (1995) defined the purpose of KAM as: “The
management process to achieve optimal business from a selected group of
identified accounts whose business contributes, or could contribute,
significantly to the achievement of your corporate objectives, present or future”.
The Sales Qualification Board (1994) had previously noted the following
nature of national vocational qualification standards: “Unlike academic
qualifications, vocational qualifications are not based on theoretical knowledge
or the possession of skills or even the ability to undertake a range of different
activities. A vocational standard is a Unit of Competence, which describes the
required ‘outcome’ of a particular occupational activity and is a rounded
achievement worthy of public recognition…”
From the above, it may be observed that while the Sales Qualification Board
has defined KAM in process terms, national vocational qualifications continue
to be couched in terms of outcome.
National vocational qualifications also place a heavy burden on both the
individual’s and employer’s ability to articulate the competences they need and
to put in place the required procedures. The award of these qualifications
typically involves:
• presenting an individual development plan;
• collecting evidence to demonstrate competence, together with witness
reports;
• a reflective statement; and submission to an assessment centre.
Monitoring attainment under these circumstances is a minefield.
The lingering impression gained from the Sales Qualification Board’s draft
functional analysis of KAM (as at May 1995) is of having merely replaced the
names of “sales manager” and “sales plan” with terms such as “key account
manager” and “account plan” respectively. Of the 61 elements in the draft, there
is heavy emphasis on implementation tasks, such as negotiation, presentations,
work allocation, monitoring customer service, etc. The critical competence of
JMP: identifying/evaluating key accounts and characterizing purchasing situations
AMS appears to be subsumed under “identify potential customers and decision
2,2 makers” and “pursue selling opportunities”. Similarly, relationship
management is presumably lost under “create a positive relationship with the
customer”. No elements refer to internal marketing of the KAM concept or to the
international dimension.
18 In summary, the Sales Qualification Board’s approach resembles some of the
mechanistic approaches to job analysis and sales training reminiscent of the
1960s and 1970s. Do we detect the invisible hand of vested interests in sales
training organizations here? At best, the draft is a highly-codified partial view,
which leaves a large residual of “soft” competence issues, such as creativity,
entrepreneurialism, learning style, cultural awareness, etc., with little
recognition that beliefs about managerial competence within companies are
conditioned by perceptions of self-image, career prospects, reward structures,
political behaviour, etc.

An agenda for future research

The following selected topics offer scope for research in the field of key account
management:
• Evaluating KAM organizational processes, techniques and skills in
support of strategy development (e.g. strategic account planning,
account portfolio diagnosis, account service/support benchmarking).
• Assessing the impact of relational and team-based approaches to KAM
on traditional negotiation and selling skills.
• Examination of the trade-offs made by selling companies as they attempt
to match their organization structures and systems to those of their key
accounts.
• Mapping the frequency/quality of interorganizational communication
between buying and selling companies as one or both parties move
towards “lean supply/manufacturing”.
• In-depth longitudinal study of “trust” as the basis of KAM and supply
partnerships.
• Comparative study of KAM managerial/occupational competence
profiles in different industrial/commercial contexts.

Conclusion
The approach to KAM organizational competences outlined in this article is
unashamedly process-based and places emphasis on the organizational/
customer context in which KAM processes are embedded. Case 4, Marriott
Hotels, exemplifies an attempt to build organizational competences and to
adopt a total customer focus in KAM. In the Marriott approach, the KAM team
goes to work for the customer!
 Each of the five organizational competences we have identified requires Key account
further attention to capture the proprietary nature of “distinctive competence” management
underlying competitive advantage and to inform/direct the process of human
resource development. The challenge lies in the need to maintain a holistic view
competences
of KAM competence and in knowing the limits of disaggregation beyond which
there are diminishing returns. We would not pretend that translation of core
competences into transferable managerial/occupational competences and 19
measurable outcomes is anything other than an onerous task.
Our concern is that the UK occupational competence movement is ploughing
ahead with insufficient thought to:
• higher orders of KAM competence at the team, organizational and
professional levels;
• elements of KAM competence influenced by the general state of maturity
of the industry and the position of selling companies on the relational
development cycle; and
• the danger that the contribution of KAM activities may be grossly
undervalued.
Our scathing criticism of the draft national vocational qualification should not
be regarded as denigrating the role of sales management and selling skills in
KAM. Many selling companies continue to rate these highly in their recruitment
criteria and much of the content of the draft vocational qualification reflects
industry thinking. Take, for example, the case of Sony, who recently advertised
for a national accounts manager, requesting applicants possessing the
following personal qualities: “You’ll be a tough, assertive negotiator with the
persuasive skills to bring customers round to your way of thinking, and at the
same time be able to build strong, long-term business relationships”. The extent
to which these qualities are appropriate outside Sony’s customer base and can
be reconciled with “mutuality” in the new age of partnership, is a moot point.
Nevertheless, our stance on KAM in this article is clear. We have argued that
KAM should be regarded as an activity carrying responsibilities and requiring
competences closer to the general management function or senior marketing
function, in preference to its current location in sales. Consequently, we
recommend that the draft national vocational qualification in key account
management should be renamed “Key accounting selling” or “Sales to major
customers” at level 4, and a new marketing management national vocational
qualification in key account management aimed at level 5. Even if this
recommendation were to be accepted, it is envisaged that key account
management would still require a complementary programme of continuing
professional development to ensure best-practice.
References and further reading
Ansoff, H.I. (1965), Corporate Strategy, Penguin Books, Harmondsworth, Middlesex.
Ansoff, H.I. (1984), Implanting Strategic Management, Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ.
JMP: Araujo, L. and Muzas, S. (1994), Key Account Business Development, Tenth Annual Industrial
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(Tony Millman is Professor of International Business and Marketing at The University of

Buckingham School of Business, UK. Kevin Wilson is Principal Lecturer in Marketing at Sheffield
Business School, UK.)