Customer relationships and key-account management

The salesforce is a major – and in many cases, the largest – part of B2B marketing budgets. Frequently, salespeople spend relatively little time actually selling, and a great deal of time doing administrative tasks, traveling between appointments, and so forth. This means that much sales management effort is directed toward ensuring that the salespeople spend as little time on administration as possible and are effective when they are in front of a customer. Key-account managers take the relationship a step further. They establish long-term relationships with customers at many levels, and often never meet the actual decision-makers. Key-account managers play the long game, building up from initial contacts: this is essential since they are dealing with very large order values or very important strategic decisions for the customer. The key points from this chapter are as follows: Relationships between firms operate at many levels. Conflict is not necessarily a bad thing: it often leads to creative solutions. Trust and person-to-person relationships are essential components of successful business-to-business relationships. Selling is about solving problems for customers, not about persuasion. Selling may not belong in the communications mix at all. Salespeople often identify with customers. After-sales activities are essential but are often neglected. Techniques used in small-scale accounts are counterproductive in key-account selling – and vice versa; the same is true of management techniques. Commission is a way of ensuring fairness: it is probably not a strong motivator.