The Importance of Good Account Management

Many businesses rely on orders from a small number of clients. This is often particularly true in the capital goods, defence, telecommunications or infrastructure projects sector. How many customers are in the market for a nuclear power plant?
If you are the CEO or VP-Marketing of such a company you need to consider setting up Account Management Teams to focus full-time on the most important customers. If you do not know the strategy, organisation or Cap ex plans of your key accounts you do not know how to position your company and its products to win orders.

Appoint a mature, experienced marketing professional as VP-Account Management, reporting to the VP-Marketing or even the CEO. Yes, the position is that important!
Give him a free hand to choose his team, either from within the company or by recruitment. Check that they are all good communicators and have strong inter-personal skills.
Give them a written job description that your full top management group has bought into.
The job description needs to contain the following:-
-create strong personal relationships at all levels of the management in the accounts they are responsible for
-gain the confidence of his colleagues in your company so they are content for him to lead the relationship with the accounts and make available to him the resources he may need
-learn about the accounts' strategies, clients, products, financial situation, shareholders, and problems. The Account Managers must become experts about your company's most important customers
-be able to have easy access to their accounts management for meetings, breakfast or lunch appointments for any of your company's executives including the CEO and Chairman of the Board
-be able to obtain inside information, ethically of course, about Cap ex , your competitors and anything else to support you in winning business
-keep all necessary managers in your company briefed on issues they should be aware of
Be aware that the establishment of such teams can initially cause some friction within the organisation, since some managers will have less direct contact with the customer and may resent this. It is important to brief the managers about the account teams and their purpose. Make a presentation to them with all the account managers present. If done well, this will reassure the doubters, and demonstrate that they still have an important task.
The account teams should be well compensated and a bonus system, related to order intake, put in place.
Many major companies and multinational corporations have benefited from the account management style of handling customer relationships