Key account management

Key account management is the continuous delivery of value through the intersection of sales, strategy and innovation. Each word in that sentence is doing work. Continuous, because value delivered once and then assumed is value the customer stops noticing. Delivery, because a proposition that is written but never lands is a rumour. And the intersection, because the job cannot be done by sales alone: the account manager sits where the customer’s strategy, the supplier’s strategy and the supplier’s capacity to innovate meet.

The definition rules out two common mistakes. It is not relationship management with a bigger budget, and it is not a sales process with longer cycles. It is an organisational capability, which is why four out of five sales organisations rebuild their programme every few years (Gartner, 2021): the training was bought, the capability was not built.