The Strategic Customer Forum.
Your leadership team and the functions that make or break a key account, in one room, agreeing which customers are key, what they are worth, and how the business will serve them. Then a standing group that keeps it true.
Most KAM programmes are rebuilt every few years. This is why.
Four out of five sales organisations rebuild their key account programme every few years (Gartner, 2021). Talk to the people who ran the last one and the reasons repeat: there was no strategy, only a list of big customers. KAM was treated as a job title rather than an organisational capability. Finance, product and operations were never asked. And the leadership team that launched it had moved on to something else by the second quarter.
The Forum exists to remove those four reasons before the first account manager is trained. It is where most clients start with us, because a development programme built on a strategy that does not exist trains people to be frustrated.
Three situations this fixes.
Big customers, no strategy
The top ten accounts are a third of revenue and there is no written view of what each is worth, what it could be worth, or who owns the answer.
KAM is one department's problem
Account managers win commitments that delivery, finance and product never agreed to. Every proposition starts a negotiation inside your own business.
The last programme faded
There was a launch, a workshop and a template. Eighteen months on, nobody can say what changed. The board is asking whether to try again.
A strategy on a page, and a group that owns it.
Agreed in the room and kept alive by the Forum, not filed after the workshop.
Which customers are key
Your portfolio classified: local, regional, global, strategic. Named, and why.
What they are worth
The whole wallet for each key customer, and the gap worth chasing.
The KAM strategy
How the business will serve its key customers, in a form the board can repeat.
A two-year plan
Initiatives, milestones and owners. The plan the Forum reviews every quarter.
The critical functions, signed up
Finance, product, operations and marketing in the room and on the plan.
KAM as a capability
The structure, measures and rewards that make it survive a change of sponsor.
One day to begin. Quarterly from then on.
Pre-work
We read your account plans, customer data and the last programme, and interview the leaders and account managers who will be in the room. We arrive with a view.
The kick-off workshop
A facilitated day with the leadership team and the critical functions: the portfolio, the wallet, the strategy, and the first draft of the two-year plan.
Forum reviews
The Forum meets each quarter to review progress against the plan, unblock what is stuck, and decide what changes. We facilitate; you decide.
Working with the leads
Regular calls with the programme leads, monthly at least, to keep the initiatives moving and the sponsor informed.
Typically ten to twelve days of design and delivery over the two years, with a board sponsor and a Forum of eight to ten people.
Both of us. In the room.
Mark Davies
Chair of the Association for Key Account Management. Visiting Fellow at Cranfield and Aston. Author of Infinite Value.
Richard Brooks
Author of AI Strategy for Sales Teams (Kogan Page, 2026). Visiting Fellow at Cranfield. He runs the AI adoption and keeps the tools useful after we leave.
The method is the one in our next book, Creating Customer Value Propositions with AI (Kogan Page, May 2027), and the one we teach on the Cranfield KAM Best Practice programme.
From £14,500.
Both of us throughout. The kick-off day, the quarterly Forums and the work between them, over two years. Priced per engagement once we have seen the portfolio.
AI training for the Forum and the tools that support the plan are included, with the tools free to use for two years from the start of the programme. Travel and expenses at cost.
Three ways in, one method underneath.
KAM Development Programme
A training, coaching and development programme in which every key account manager builds a value proposition and a growth strategy for one real customer, and presents it to your senior leaders at the end.
Key Customer Deep Dive
The method applied end to end with one account team on one key customer: the offer, the proposition, the number, the plan, and the projected growth presented to your senior leaders. A reference plan for every account that follows.
Tell us where you are.
A sentence or two is enough. We reply within a working day, usually with three questions.