Good Key Account Management Training | Best Sales Training in Malaysia | Do You Think Great Sales Pe
A major issue that companies face when they adopt KAM is who they should appoint into the key account manager roles. The obvious place to look first is amongst the sales force, and in many companies the key account managers are drawn exclusively from sales (in fact, a KAM role is seen as a “promotion” from a sales role and is based on sales success).
Clearly, the policy of appointing key account managers from the sales force has its merits. Good sales people tend to have better than average interpersonal skills; they have experience in customer contact; they are skilled at making presentations; they are persuasive, good at presentations, and not afraid of asking for the order.
However, the best sales people do not necessarily make great key account managers.
Well, you should consider whether your role currently profiles as a KAM role and, if it does, whether that fact is recognized. If your role profiles (i.e. as more of a sales than a KAM role), you should consider whether you would be more comfortable in a KAM role or whether you would, in fact, prefer to continue in sales.
In the real world, the distinction between sales and KAM is less clear-cut. Many sales people managing business-to-business relationships have a role in customer retention and relationship management. Many key account managers are measured by revenues and receive commission. But both sales people and key account managers recognize the general truth that there is a difference of emphasis in the two roles. It is less often acknowledged that this difference of emphasis also implies a different skill set.
When appointing key account managers, a company needs to consider the skill set it requires the key account manager to have or to develop. The most popular recruitment tool is the job interview, but it is widely recognized that job interviews are a poor method of evaluating an applicant’s suitability for a job. Increasingly, companies are turning to a battery of other evaluation techniques that, used in conjunction with a job interview, improve the likelihood that they will appoint the right person. Four additional tools can be used to assess the suitability of an applicant for a key account manager role. In descending order of usefulness for KAM roles, these are: biodata; personality type; emotional intelligence; and cognitive ability.
As each of these four tools has some predictive ability for key account manager role success, each will be considered in turn.
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