Here at Kapta, we pride ourselves on producing quality, insightful pieces on our blog. If you’ve kept up with us over the years, you probably know that every week we publish a new article with information that can help any key account manager improve their work and step up their game.
Today, we wanted to take a step back and give you a crash course on some reader favorites from over the years. We highly suggest that you click the links and read the entire posts, but these brief summaries should be enough to give you some ideas and spark your inspiration.
4 Important Differences Between Key Accounts and Sales
In our business, all too often we’ve found that people commonly confuse sales with key account management. While it might seem on the surface like they are similar, in reality, key account management is a much different field.
The sales department looks at the bottom line of a company. You want to make as many sales as possible, and once someone completes the buying process, you move on to the next prospect. Key account management goes much further and is focused on creating the long-term relationship that will lead to greater organizational value.
Relationships are the name of the game with key account management, and a key account manager cares more about providing actionable solutions to a select few clients rather than trying to make a quick buck off of dozens of clients. Knowing the differences between the two can lead to significant results for your organization. Click the link in the header to read the full article.
10 Tips for Successful Key Account Managers
In my opinion, key account managers are the backbone and unsung heroes of any B2B company. Without their work, churn rates could spiral out of control, and the bottom line could take a significant impact.
Even though key account managers are so crucial to the success of their organizations, we’ve found that there isn’t much actionable advice available online — so we decided to provide it!
This blog post is a list of 10 actionable tips that any key account manager can follow to improve their success rate with clients. We cover a variety of topics, but they all have the same goal of improving your efforts to build relationships with clients and become the trusted advisor they turn to whenever they have a problem or question. Click the link above to read all ten, and use them in your work to achieve more significant results.
What is the Role of a Key Account Manager?
Although you might hold the title of key account manager, you might still wonder what separates you from the rest of the people within your organization. That’s okay! Sometimes we can all feel a little bit lost in our day to day work, but it’s still essential that you stop every once in a while to gain a new perspective and develop a new focus for the role you fill within your company.
So, what is the role of a Key Account Manager? We wanted to break it down into a few key aspects to help others understand why key account managers are so unique.
For starters, key account managers work with the accounts that really matter to the company’s bottom line. Key accounts are more likely to make purchases, and they’re also more forgiving than other clients too.
So, the role of the key account manager is to build trust with these accounts. No long-term relationship is established without a base understanding of each party. The key account manager is also the strategic advisor. They help their key account navigate the competitive landscape and provide solutions that go beyond the initial sale. They’re there to help their clients achieve greater success because the more successful your client is, the more successful your organization will be.
The Quarterly Business Review (QBR) Is Dead. And That’s a Good Thing.
Probably one of our most controversial posts on the blog, this one is a reader favorite for a number of reasons. As someone involved in account management, you’re probably used to the traditional QBR. You schedule it every 90 days, and it’s your opportunity to review the progress you’ve made with the client.
In theory, the QBR sounds perfect. It’s been around for decades, and many organizations have seen success with the QBR. There’s one glaring problem with QBRs, however — they’re too infrequent!
In the past, before the internet, emails, text messages, and cell phone, meeting with a client only every quarter wasn’t too out of the ordinary. The problem is, we live in a connected society these days, and your clients are always online. You don’t need to send a letter in the mail to get in touch with them, and instead, you can just pick up the phone once (or a few times) a week.
The more often that you can meet or speak with a client, the more progress you can make. If you are always aware of their goals, you’ll be able to adapt your strategy and provide proactive solutions. You’ll never feel caught off guard, and you can make more effective progress with less downtime.
5 Essential Skills for Successful Key Account Management
The final blog post I want to share with you today is a list of skills that every successful key account manager must develop. The skills you need are as follows:
- The ability to prioritize key accounts
- Strong research skills
- The ability to regulate the perception of your key accounts within your organization
- Continued learning
- Relationship building within your team
All five of these skills are conducive to building stronger relationships with each of your key accounts while also improving your abilities to provide custom solutions. While there are numerous other skills that key account managers need, these five are crucial.
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