Determining the indirect value of a customer

The issue of accountability in marketing has led to a substantial and growing body of work on how to value customer relationships. Net present value methods (customer lifetime value / customer equity) have emerged as generally preferred ways to assess the financial value of customers. However, such calculations fail to take account of other important but indirect sources of value noted by previous researchers, such as advocacy. This paper examines the development and application of three processes to determine indirect value in business-to- business and business-to-consumer contexts. The research shows that indirect value has a measurable monetary impact not captured by conventional financial tools, and that understanding this changes the way in which customers are managed

The effectiveness of Key Account Management practices

This paper investigates the extent to which Key Account Management (KAM) programs are achieving a range of financial and non-financial measures of effectiveness for implementing companies. It investigates a wide range of KAM practices as well as comparing the predictive power of these practices on nine desirable effectiveness measures. The paper therefore provides greater depth of insight than previous models in terms of both the practices included and the effectiveness measures used, giving a far richer insight than previous models. The results suggest that the extent to which KAM practices are embedded within the company is strongly related to all nine effectiveness measures. However it is outcomes which favor the customer which are most realizable such as increased customer satisfaction, relational improvement and joint investment, with a significant time lag and lower predictability for supplier benefits such as increased revenue, increased profit margins or cost efficiencies

The key account manager's internal selling role : an exploration of interpersonal conflict

Acting in a boundary spanning role within their organisations, the key account manager in representing their customers’ needs internally is required to manage a wide range of complex internal relationships. This can often lead to incidents of conflict between the key account manager and other individuals or groups of individuals within the organisation in non-sales functions. Using the Critical Incident Technique (CIT), (Flanagan, 1954) together with an interpretive framework for data coding (Spiggle, 1994), this research investigates conflict and the key account manager’s internal selling role. This research also explores how the key account manager perceives intraorganisational, interpersonal conflicts and investigates the complex behavioural sequences adopted to manage them. In doing so this research addresses some of the shortcomings of the traditional view of the nature of organisational conflict and how it is managed while extending our understanding of the key account manager’s internal selling role. In contrast to the majority of research into personal selling, this research takes an interpretive approach through the analysis of transcripts from a series of CIT interviews with key account managers in the field. Twenty-nine key account managers from seven participating FMCG, Blue Chip organisations in the U.K. and U.S. participated in the research. From the CIT interviews conducted, 112 critical incidents were described with both positive and negative outcomes. This research provides further insight into the complexity of conflict, suggesting conflict is inherent within the key account management internal selling role, that incidents of conflict do not occur in isolation, that these conflict episodes are complex, having multiple components and that a combination of behaviours can be used in their management. In addressing these issues in the key account management context, this research further develops our knowledge of personal selling and the key account manager’s internal selling role by providing an analysis of the recollections of how conflict is perceived and managed by the key account managers involved.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

Attitudes and behaviours of key account managers:Are they really any different to senior sales professionals?

This study investigates the range of attitudes and behaviours exhibited by Key Account Managers (KAMs) in their roles as customer relationship managers. Specifically, we test whether KAMs exhibit different behaviours and attitudes towards relationship management compared to other sales professionals based on a range of assumptions currently theorized but untested in the Key Account Management (KAM) literature. Utilizing the existing theoretical models of a KAM role we identify six major areas of relational behaviour assumed in the literature to separate the KAM from the sales professional. Drawing on a cross sectional quantitative study of 10 organizations and 409 key account managers, sales managers, and senior sales executives we explore goal orientation, planning, customer embeddedness, strategic prioritization, adaptability and internal management behaviours of our groups and find that, in certain managerial tasks, KAMs do indeed exhibit many of the different behaviours and attitudes predicted in the literature. However, in many customer-facing, goal orientated and revenue generating activities, contrary to expectations, they display similar attitudes and behaviours to those in senior sales roles. This challenges the way that the KAM role has previously been conceptualized. Our findings raise a potential issue for senior managers, since KAMs' unexpectedly short term orientation may lead to insufficient consideration of the strategic consequences of their decisions for these key customer relationships

Which resources and capabilities underpin strategic key account management?

Key account management (KAM) supports the profitability and financial sustainability of firms in business-to-business markets. It also attracts considerable academic research. However, KAM research remains largely atheoretical and lacking in conceptual foundations. This paper argues for an organizational-level, resource-based view of KAM. Using a systematic approach, the authors review the KAM literature to identify the critical resources and capabilities that underpin strategic KAM. The analysis synthesizes and integrates previous research on KAM applying a resource-based lens to reveal that strategic KAM comprises complex portfolios of resources and capabilities that constitute a source of competitive advantage. The authors discuss the theoretical and practical implications of this unique view of KAM and identify directions for further research

An ecosystems analysis of how sales managers develop salespeople

Purpose The purpose of this study is to identify and explain how leadership behaviors of sales managers can enhance the development of salespeople within the context of those interpersonal connections and interactions that is the sales ecosystem. Design/methodology/approach The authors collected and analyzed qualitative data from in-depth interviews with a sample of 36 sales professionals. Over 47 hours of interviews were transcribed and analyzed via NVivo. The statements were labeled as particular leader behaviors using the Miles and Huberman (1994) coding system. Findings The study identifies coaching, customer engaging, collaborating and championing as the four key leader behaviors that are relevant to the sales ecosystem. Specifically, coaching and customer engaging enhance the individual microsystems of salespeople; and collaborating and championing enhance the corresponding mesosystems. Analysis of the interview statements further revealed that trust, confidence, optimism and resilience are four relational elements that tend to coexist with these leader behaviors in the sales ecosystem. Practical implications This study provides a structure for sales organizations to strengthen their sales ecosystem through targeted interventions and training for those that manage salespeople. Past research finds that sales organizations too often neglect this type of managerial training. Originality/value This is the first study to examine sales leadership through the lens of Bronfenbrenner’s (1979) ecological systems theory. Further, the qualitative methodology, which is relatively unique in sales research, provides rich data that is particularly useful for exploring how and why things have happened

A qualitative study of leader behaviors perceived to enable salesperson performance

This study builds on and extends previous sales leadership research by exploring sales professionals’ perceptions of effective leadership behaviors. Semistructured interviews with both sales leaders and salespeople working in a global enterprise software company were examined through a qualitative analysis. Results indicated that participants believed sales leadership played an important role in influencing sales performance. When asked to describe specific sales leader behaviors that best enable salesperson performance, sales professionals – both sales leaders and salespeople – overwhelmingly referenced coaching, followed by collaborating, championing, and customer engaging. We define and describe these four key sales leader behaviors and identify four potential mediating variables (trust, confidence, optimism, and resilience), from which emerges a conceptual framework of sales leader behaviors perceived to enable salesperson performance. We examine these four key sales leader behaviors and mediators in the broader context of leadership theory, particularly transformational, servant, authentic, and adaptive leadership theories. The key contribution of this study is the identification of a set of leader behaviors that are likely to be especially effective in modern sales organizations given that they originated from the perceptions of sales professionals themselves

Making customers pay: measuring and managing customer risk and returns

CRM (Customer Relationship Management) builds on the Relationship Marketing idea that lifetime relationships with customers are more profitable than short-term transactional relationships. However, subsequent work on the profitability of customers has shown that some customers are very unprofitable. This leaves managers with a problem: how to focus their relationship management efforts to maximise shareholder value. A suggested theoretical approach is to view the customer base as an investment portfolio. This paper uses the portfolio management model of risk and return to explore the measurement of returns and of the risk of the customer. Some implications for CRM managers are outlined