There are many roles that a key account manager has to play that are a must for strategic account management initiatives to deliver at peak potential. Let’s have a look at some of the strategic account management roles that are an inseparable part of account management trends:
1. Results Driver:
Results drivers have a fire in the belly to maximize the business inside of the “market” of the account. Growth is what the results driver looks for every time. Result drivers are always anxious at finding out ways to maximize results for the account they hold. This helps the company to broaden their vision and provide better management to their customers. Thus key account managers have this big responsibility to drive results for the customers.
2. Relationship Lead:
There can be many people associated with an account so there is requirement to strengthen the relationship. There might be many opportunities that can come up hence relationship is what required to grab the opportunities to beat the competition. Relationship lead is one role that a key account manager has to play to strengthen relationship with the customers to defend against competitors inroads. Highly efficient key account managers create a relationship at enterprise level and also drive relationship with new stakeholders beside the existing customers.
3. Innovator:
It requires an innovative approach to deliver value for the strategic accounts because there is always a room for more value creation. So it is necessary to be innovative in approach to introduce the new products, services and capabilities to the customers. Innovators collect information and communicate it in a broader way to the executive level clients. They are also very instrumental in facilitating ideas exchange in collaboration with customers. Innovation is essential as per account management trends because a key account manager must have the innovative skills which are required for vision and energy in interaction so that client don’t lose interest.
4. Collaborator:
It requires perfect collaboration of team efforts to maximize the value for strategic accounts. The key account manager also has to play this role because it is he who has to function as an internal team builder to build internal bridges and trust and involve likeminded people to produce the positive outcomes. Lack of co-operation and collaboration among various group of the organization has been a major factor that prevents expansion of accounts. So the collaborator has to align all the processes or operations to collaborate the groups. Though it’s challenging but the results are very impressive.
5. Technical Expert: As technicality is involved at every stage nowadays it is required for the key account manager to play role of a specialist/analyst/technician. There are many instances where the technical evaluator might come and say “this won’t work” so having the technical expertness in account management trends help to get pass this issue when you are offering something new to the client.
6. Project Manager:
This is one of the most important roles to play in account management trends. The key account manager is responsible for creating progress report, scheduling meetings, progress of the strategic account plan; get necessary resources in place, formulation of new actionable plans, track actions and outcomes etc. Overall his responsibilities involve a lot of tasks to perform the right way.
