KAMCast - Key Account Management Strategies for Business Leaders – Details, episodes & analysis

How well do you empower your people to reach their own full potential, supported along the way with good, timely, and accessible coaching conversations?

Now sure how to go about that? Then this episode is for you because I’m joined by a friend of the show, Lisa Brice, NLP Master Trainer and Coach and author of a new book called:

“Choose to be a coach - the be quick guide to coaching in the corridor, at the coffee shop or on the computer.”

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𝗟𝗜𝗦𝗔 𝗕𝗥𝗜𝗖𝗘 𝗕𝗜𝗢:

Lisa is a certified Master NLP Trainer, coach and business consultant. Her work is focussed on enhancing personal performance and intuitive leadership development. Her specialism is her Equine Assisted Learning which is built into her work with clients.

To support her work with Leaders, Lisa also holds a Diploma in Strategic Business Coaching from the CMI; is a Licensed HeartMath® Trainer and Coach; and is also a Systemic Coaching and Constellations Practitioner. (Lisabrice.co.uk)

𝗗𝗔𝗩𝗜𝗗 𝗩𝗘𝗡𝗧𝗨𝗥𝗔 𝗕𝗜𝗢:

David is the principal KAM Consultant & Managing Director at KAMGuru.com, a specialist in Key Account Management training and consultancy business, based in the UK.

David is a Speaker, Author and Performance Coach with more than a decade of hands-on and consultative experience in sales and management roles in the leisure, entertainment and telecoms industries.

Sales and Marketing is like stealing your neighbour’s cat…and in this episode, I talk to Bryony Thomas at Watertight Marketing to find out why.

Bryony is the creator of the Watertight Marketing methodology, captured in her best-selling book of the same name which acts as the hub to a suite of thinking tools that have been designed and refined over two decades and across over 2000 organisations. 

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𝗕𝗥𝗬𝗢𝗡𝗬 𝗧𝗛𝗢𝗠𝗔𝗦 𝗕𝗜𝗢:

Bryony is an award-winning speaker, author, marketing strategist and the creator of the proven Watertight Marketing Methodology. She stops people from wasting money on marketing.

In 2008, she left her corporate role as Director of Marketing for Experian, a FTSE100 company, and set up her own consultancy. She believes that small businesses are a real lever of meaningful and sustainable change in the world, and she has built a proven methodology to help them to do just that.

Through her 12-month marketing transformation programme, book and speaking she reaches audiences far and wide, and today also has a team of licensed Watertight Marketing Practitioners.

𝗗𝗔𝗩𝗜𝗗 𝗩𝗘𝗡𝗧𝗨𝗥𝗔 𝗕𝗜𝗢:

David is the principal KAM Consultant & Managing Director at KAMGuru.com, a specialist Key Account Management training and consultancy business, based in the UK.

David is a Speaker, Author and Performance Coach with more than a decade of hands-on and consultative experience in sales and management roles in the leisure, entertainment and telecoms industries.

How successful is your key account management team? What is the definition you have for what success is, for your business? How do you measure the performance of your key account managers?

If you find that the answers are all to do with growth, you’re probably looking at it TOO LATE and you are running a massive risk with your most important accounts.

Success is a destination, one that is different and personal to each business and each team. And for every clear destination there is a path, a route, and a map for how to get there.

Whether you talk about KPI’s, goals, objectives, or metrics – we are looking for

early warning signs and alerts that tell you clearly whether someone is on track for success or way off course.

We could think of them as the ‘flight deck’ of important gauges to give you a clear overview of what is really going on.

These important measures, and the intelligence they give us, will ultimately provide an opportunity to check against benchmarks and fuel coaching conversations with the team.

If growth is the end goal: what are the measurable and intentional stepping stones that we can track and guide the way? Are they…

• frequency of contact
• customer satisfaction responses
• the number of decision makers we are connected to and actively engaging with
• the number of open issues
• is there an active KAMPlan for the account?

These are all quantifiable indicators that would either comfort you that the relationship with your most important customers is all in order or shine a light on the vulnerabilities that present the biggest risks… way ahead of time… ultimately giving you time to sort it out!

In this episode I speak to Ian Windle, an award-winning Leadership and TEDx speaker, Executive Coach and team builder. He is the author of Amazon best seller “The Leadership Map: The gritty guide to strategy that works and people who care.”

He works with leadership teams on their strategy, vision and values, as well as developing their capabilities to perform at their peak.

In this discussion we dig into:

• What success looks like in business
• How we measure success and performance across all levels of the business
• How to foster transparency and accountability team-wide in your organisation
• Where to start with KPI’s and metrics in a sales team

My hope is that after you have listened to this episode, you will seriously reflect on what the definition of success is for you and your team, and how are you measuring performance today.

Do you have a MAP that you are following to guide you, the team and the business steadily on course for achieving your strategic goals in the next 12 months?

If you haven’t had the conversation around how you are judging success in your business, perhaps that is the best to start.

Are you obsessed with targets, with little focus on the granular steppingstones, the route to success?  Focussing too heavily on the target, is like trying to win a game of basketball by staring at the scoreboard!

For me, learning to lead can be a bit like learning to drive: no amount of training can prepare you for contact with the real world.

If you are finding leadership easy then you are probably not doing the right things! What are the KEY things that drive your Economic engine? What are your critical numbers?

Are you tracking and reporting information that is useful not just interesting? 

Do you have a balanced selection of key metrics that support you and your account management team to track the journey?

In each...

Key account management is a beautifully simple business basic…one that isn’t that easy! If it was, we’d all be doing it brilliantly wouldn’t we? 

Like most working practices in business, there are a handful of common, or typical reasons why a KAM culture struggles to get off the ground in an organisation.  In this episode, I seek to shine a glaring light on the assassins of good KAM practice.

The intent for this episode is this: we’re big believers in shining a light on vulnerabilities in a business – it serves as a wonderful opportunity to mitigate risks, develop and create new ways of working and foster better ways of thinking.

In this episode, David shares the experiences we’ve had in working with clients.  Some of these clients have called for our support as a result of experiencing the loss of a customer and realising their vulnerabilities way too late.

Others have started their respective KAM-Paigns to implement a KAM Culture and the momentum has dwindled and progress halted, caused by one or several of the reasons shared in this episode.

We’d urge you to bookmark this episode and make sure that you listen to it properly – dig really deep and reflect. It could be the spur you need to make a long-term systemic change which could in turn could bring meaningful (and profitable) transformative change.

Here are the highlights that David walks you through on the 5 reasons your KAM programme is more than likely failing:

Do you and your team know who your key accounts are and why they are qualified as “key”? Yep, a simple one right? But so many businesses miss this.

I find that this lack of clarity often comes from a place of assumption. Assumption that the key accounts are simply the largest ones. The accounts that make up the lion’s share of revenue or profit.

For me, the true definition of a key account is whatever is, or whatever will be, important to your business.

It’s so important to reach a focus and clarity of the defining characteristics of a key account in your business. Without that, a KAM programme runs the risk of becoming something we talk about rather than do.

(Listen to the episode to get the 5 reflective questions you need to ask yourself).

When was the last time you proactively sought feedback from your key contacts at your most important customers?

And did that feedback make its way back to the business, into your team discussions and shape the way you engage with that customer going forward?

We spend a lot of time making decisions that impact the customer and creating products and services that deliver an end value for the customer… and yet, all too often, we do this whilst sat around a boardroom table, without a customer in sight.

In the world of KAM, the customer’s perception becomes your reality…

We believe that key account management is a team sport. It’s not a job for lone heroes who go where nobody has gone before, in pursuit of commercial glory.

Key account management is, in many ways, part of everyone’s job within the company. Looking at it simply, maybe there are only two groups of people within an organisation?

There is a group of people who are (a) servicing the customer and there is another who are (b) providing an internal service to the group of people servicing the customer.

So, if we run with the notion that the quality of...

Are you 'ready' for getting back to normal? And…what is normal?

For many of us, the effects of the pandemic have been going on for so long that we can’t quite remember what normal is anymore.

So, as we start to 'unlock' society, here in the UK, and begin thinking about how we will reengage with our key accounts, many of whom we won’t have seen for over a year, how ready do you feel to hit the ground running'?

Have you thought about who you need to see first, what you want to achieve and how you will need to adapt?

In this episode of KAMCast I welcome back my good friend and fellow KAM activist, Warwick Brown, as we set about answering some listener questions and talk about some common themes we are hearing with our clients at the moment.

Our aim for this episode is to pause and reflect on what we may need to do - to be “match fit” for the NEXT normal, and fast track the performance of our most important accounts.

I’d be really interested to hear what your thoughts are on this topic, when you are finished listening to this episode. (Email me and let me know. Also – has it spurred another topic you would like to hear us chew on, in an upcoming episode? Or do you have more burning questions? Let me know.)

Warwick and I get into a great discussion on:

• How we best engage with C-Suite decision makers going forward?
• How we can sense check our understanding of the decision-making process and fill any gaps we might have? (Post-Covid changes)
• What the next normal will look like and what will we need to adapt and change as we re-emerge into society

 Whatever you are planning next when it comes to engaging with your key contacts, and however close you feel to a sense of normality, I’d really encourage you to hit the pause button and reflect. 

1. What can you do to be more intentional and impactful in your client interactions?
2. How will you approach engaging key decision makers you are yet to meet?
3. Do you have a clear view and understanding of the decision-making structure in your key account’s organisation?
4. How are you going to managing the transition, continuing to be mindful of social distancing, without becoming ‘socially awkward’?
5. What ‘traditional’ practices will now become tactical for you?

Maybe you can really relate to the challenge of engaging with C-suite execs, so there’s an extra question to ask:

• What changes do you need to make in your approach to improve your impact when building new relationships with high level decision makers? 

Like anything we talk about on KAMCast, I really value those opportunities for honest reflection before deciding what to do next. My wish is that something we have talked about in this episode has triggered and ignited some positive action for you. If it has let us know…please!

Warwick is a Key Account Consultant and Founder of The KAM Club, has led business development and account management teams in Australia and Europe for more than 15 years. He has worked with...

Have you ever found yourself struggling to understand, or get along, with people who are older or younger than you?

Perhaps a clash in communications style, working preferences, belief systems, values or motivational needs?

Many of the business leaders that we talk to in our work at KAMGuru tell us how difficult they find driving higher levels of motivation and engagement from younger sales teams.

They say that age is just a number… except it isn’t, is it?

The nuances of dealing with people across the generations can prove to be challenging, whether consciously or unconsciously, and the solution, as we’ve talked about so many times on KAMCast, is in the ability to raise your awareness, understand yourself, understand others and then choose if and how to adapt your behaviours to get the best out of your relationship interactions, whether it be with your teams or Key Customer contacts.

Whether you are working closely with the external customer base or whether you recognise your internal customers, on your team and colleagues across the business, you are likely to come up against the ‘generation gap’, highlighted by the notable differences across the different age groups.

In this episode of KAMCast, I talk to Henry Rose Lee - one of the few inter-generational diversity experts in the world. 

Henry works with all generations in the workforce and particularly with Millennials and Gen Z - to help them become more productive and effective. As an author of three books on maximising today’s young talent, (consisting of Generation Z and the Millennial generation), Henry busts myths and provides business leaders with practical tactics for attracting, recruiting, engaging and retaining your youngest employees. 

I hope you enjoy it – let me know what you think!

When I was preparing for this conversation, I was conscious that for many, this is a burning topic and I was keen to get a deeper understanding of:

• What the differences across generations really are
• How those differences play out in the workplace, particularly in a virtual working environment
• How communication styles, techniques and strategies will vary across the ages and where ‘clashes’ are likely to happen
• How, as leaders, we can drive higher levels of engagement and motivation from our younger teams

Ultimately understanding how we can MIND THE GAP in generational diversity across our key accounts and sales teams.

I wasn’t disappointed!

When you listen to this episode – you’ll gain some really pragmatic and practical advice from Henry Rose Lee who helps us look through the intergenerational lens from a position of understanding.

I particularly liked Henry’s thoughts on engaging the motivational needs of younger talent on our teams.

With three quarters of Gen Z yearning to start their own business - I wonder if you have a team of entrepreneurial salespeople? And how you harness their enthusiasm and creativity within the remits of your organisational structure?

• Do you build a COMMUNITY that your talent can feel part of?
• What are the CAUSES that you, you teams and your business care about?
• And what CAREER progression opportunities are available to your team to grow and develop in their role and bring higher levels of commitment, enthusiasm and contribution to your business?

I’m often amazed at the lack of trust between sales leaders and their teams. Henry gives us some great advice on how to build trust and I love the notion of checking IN, not checking UP....

How has the last 12 months been for you and your business?

At the time of recording this episode, it’s been a year… to the day that I delivered my last ‘in person’ seminar for a group of Chief Executives in Leeds.

By then, we had already stopped shaking hands with people and we were pouring copious amounts of antibacterial gel over our hands at every opportunity.

We were beginning to come to terms with the idea that we would likely need to ‘hibernate’ in a home working environment for a few weeks while it all ‘blew over’. Little did we know that as we watched on as other parts of the world plunged into draconian lockdowns, we were only at the beginning of what would turn out to be a very strange time to be alive and a hard time to be in business.

Wherever you are in the world and whatever the last 12 months has been like for you, I’ve no doubt it will have been a rollercoaster of emotions and adaptation as we settled in to a ‘new normal’ whilst constantly asking ourselves what the ‘next normal’ was likely to be like.

Compassion and empathy have been the currency in many of our client relationships and we have all become well versed in the ways of asking ‘how are you?’… ‘no, how are you really?’

In this episode, I wanted to look at what we’ve seen in our KAM practices in the last 12 months. What have you noticed in your client relationships? How have you adapted your communications styles and contact frequencies to adapt to the situation?

I wanted to share with you some of my reflections. Some things I’ve seen, some things I have learned and some thoughts on where the ‘next normal may take us’.

Moving to a virtual world, where even those who hadn’t used video conferencing before, now became Zoom and MS Teams’ experts, took real adjustment for some people.

Let’s face it, for most Key Account Managers, one of the things that keeps us going in our work, is the person-to-person interaction that we get when partnering with important customers. The best ongoing, trusted relationships that we build tend to be accelerated when we have the opportunity to sit down over a coffee, a lunch or even play a round of golf at an away day.

So, the move to working online screamed disaster as we fumbled our way through finding a balance between relationship building and the business agenda.

• At first, the business agenda, for many, went out of the window and the early iteration of the ‘Zoom call’ was primarily a ‘check-in’ and an opportunity to share experiences and see how each other’s businesses were shaping up. (If anything, this was a good opportunity to really connect with clients, from a vulnerable position and fast track the connection you have and the rapport between you.)
• Then it flipped the other way… small talk about the ‘crisis’ was dropped and the business agenda took centre stage. (The pace at which we needed to work accelerated and our diaries were packed with back-to-back video calls and we simply didn’t have time to dwell on the niceties.)

Now is the time to combine the two – ensuring that partnerships in a virtual environment really do cater for the person-to-person connections as well as the business agenda.

Listen to the full episode to hear my specific reflections about your video call behaviour (timestamp around 4mins 45secs)

For many, who found themselves worrying about what the future would hold, uncertain about the stability of the business, their industry or their job, they allowed desperation to take hold and started a frantic race to the bottom.

Compassion meant compromising the win:win balance...

Do you wish your team members were having more strategic conversations with your key accounts?

Do you have a clear understanding of what strategy is?

Does your team have a clear understanding of what strategy is?

It’s fair to say that the S word – strategy – gets bandied around a lot in business - we even talk about it as one of our guiding pillars for success in KAM.

And with words that get so heavily used, it’s common for the waters to get muddied and the definition to become overcomplicated, leading to overthinking activities and behaviours.

Do you let the words you use with your key accounts do the heavy lifting - rather than developing the skills to open up more curious, value-based conversations - looking at a longer-term vision and the actions that will get your there?

In this episode I take a look at the topic of strategy, with brand strategist Shelley Röstlund.

Shelley works with subject matter experts to clarify their brand purpose and value by leveraging a blend of brand archetypes, belief systems, customer insights & core product refining. 

With Shelley having strategic conversations on a daily basis with her clients, I was keen to hear her thoughts and dig deep on this topic.

With our clients, at KAMGuru, we work heavily on developing teams to have more strategic conversations with their most important customers, ultimately forging the trusted partnerships they desire, and developing long term profitability.

With strategy being such an important component to understanding our customers, it’s so important that, as KAM Pros, we are able to get a firm grip on the strategic skillset, empowering us to truly Become the expert in the customer’s world.

We really peel back a few layers of the strategic onion in this episode. Shelley and I dig into:

1. How to define strategy, in a business context
2. Why does it become so complicated?
3. The value of having strategic conversations with clients, and how to have them Shelley shares some top tips on how to set yourself up for a strategic conversation:
4. When is the right time to start a strategic, value-based conversation with your clients?
5. How to handle the entrepreneurial personality types when having focussed discussions?

With strategy being such an important component to understanding our customers, it’s so important that, as KAM professionals, we are able to get a firm grip on the strategic skillset - empowering us to truly become the expert in the customer’s world.

I love the way Shelley describes her definition of strategy as being “the path that links vision to action.” And the notion that the how and the what become clear when you know your why.

Let’s face it – we all like to get distracted with the shiny ball of the ‘how’. All too often I see businesses get sucked into the tactics when talking about strategy, when in reality the Strategy has to comes first.

Pulling from a well-known Stephen Covey principle: when you or your team are talking with clients on their strategic vision - do you listen with the intent to understand or with the intent to reply? You are, in essence, risking showering the client with an ill-timed pitch fest, and a ‘spray and pray’ sales approach.

Curiosity doesn’t kill the cat when it comes to trusted partnerships and it’s time to hone the skills to be curious with our clients.  Remember that, as account managers, we don’t need to have all the answers – we just need the right questions and the enthusiasm to learn...

How often do you put aside time to reflect honestly on the learning you have gained following the closure of a deal, whether you won or lost it?

Do you pause for a moment to celebrate the victory or commiserate the loss?

Or do you go deeper than that, in pursuit of feedback that can be fed forward into future pitches?

Creating a learning culture in an account management team is hugely beneficial and requires us all to embrace feedback, even the painful stuff.

The sort of feedback that tells us specifically what went well, so that we can repeat and replicate, and how things could have been better, so that we can tweak and develop our approach to maximise chances on the next attempt.

It will always feel better to focus on the wins and brush away the losses. And, at the same time, the risk we run is blindly ignoring the rich layers of feedback and learning that are available, if we intentionally go looking for it.

In this episode you get to listen and learn from my guest Vince Tickel - a seasoned entrepreneur, executive coach and group chairman of the Vistage Central London group.

Having started a career in the marketing departments of multi-national food companies, he set up his first company, a marketing consultancy called Interface, aged 24, working for branded companies such as Unilever, Bacardi-Martini, Bass and P&G.

In the late 90’s he diversified, setting up a chain of sales and marketing service companies in the UK and Europe building it into a £15m turnover group with over 100 staff.

I invited him on to KAMCAST to share with you what his experience has been in implementing a learning culture in his businesses - where feedback was king, and teams live by the mantra:

When you lose, don’t lose the learning. 

The reality is that you are highly unlikely to win all the deals or contracts you pitch for, right? Losing is part and parcel of the world of account management.

So how would rate yourself on learning from the feedback you get along the way?

Vince says that curiosity starts at the top of an organisation and we want to be recruiting ‘sponges not stones’. I like that – a great analogy.

Team members who are constantly looking for:

a.    constructive criticism,

b.    understanding what went well, and

c.    what would be even better “if…(insert here)”

…could be the difference between static performance in the comfort zone and developing performance and growing relationships and revenue.

I am convinced after this conversation with Vince that Critical Feedback should be hard wired into a KAM Culture.

Of course, that requires TRUST and VULNERABILITY. To lead from a position of trust means not pretending to know everything. Being comfortable saying ‘I don’t know’, ‘I got that wrong’, ‘I’m sorry’.

This level of vulnerability will induce an attitude towards failure that embraces it in pursuit of learning and feedback. Ultimately eliminating the fear.

In this episode you’ll hear Vince’s top three tips on implementing critical feedback into your business:

TIP #1: A learning culture starts at the top

As leaders we need to be a student…always

TIP #2: Let people see what they can’t see

Create ways for your team to be able to view or listen to their own client facing activity so that they can analyse their own performance.

TIP #3: Have open sessions

Your peers can be your best coaches and guides - so give them the opportunity to listen, question, challenge and advise on what they would do if they were in your shoes.

What is the toughest question you have faced from your most important customers?What is the toughest question you have faced from you team?

How did you handle those questions?

Did you answer with confidence and finesse? Or did you crumble under the pressure and end up blurting out more that you would care to share?

As a business leader, you will have undoubtedly faced some really tough questions over the years. Your ability to answer them will have played a really important role in the growth and success of your business.

So, what happens when you are not around? How do the account managers in your business cope under the mounting pressure of a difficult and challenging question?

Are the team naturally skilled in remaining cool, calm and collected under pressure or is this an area that needs development?

In this episode, I talk to Michael Dodd, international speaker, consultant and author of “Great Answers To Tough Questions At Work”.

Michael works with organisations to help them deal more effectively – or EVEN more effectively – with those nightmare questions that people in business can get any time from clients, prospects, members of our own team, or even the media … particularly given the challenges we face in a climate affected by the disruption of the pandemic. 

Michael brings his experience as a political journalist from Australia - and as a foreign correspondent – where he was trained to ASK the toughest possible questions.

But he now helps clients to ANSWER them.

In our conversation, I put these main questions over to Michael:

• Is this a skill that can be learned, or are we looking for natural ability to deliver confident answers under pressure?
• What can we learn from people we see in the news? Can we model what good looks like from what we see on the news?
• How can we handle some of the most common questions that send us into a spin when we are put on the spot by clients and new prospects?

I would say that this episode does cause you to reflect inwardly on your own business and team and ask: “How would you rate your team in their ability to handle tough questions from your clients?”

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Option 1:  You feel confident in your team. Your action now then is: how would you model that so that new team members can also learn the art of giving great answers in your business?

Option 2: This question causes your stomach to turn. Your next step then is to look at what you can do over the next few weeks to bolster this skillset and protect yourself from uncomfortable challenges.

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Michael’s ‘first step’ advice is to start to evaluate your skillset on this by thinking about what the hardest question is that you and your team could be asked? And what’s the best thing (right now) that you can respond with, on that topic?

If you are at risk of facing those - what Michael calls - ‘blow torch on the belly’ questions, it’s clear that we need to build a culture of planning, preparing and practising so that we are consistently and confidently READY with great answers. (I reckon these need to go into your KAM Plan structure somewhere!)

With communication being a huge factor to the success or weakness of the relationships with your key accounts, this really is an area that needs focus on, in the same way that we would focus on how we communicate new features of our products or service. Don’t you think?

Listen to the episode and let me know your experiences in tackling those tough questions. What’s your survival technique?

In each episode we ask you, our listener, a killer question that is...