Key Account Management: Learning From Supplier And Customer. .

Description: Key account management is a natural development of customer focus and relationship marketing in business-to-business markets. It offers critical benefits and opportunities for profit enhancement to both sides of the seller/buyer dyad. Based on extensive and unique research by Cranfield School of Management, "Key Account Management" presents a new framework for understanding the development of key account relationships. It incorporates a comprehensive guide to the current practice of key account management, and comments on the challenges for the future of key account management practice. The research was based on in-depth interviews with key account managers, their managers and their main contacts in the customer organization. It addresses one of the key new areas in strategic marketing practice. It is ideal for practitioners and students.

Review: "The pan-company model acts as a framework, but the real answers, as this excellent book demonstrates, are infinitely more complex. Marketing - creating and keeping customers - is a multi-dimensional task." from the foreword by Steve Cuthbert, Director General, The Chartered Institute of Marketing As always, Malcolm McDonald's writing is clear and timely. He may be a Professor and a Doctor of Philosophy, but he is also a manager writing for managers. This book is unique and covers ground that desperately needs attention. All managers should read this valuable guide.' Professor John Saunders, Head, Aston Business School 'Key Account Management is rapidly becoming more important as purchasing power is increasingly concentrated in the hands of fewer, larger buyers. This timely book based on original research provides excellent strategic and tactical guidance and tools for marketing/sales directors as well as key account executives to enable them to manage their major customers more effectively.' Mike Wilson, Director, Marketing Improvements Group, Plc

Contents: The origins of key account management; The evolution of key account relationships; Key account planning in the context of strategic marketing planning; Identifying and targeting key accounts; Key account planning; The role of the key account manager; Positioning of the key account activity; The Future of key account management; Mini-cases.



Author Biography: MA(Oxon), MSc, PhD, D.Litt. FCIM FRSA, until recently was Professor of Marketing and Deputy Director Cranfield School of Management, with special responsibility for E-business. Malcolm is a graduate in English Language and Literature from Oxford University, in Business Studies from Bradford University Management Centre, and has a PhD from Cranfield University. He also has an Honorary Doctorate from Bradford University. Malcolm has extensive industrial experience, including a number of years as Marketing Director of Canada Dry. Beth Rogers is Visiting Fellow at the Cranfield School of Management and a Chartered Maketer. She spent her early career with IBM and then worked as a management consultant for nine years before joining Logical Worlwide as Solutions Marketing Manager.