Criteria of Successful Key Account Managers

China is Buy Verified Binance Accounts that is deeply-rooted in the cultivation of relationships or “guan xi”. In fact, without the right relationships, certain kinds of sales will simply not materialise. Chinese sales people take pride in their relationship-development skills, but unfortunately most Chinese sales people are focusing on the wrong relationships. Even if they are building the right relationships, there are still other criteria to be successful in Key Account Management. These are:

* Cultivating as many relationships as possible in a Key Account, but most importantly with the entrenched influencers AND be aware of their entrenched interests and practices;

* Through your relationships in the account, understand the long-term AND short-term business objectives, and find out ways how you can help them in achieving some of these objectives;

* Since you don’t have infinite amount of time and resources, prioritise your activities that will give you optimal results

One key objective of Key Account Management is to grow your business with the account. Many so-called Key Account Managers are simply glorified versions of Guest Relations Officers, and they do nothing that will either grow the business, or protect it from competitors.

To grow your business with your Key Accounts, you will have to first understand their business, and then find ways to add or create value for your customers. And you have to do so bearing in mind that you have other Accounts to attend to, and you have limited time, budget and other resources.

Who are Your Key Accounts?

Since there will be quite substantial amount of effort and resources used in managing Key Accounts, you may want to define which of your customers qualify as Key Accounts. In most cases, many sellers define Key Accounts as simply those whom bought the most from them. However, there may be some customers who bought the most, BUT squeezed you for prices below costs AND took forever to pay you. You don’t want those customers to be your Key Accounts do you?

Here’s a list of criteria that you can refer to:

* Buys at least a certain amount of sales from you each year or each quarter;

* Maintains a margin of x% with you on average;

* Consistently increases their purchase volume from you over the past few years or quarters;

* High potential size of their business (which can be measured by how much business your competitor is doing with them, or by an estimated figure if they bought an optimal amount from you);

* Creditworthy and pays on time;

* Provides you with access on their current and future business objectives;

* Open to new ideas, suggestions and discussions on what else you can do for them; etc.

There are no fixed way of defining which of these criteria are suitable for you, but the selection of Key Accounts are likely to be made with a combination of a few criteria. It is unlikely to be based on any one single criteria such as volume, margin or growth potential.

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