The authors’ research has found most business-to-business companies under-invest in their most important customers’ relationships. At the same time, they have found that systematically focusing on such relationships can be a powerful source of strategic advantage and -for some accounts, at least - an effective antidote for transactional selling, commoditized pricing, and eroded margins. But in sixteen years of consulting, the authors have seen most organizations fail more often than they succeed in systematically focusing on such relationships - particularly when they are trying to implement strategic account management programs. This book, through compelling case examples gathered from the authors experiences in helping organizations manage their most critical business relationships, will point out the keys in designing and implementing a strategic account management program. The central theme of The Seven Keys to Managing Strategic Accounts is that when firms try to develop a strategic account management program, they tend to make common - and crippling - errors. The book will present these implementation errors, using disguised case studies of failures, and then will present examples of how other, more successful (and named) firms avoided or overcame these pitfalls. The Seven Keys to Managing Strategic Accounts has four distinguishing characteristics: - A total focus on designing and implementing strategic account management programs. - Twelve punchy chapters focused at executive needs - book will be around 256 pages. - Named case studies of successful strategic account management implementation and disguised cases of SAMP implementation failures. - A competency model for strategic account managers derived from 36 world-class strategic account managers. The book is written as a collaboration between Miller Heiman and S4 Consulting and both companies will be promoting the book extensively through their channels. Miller Heiman will also be using the book in a class developed around this book.
