Successful Key Account Management: Machinery Dealer Manager's Handbook (Master's Program in Dealer Management)

The focus of Successful Key Account Management is examining the Best Industry Practices for Machine Dealer Managers in today’s industrial equipment dealerships. The very definition of a Key Account must include providing sustainable revenue, potential for sales growth, relationship match between the dealership’s positioning and customer expectations, and the account’s fit in the Strategic Direction of the Dealer’s model. Every dealership has a small number of very large accounts that contribute significantly to the overall success of the business. A key account is one which, if you lost your large (key) account, this loss would have a catastrophic impact on your business. Hopefully, your dealership has strategically avoided the risk of having 80% of your business in only 2 or 3 accounts. My Successful Key Account Management Handbook will delve into examining and identifying ways to avoid this outcome. What are the Best Practices in Key Account Management today? The concept of “high-tech/high-touch” is proving to be a very successful approach to developing and keeping those accounts essential to your long-term financial success. However, the challenge in Successful Key Account Management is to simultaneously ensure dealer resources, offerings, culture and systems also meet the requirements of smaller customers. We will review how to build this mindset in your company. Of equal importance, we will examine how Product Support can play a critical, crucial role in acquiring and keeping those very large, very important customers. We’ll explore the Key Account Management procedures and policies we’ve seen that yield the best results, as well as the Quantitative Dealer Performance Metrics that contribute most to Successful Key Account Management. We'll help you conduct a Key Account performance self-assessment. Then, we'll examine the essential steps in Key Account Management from assembling the team, gathering important facts, defining the roles of key influencers, identifying preferences and fears, and establishing Product Support as a Competitive Strength. We'll review how large accounts evaluate a potential dealer vendor. We'll specify the necessary selling skills and structure a contact strategy to successfully service all accounts to optimize market share. And, we'll discuss how deal participation rate directly impacts market share. We'll study how to avoid the biggest mistakes in Key Account Management as well as how to dodge the biggest vulnerabilities in your dealership. We'll conclude with special reports on how to sell large, complex engineered systems, perform life-cycle costing, optimize rental profits, and avoid major pitfalls in used equipment. I look forward to hearing your thoughts about this 11th volume in our "Master's Program in Dealer Management." Thank you for your interest in my work. Walter J. McDonald walt@mcdonaldgroupinc.com