Category: Thought leadership

Having invested and embedded Salesforce as your CRM, the benefits of having a platform that underpins distributed working and collaboration have come to the fore. Whether you have a proactive or reactive focus on target prospects, the challenge is the same – where do you put your focus in uncovering exactly who you should be […]

Securing existing business and growing new business is nothing new – but finding ways to do this, practically, efficiently and within your existing sales ecosystem is where you may now be feeling the pinch.

The Future of Key Account Management When asked about the future of Key Account Management (KAM), thought leaders tend to discuss three factors: supply chain management, risk and technology (1). Supply Chain Management Supply chain management continues to evolve. Despite much price pressure in recent years, it is noticeable that sustainability has also become very […]

The relevance of sales enablement to KAM The definition of sales enablement relevant to this discussion is ‘’The sales infrastructure that facilitates and supports the effectiveness and efficiency of salespeople and sales activities.’’ Sales enablement encompasses the company’s investment in process design, technology, systems, training, tools and sales support teams. Much focus is put on […]

The Evolution of Key Account Management in Business Organisations KAM is never implemented…. there is an ongoing, continuous and very long term commitment to continual improvement for the best practice KAM companies.” Davies & Ryals, 2009, p1041 (1) KAM can start small and develop over time. It is a major business change, subject to the […]

In our annual ThinkTank discussion this year we will focus on how Key Account Management has evolved since it became mainstream in the 1990s. The opportunity is there for a sales transformation of the practice of winning, keeping and growing key customers, yet we still struggle to achieve the outcomes of improved customer satisfaction, loyalty […]

Is your sales team on trend with sales transformation? It doesn’t seem long ago that we were heralding the arrival of CRM, with its promise to streamline sales processes, accelerate pipeline velocity and increase sales revenues. Now CRM goes hand in hand with the term ‘sales transformation’ and together they are promising to revolutionise sales. […]

Why must we change the way we sell? I recently delivered a sales training programme to seasoned sales professionals in France. Naturally one of the topics we covered was the sales process. Given their experience, I didn’t want to dictate to this sales team how their sales process should evolve because of today’s more informed […]

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems like Salesforce were designed for the sales force. So, why is it so hard to get sales people to use it? The reason most sales professionals don’t like using CRM to manage their sales is their perception that we burden them with things they don’t need. If a sales pro […]