The idea of singling out key accounts is to treat them special, to give them the recognition and treatment that they deserve. If the age old “80/20 rule” applies, there are 20% of your customers, or less, who generate 80% of the profits, or more. These customers should be made to feel as though they are really special. Most companies recognize this strategy as being important and create sales plans and organizations to reflect this idea. In my experience, many lose sight of the objective of this strategy when they implement tactics to support it.

As an example, one of my clients gave their top 100 customers a special number to call for customer service. The customers would only call this number when my client’s product had failed, resulting in a serious loss of revenue for their customer. The customer would need assistance immediately. When this special number is called by the “key account” customer, these customers actually experience a serious delay in service. They need to be qualified for the special service first in order to receive it. In fact, they may have been better off calling the number for the masses.

In another client, too many customers were considered “key accounts.” The objective was to treat them all as “special.” What happened internally was that each region of the company wanted to define their own key account criteria. None of them wanted to be left out of this program. The result was that the number of customers who were put into this group far exceeded the number of customers that the sales staff could reasonably accommodate. The key account sales reps did not have time to treat each customer with the special attention that they deserved. The hope was that each special account would be visited at least once a month, or once a quarter at worst. In fact, many were only visited twice a year or less often.

What does a key account want from sales staff? Some do not want frequent contact, but most of them do. If their partnership with your company means that they are a key account, they have a number of wants and needs that have been expressed frequently in market research:

1. Understand their business – they don’t want to have to explain their needs over and over because you have changed sales assignments or don’t remember from last time.
2. Know how they make money and how your product or service helps them accomplish that.
3. Ask about their plans. Are they expanding? Are they moving? What are their major problems? In what direction do they see their business or industry going in the future? You need to know in case you can help, even if they don’t think the problems apply to your product or service. Find out what their problems are, all of them, and find ways to help.
4. Make sure that you know not only their order history with you, but any problems in the relationship, even if they did not involve the sales activity (e.g., missing delivery dates or service delays).

One of my clients recently held several conversations with key accounts in this way. What they discovered was that the key customers were seeing a trend in their industry toward using larger sizes of a product that interfaced with my client’s product. Unless they responded to this trend, my client could lose some business from their key accounts. This knowledge was worth millions of dollars. It enabled my client to develop products to meet the needs of the key accounts and stay ahead of the competition.

Many companies do not treat these types of customers as truly special. Designating them as a “key account” should be meaningful to them as well. If they don’t feel as though they are being treated as important to you, such a designation will be a negative, not a positive, in their mind. I have heard several times in my consulting practice, “I don’t feel as though I am being given the attention that my purchases would indicate I deserve; I’m not being treated as a special customer should be treated.”

Make sure that your best customers don’t feel that way. You may want to ask them what being a key account means to them and how they would want to be treated. Some of the answers may surprise you. This type of research is invaluable. It may be done fairly easily if your C-level sales executive is sincere about making these customers feel like the select few. Ask the right open-ended questions about what being a key account should mean. Describe how the relationship should work, your reasons for designating them as a key account. Find out their thoughts on how to grow the partnership so both companies profit.

The bottom line: Don’t lose sight of your overall objective to make the key account feel special as you implement the tactics of that strategy.