Opinion

Ask any pharmaceutical sales executive if their companies have embraced key account management (KAM), the answer is almost invariably an enthusiastic yes.

But do they all mean the same thing? There is reason to doubt it. What is an account anyway? Or, if we know that, what does it mean to manage it?

This ambiguity creates a lot of misunderstandings. And potential disappointment with the results.

For some, account management means coordination of the activities of multiple client facing roles that are directed at the same customer. For others it is the opposite: identifying and understanding the importance and motivations of the different stakeholders and decision makers at a customer (=account), and assigning a key person (account manager) to navigate this complexity. Others may try a combination of both.

Is account management = value based selling? Or can you do account management without doing value based selling, but not value based selling without account management? Confused? There's more.

Some experts speak of a journey that a sales organization needs to make through different stages of account management sophistication, until a fully fledged account management capability is developed. Still others reserve the account management approach to certain customer groups, e.g. hospitals, buying groups or insurance companies. They are contradicted by others who see account management as THE future in pharma selling that will replace the old detailing model.

So now what?