3.2 KAM resources

There are two options for the determination of dedicated KAM resources;

1. To deploy a dedicated, cross-territorial National Key Account Manager who is in charge of all selected KA’s in the respective country.
2. To allocate the selected key accounts to the responsible territorial sales engineers. This part-time key account management approach would mean, for instance, each of the five territory sales engineers of Russia or France would cover a few key accounts.

The quality of the Key Account Manager has the strongest impact on the overall success. This statement is based on the investigation of Zupancic/ Belz/ Bussmann, page 30. Table 5 shows the comparison of the skills requirements between a dedicated Key Account Manager and a traditional territorial sales engineer.

Table 5: Traditional sales engineer versus Key Account Manager (Source: Zupancic Dirk / Belz Christian / Bussmann Wolfgang F., page 30)

The majority of the MTPRO sales engineers in most countries do not fulfil the listed skills in table 5. That means the allocation of the selected key accounts to the territorial sales engineers would put the success of the KAM concept in jeopardy. Therefore the part-time key account management approach is no viable option. The decision is to deploy a capable cross-territorial National Key Account Manager, who ensures the effectiveness of the KAM concept.