Dim Sum and Account Management
A few weeks ago I went on a business trip to Shanghai. It was my first time in China. I arrived in the evening and checked into my hotel. After a trip of 20 hours, I was starving. None of my colleagues had yet arrived, so I went out alone to find a restaurant.
By on Aug 18, 2010A few weeks ago I went on a business trip to Shanghai.
It was my first time in China. I arrived in the evening and checked into my hotel. After a trip of 20 hours, I was starving. None of my colleagues had yet arrived, so I went out alone to find a restaurant.
Just around the corner was one that looked promising. It turned out to be Korean rather than Chinese, but that was just as well. So in I went.
I was led to a very nice table at the window, overlooking the square outside. I sat down.
The waitress started talking to me in Chinese. At least thats what I think it was, but it could just as well have been Korean. I smiled and asked something in English. She smiled and replied something in Chinese (or Korean). This went on for a bit lots of smiling but no real progress towards a meal. In fact, nobody in the restaurant spoke a word of English. And I was the only foreigner in the place, so there was no hope for external support.
How could I possibly explain what I wanted to eat, and how could I make sure that I actually got what I wanted? Should I perhaps just let them bring me anything they thought might appeal to me? The risk of failure might be high. Or, I could try to convince them (but how?) to let me into the kitchen and have the cook show me what ingredients were on offer. I have a colleague who is a great cook who knows Asian cuisine and would probably have exulted in this situation, somehow getting the cook to concoct a custom meal.
But thats not me.
As it happened, the solution was actually really simple. The waitress disappeared - for a moment I thought perhaps she had remembered where she could fetch somebody who could speak English after all. Instead, she came back with an armful of large picture cards. These turned out to be menus with photos of food items. They followed a clear and familiar structure of drinks, starters, main courses and deserts.
Through pointing (and a lot of more smiling) I had no trouble configuring an excellent meal, and about an hour later I returned to my hotel well fed and happy, and thinking that this experience had been a lot like key account management.
OK, I realize that this thought may seem weird without further explanation. So let me explain.
One theory for successful KAM is that the more control management gives up, the more value the KAMs can produce. And considering the command and control culture of many pharma companies, a lot of control may be on the line.
The rationale is that account management is just too complex. Contrary to the old model of coverage and frequency objectives, it is impossible to plan everything upfront. Instead, the account managers need to go rapidly with the flow as business opportunities evolve. If we micromanage them, we only slow them down.
That sounds great. The term control anyway carries some negative connotations. It is much better if we empower instead. I bet the best KAMs know anyway what to do when they go to their accounts.
But thats just it the best KAMs. These are like my colleague, making it up as they go along and probably producing a very decent result.
But what about the rest of us (i.e. your average KAM)? Of course we dont want to be told exactly what to eat but having a menu with lots of options to choose from is a really good starting point.
A manufacturer of medical products I worked with recently created just such a menu. They brought their best account managers together for a workshop to understand what they were doing that made their customer relationships so outstanding. Then they codified what they learned into a simple sales process with four stages (convenient labelled A,B,C,D). For each step, they defined a set of tactical options that had proved useful in moving a customer to the next step. Then, they put the menu into their account planning system.
Today, instead of asking their account managers to develop account plans pretty much from scratch (perhaps with the help of some templates), the KAMs can simply configure their plans from the provided options. Of course they can add their own tactics if they want to (and these are then made available to everybody else), but in most cases the options from the menu are perfectly fine.
The planning process is simple, fast and allows much better insight into what KAMs are doing and what works and what doesnt.
Thus with a little bit of structure as guidance (drinks, starters, main courses, deserts or A, B, C, D) and a lot of choice for the menu items (perhaps with recommendations from colleagues?), we can have a pretty decent meal, even if we dont know the language.