A morning in KAM
Having spent the morning listening to the speakers in the KAM track at the SFE Europe 2009 conference, a clear theme seems to be developing as an overarching message.
By on Mar 4, 2009Having spent the morning listening to the speakers in the KAM track at the SFE Europe 2009 conference, a clear theme seems to be developing as an overarching message. Our sales teams need to be offering value rather than pushing product, and the way to do this is by empowering staff and creating key account management roles.
I caught up with David Wright (Chairman of the Key Account Management (KAM) track) to reflect on the conference so far, and he was in agreement that this was the main learning he had taken from the event. He was particularly impressed with the presentations from Huw Tippett (Novartis) and Peter Albiez (Pfizer), who both offered practical examples of how key account management has been used to activate Value-Based Selling (VBS) in those organisations. He believes that we need more of these examples to show the industry that this is not just theory, it works in practice.
We went on to discuss how the competitive advantage which early adopters of VBS gain then limits the level of sharing a company will do. Ironically the core ethos of working in this way is collaboration and it is only through doing this that pharma companies will begin to build trust of the customer.
David pointed out that the discussions we start at events such as this one, SFE Europe, need to carry on beyond the conference. To this end he will be blogging on the eyeforpharma site to continue the momentum after the event. Furthermore, in the spirit of sharing, he has replaced the gap left by an ill speaker with a discussion amongst delegates on their experience of KAM in their own organisations. Perhaps by sharing at this level, everyone can leave with some thoughts on moving forward.. and that can only be a good thing?