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Development of a framework for
key account management
Specifically for a multinational company
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I
have been discussing development of a key account management
for an MNC. In the first part, I discussed what a firm
should not do and what are the major
elements of a key account management program for an MNC.
The process in the chart below outlines the key steps that a firm has to consider while developing a basic framework. |
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Mission: It is best to revisit your mission if you have traditionally not been an MNC. In some cases, I have been able to convince organizations not only to have a different mission for their operations in other countries, but also to rewrite their corporate mission to reflect their new mission.
Values: A company’s values evolve over time and it is best to stick with them, unless they present cultural or legal conflicts when operating in multiple nations. For instance, McDonald’s had to de-emphasize its focus on beef while operating in India. |
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Skills and capabilities: An inventory of skills and capabilities must be done for each domain that you do business in. For instance, a company may not be able to provide technical support or manuals in multiple languages/dialects due to lack of internal capabilities. And customers are very appreciative if you are up-front about it. I have dealt with customers in Japan who gladly offered to get documents translated into Japanese themselves. We declared to all our customers what documents we would provide in Japanese but also offered to make sure that we provided the English versions of documents for customer-specific needs.
Principles of customer value: A combination of a firm’s mission, values, and skills/capabilities should be used to lay out the fundamental principles of how you would create value for your customers no matter where they are located. Once you clearly lay these out for everyone to see, not only will your customers understand what you offer to them, your account mangers will know exactly what they have to do.
Next part: Tactics
for key account management
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Questions,
comments, feedback, and suggestions
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