Managing clients on a local scale is hard enough, but what’s involved when it comes to a global scale of account management? How can you attain the best results?

“Global Account Management? That’s just Key Account Management with time zones...” We’ve heard this said, and if that’s the view in your company, particularly if that’s the view at the top, then watch out for trouble. Not only is this so very clearly the comment of someone who has never tried it, but as an underestimation of the task ahead it ranks alongside the notion that flying is just walking, with wings.

It ain’t easy on a global scale

Nobody thinks Key Account Management is easy, but add the global aspect to the challenge and the complexities can become quite daunting. As well as the obvious challenge of geography, language, and yes, those time zones, we must add the following:

• The challenge of global pricing…
or not… won’t a global price mean your lowest price?
• The increasing organisational complexity…
a massive challenge for those companies firmly based on national structures
• What we might call the ‘global versus local’ dilemma…
whose interests are we pursuing, the health of our local businesses (known entities with clear objectives and operations), or some greater (but most likely poorly defined) ‘common good’? I’m all for the ‘common good’, but try arguing that with one of your local ‘barons’…
• The need for authority…
and here lies another dilemma: global account managers need the kind of authority that most managers will fear to give them
• The need for senior management commitment…
don’t even think of starting if the Board is not on board
• The impact of cultural diversity…
too often ignored and yet there is good news here – harnessing global diversity can work hugely to your benefit; ignoring it, or worse, fearing it, throws away a huge opportunity to enhance the quality of your team

Given all this, taking on the global challenge may prove to be one of the most testing things that your business undertakes; it will certainly occupy large amounts of your time, and it may cost you more than you had ever imagined. This is not something to be entered into lightly.

Let’s start with a rule: the nature of your Account Management (whether it be practiced nationally or globally) should begin with the nature of your customer. If your customer is not ‘truly global’, but merely ‘plain international’, then you might save yourself a lot of unnecessary and certainly unrewarded effort.

Getting the definition of ‘truly global’ right

This could save your business a great deal of time, money, and frustration. ‘Truly global’ implies something far more significant than size or geographic presence. The customer may be big, they may be everywhere, but are they ‘shrinking the world’? Do their behaviours and activities preserve or bolster national boundaries, or do they render such things old-fashioned, even meaningless?

The first test is to do with the opportunity, the second the practicalities and realities, while the third is to do with your reward, and is vital to understand. It is all too easy to make agreements globally – it really is – particularly when they involve suppliers trading discounts for global listings, but will they be enforced? Will you get your reward, or have you simply purchased a global hunting licence?

Simple tests, complex or unclear answers

Simple tests, but often with complex or unclear answers. B2B marketers face hugely diverse customer portfolios. Each customer must be assessed individually – truly global, plain international, or toughest of them all, the ‘would be global’. The secret to success amidst this complexity is timing.

Where does the customer lie in the spectrum from ‘plain international’, through to ‘would be global’, and on to ‘truly global’? And in what direction are they moving and how fast? Answering these questions will help determine your own response.

The extremes are the simple ones. They are plain national - put aside the challenge of GAM, it is unnecessary, and its practice would be artificial, almost certainly causing you more trouble than good. They are truly global - then bite the bullet, and fast, before they become terminally frustrated with your fragmented silo mentality and your hopelessly national structures. It’s the ones in the middle that create the biggest problem, and in truth it is here that most of us will find most of our customers.

What becomes clear is that right now, GAM in B2B markets is more about reading the signs and getting your internal house in order than it is about dramatic changes to sales and marketing practices. By attending to the challenges listed above, starting by getting the Board on board, then looking at your organisation, finding the appropriate measures and mechanisms for performance and rewards (in GAM it has never been better advice to ‘measure and reward the things you want to happen’), and then the issues of authority and cultural diversity, so you will find that progress is made by smooth evolutionary steps rather than disruptive revolutionary leaps.

A final tip – don’t attempt this alone

Chances are (as readers of this article) that you are in sales or marketing, but GAM is a truly cross functional challenge, and the sooner you get your colleagues moving in the same direction the better. There is often good news to be found here: the challenges of globalisation have already come to many of your colleagues, whether in production, R&D, IT, human resources, and the rest – you may find that the lessons they have learned will be of use to you in your own global challenge.

By Bryan Foss and Peter Cheverton
Founder of Fossinitiatives and Director of Insight MP (respectively)

A whetted appetite?

If this article has whetted your appetite for more, then you might like to turn to a newly published book, Global Account Management, by Peter Cheverton, published by Kogan Page. To find out more, please contact Peter.Cheverton@insight-mp.com

Peter Cheverton is a Director of INSIGHT Marketing and People Ltd www.insight-mp.com , a global firm specialising in the challenges of KAM and GAM, and presents a bi-annual Masterclass in both these important areas.

Bryan Foss is an independent board level advisor and non-executive director, also founder of www.FossInitiatives.com and co-author (with Peter Cheverton) of the Kogan Page book Key Account Management in Financial Services