Define Strategic Account Management as a Business Rather Than a Sales Initiative

How can you ensure that strategic account management will be a firm initiative?

1. The firm's senior leadership must see the financial sense of treating customers as strategic accounts.

2. All key departments need to be heading in roughly the same direction. The supplier's cross-functional executives and managers must work together from program design to program implementation and, ideally, after program launch.

3. Departments outside sales must be recognized for their contributions to strategic account management.