What is a Strategic Account?

Strategic accounts are those customers who most readily help a firm achieve its strategic and financial goals.

They are chosen as strategic accounts because they have met specific criteria and they are most likely to provide a return on the higher level of investment that managing such accounts requires. These customers may be large, they may be small (targeted emerging accounts, for example), but they have strategic significance for the supplier.

Strategic accounts are those customers that most readily help a firm achieve its strategic and financial goals.

This book will use three words interchangeably to describe such customers: strategic account, account, and customer. Although all customers are important, there are certain customers you cannot afford to ignore or live without. You must treat strategic accounts differently (unless they request otherwise) and invest more in them. You need to select and invest in these accounts wisely.