In line with Mourik Industry’s Route ’25 strategy, KtotK has developed the commercial training ‘Customer-oriented acceleration’ for Mourik. A team of 36 commercial managers successfully completed this training last year.

In five inspiring sessions, the Mourik team worked on their commercial strategy and the associated new skills. The aim of the training was to learn to think and act even more from the customer’s perspective. Mourik wants to offer their customers even more added value. To do this, it is important to understand the customer even better. The ‘Customer-oriented acceleration’ training goes into this in more detail.

Jan Jansen provided the training to Mourik’s team, as KtotK specializes in developing and realizing commercial training courses.

“It was exceptionally inspiring to play the role of coach during the commercial development of these participants”, says Jan. “It’s always great to see that during these trainings, the participants become increasingly aware that by translating services into value, more opportunities arise and even more value can be created for customers.”

Ellen Faber, head of calculations and participant in the training, initially experienced the training as rather abstract. “But during the training and after sparring with colleagues, I have increasingly come aware of its importance. For instance, I learned that customer contact with “IB people “- contacts with Influence and Decision-Making Power – lies mainly outside our calculation department. Now I see how important it is to involve colleagues who maintain the customer contact in the tender process, even more than we already did.”

Ellen found sparring with her colleagues extremely valuable. “I think that work session 4 was the most inspiring: Presentation of value. It provided us with tools to improve our quotations and make them even more effective. Here we learned to increase our chances by getting outside of the competition area and acquire the assignment with a good margin.”

Mourik has completed this phase of its commercial training, and is now evaluating internally how they can further share the valuable insights gained within their organization in a practical way.

The result must be: excellence in every phase of the Customer Buying Cycle. Members of the account team have different natural qualities and potential talents in the various phases of the CBC. Members of the account team and their managers can become more aware of these qualities and potential talents.
Empowering these individual natural qualities and developing potential talents in the specific phases of the CBC, creates powerful and strong cooperative account teams and Account Management Excellence for profitable long term business revenue.

Acceptance of vulnerable qualities and potential is key for the further empowerment of individual natural qualities and the development of potential talent for all members of the account team.

KtotK has developed the Customer Buying Cycle functionality (Keycan CBC) with Keyscan inside.

• Keyminds & Me-Scan have developed the Keyscan. The CBC functionality has been added exclusively for KtotK. With this functionality we are able to focus in our training & coaching on the empowerment of natural quality and developable talent in specific phase of the Customer Buying Cycle.
• This enables account teams to cooperate on strength of the individuals and the team.
• Managers will be able to focus coaching on the empowerment of natural quality and developable talent

How do we train & coach on Account Management Excellence and Keyscan CBC?

To learn more about Account Based Engagement & Keyscan CBC,  please contact:

Jan Jansen +31653290938/email: jan.jansen@ktotk.nl,
Peter Weertman +31642810147/ email:  peter.weertman@ktotk.nl
Hans Kriens +31651531667/email: hans.kriens@ktotk.nl

How to use Account-Based Engagement (ABE) for your Key Account success

Account Based-Engagement conveys the integration between marketing & sales to grow future business with Platinum- or Key accounts. It integrates Account-Based Marketing and Account Management Excellence.

It requires a well-thought-out strategy and close cooperation between account management, marketing and other disciplines like service in your company. KtotK introduces its valuable and powerful Account-Based Engagement concept.

Why is ABE so important for your future business with your Key Accounts?

• Growing or defending the Share of Wallet with your Key Accounts is not self-evident.
• The major shift to sustainable solutions requires the right innovations and capabilities.
• Equally important focused engagement with the stakeholders of the Key Accounts.
• Competitors are changing fast, and growing using all new innovations and capabilities.
• Focus on communication of the right message to the right stakeholders becomes a key factor of success.
• Control by account management on all phases of the complex Customer Buying Cycles becomes more critical than ever before.

What is the KtotK approach for this development?

The basis of the concept is the understanding of Customer Buying Cycles (CBC) of the company’s key or platinum accounts. Accounts which represent a substantial part of revenue and probably even more of net profit. These Key accounts deserve an integrated one-to-one marketing and account management approach.

RFQ stands for Request for Quotation, being the document representing the needs of all departments and its stakeholders with the key account. This very often is the moment for suppliers to start the “Sales activities”. Conclusion: too late. Suppliers must be present in all phases of the CBC, but certainly in “The concretize needs” phase.

The CBC is a cycle, which never ends. A cycle with distinctive phases requiring specific marketing and sales performance by the supplier. This is the reason why Marketing and Sales in a Key Accounts Program are invited to work seamlessly together on Account Based Marketing and Account Management Excellence.

The program’s objective is to foster practices, aligned with the account teams and marketing specialists, that can raise the level of the entire team’s performance and its individual members, and position Suppliers for accelerated growth in these tough key accounts, with long and complex buying cycles, and multi-level Decision Making Units.

KtotK’s Account-Based Engagement Program

This signature KtotK program is designed around the Customer Buying Circle and considers every stage of the decision-making process.

Each stage requires a specific focus, which we will concentrate on across the program.

Conclusion:

Marketing and Account Management will face a substantial changes in doing their business with their Key Accounts. Close cooperation between the two disciplines will prove, that growing a profitable business in his changing arena with the key accounts is challenging – but possible.

The road to a successful implementation requires a step-by-step approach. The steps we have defined in our program are shown below.

KtotK and Keyminds have decided to integrate the KtotK Account Management Excellence and Keyminds’ Keyscan. They have agreed to join forces and work together to market their co-creation. For information on Keyminds go to keyminds.nl

With its product Keyscan, Keyminds is a specialist in development assessment, discovering the hidden capabilities and full potential of account managers during the specific phases of the Customer Buying Cycle.

KtotK has developed the Hybrid Account Management Excellence Training Program. This program was designed with the Customer Buying Cycle in mind, with special focus on the customers’ decision making process at all stages. In its Account Management Excellence Training Program, KtotK addresses this potential and challenges the Account Managers – and the Accountteam – to develop their full potential.

There are 4 phases in the Customer Buying Cycle (CBC). KtotK covers these phases with 5 KtotK Excellence Training Interventions:

1. Concretise the Needs by “Value Awareness”
2. The Selection Proces by “Become#1”
3. The Purchase by “Partner”
4. The Implementation of the Solution by “Relation Excellence, and
5. Becoming a “Trusted Partner”.

Every phase of the Customer Buying Cycle requires specific competences by both the Account Manager and the Account Team.

Both Keyminds and KtotK are looking forward to cooperate in this joint effort allowing synergy to strengthen their proposition.

On the picture from left to right Willemijn Jüttner, Willem Jüttner (both Keyminds) and Jan Jansen (KtotK)