The indirect approach through top management

Salespeople often find it hard to manage this aspect that is vital to a successful key-account strategy. Either they over-use top management,with well-known disastrous consequences, wherein managers take over meetings, hogging the floor during presentations - oftencounter-productively. This is especially true when they charge in during final discussions. At worst, they go over the heads of theKAM's usual contacts to see their bosses. These admissions of weakness and desperate moves are generally seized upon by theclient to enhance his own position.

Many KAMs, who have thus had their fingers burnt, develop theopposite attitude: don't let the bosses get involved! Unfortunately, this too is a sign of a flaw. The KAM needs to harness and manage all theresources of his company. An important objective is to set up a lobbying policy aimed at the client's key decision-makers, and often hisown top management is the KAM's only resource to reach this target.
For this to be more effective, he needs to focus on a few vital points:

• Effective lobbying must start before any business gets under way. You do not send your management to meet the client's VIPs once a major project is under discussion. It must be done 6 to 18 monthsbeforehand.
• There is such a thing as (unwritten) rules of hierarchy. If you decideto send your CEO to meet an xth-ranking person with the client, you don't want him to meet the x +1. The host will be very upset to learnthat unknown to him, contact has already been made with a lowerranking person. So ensuring that the decision-making «cogs» of bothcompanies mesh is of the utmost importance.
• As the precise aim of the meeting is not to talk business betweenthe two companies, the reason for the meeting has to be prepared meticulously and focus more on major trends in the client's industryand their impact on your mutual business.

Experience has shown that under these conditions, a senior decisionmakerwill not turn down an appointment with the top management of a supplier. Since there is no emergency, it may take some weeks to find a slot in both diaries. But the principle is not rejected outright. Why would a top manager in a multinational company turn down aninformal business meeting with the CEO or managing director even of an SME? Doesn't he also need his own network to flourish? Andisn't it for him too an ideal opportunity to get «some fresh air» from outside instead of getting information through the usual filters of thestrata of his own hierarchy?

Knowing what a supplier thinks of his own organisation is alwaysworthwhile to him.

Hence, the meeting must be organised and presented through aninformal, unhurried approach (perhaps a lunch) the aim of which might be: to get his assessment of the key implications as his groupsees them so they may be factored better into your company's solutions within the account and to provide him with information  (feedback, benchmarking, findings from the field, etc.) about what is happening in his company or on his market as you see it.

Since this type of encounter usually begins by getting the client to talk about the constraints and issues affecting his industry and his area of responsibility, you must also be fully prepared to analyse these trendsand know the account in detail. As the client is also waiting for ideas and feedback, once again good preparation serves to get your keymessages across.