I mean one of the first issues is selection and you might say “Why on earth would you worry about how you select key accounts? Don’t they self select?” Now I cannot say which company it was but I was in the city not so long ago with a very famous company and I said to one of their directors and I said “How many key accounts have you got?” and she said “We have a thousand”. And when I heard that I wanted to stab my self in the eye with a fork I can tell you, I mean really. How can you possibly have a thousand key accounts I mean it is nutty wall stuff isn't. If I said to you and this audience let's say that on average each of us has got a hundred friends on average. Some from school, some from university, some from family, some from work, some from sports etcetera, okay so on average we've got a hundred and I said “How many of those hundred do you really, really love and cherish and give close warmth to and love and the answer is one, three or four, four or five. You haven't got the capability emotionally or any other way to really pay attention to more than four or five.”
So when somebody says they’ve got a thousand key accounts you can understand how annoyed I get. Then the other thing you’ve got is categorization. And you wouldn’t believe the nonsense that you see when it comes to this you get people who are say “Are categorized our key accounts gold, silver and bronze” and you know and so on and so fort and now you wouldn’t need a degree in anything to work out the C isn't as good as B and that A is better than B and bronze is not as good as silver and silver isn't quite as good as gold. But could you imagine a young man or a woman in the call center and the customer phones up and they start giggling and they say “You're a C costumer or you’re a bronze costumer” why do we give them insulting names I really do not know.
And then you’ve the whole business of profitability, now I will show you, give you some evidence that about 85% of companies in the world haven't the faintest idea whether they make or lose money after their dealings with their major costumers so we just put that on us.
Transcription by:
Scribe4you Transcription Services