Business-to-Business Selling and Key Account Management
Thematic Area: Sales and Key Account Management (KAM)
Supervisor: Professor Lynette Ryals
Supervisor: Dr Javier Marcos
In a tougher business-to-business world where customers are becoming more powerful, more knowledgeable and more sophisticated, the way in which companies manage their relationships with major customers is vital. Previous research has found that long-term relationships can pay off for buyers and for suppliers. However, poor management of these key customer relationships can lead to damage to corporate profitability through over-servicing clients (higher costs) and loss of customer revenues (pricing issues, total loss of the customer, or customer migration to alternative suppliers). Cranfield has been researching into strategic selling and account management since 1994 and is a world-leader in this field.
There are several exciting areas for doctoral research in this fast-growing field with a huge potential contribution to both theory and practice:
Key Account Management (Prof Lynette Ryals)
- Value Propositions: How are value propositions developed in collaborative relationships? How is value created and shared between the partners?
- Solution Selling, Complex Selling and Offer Development: What difficulties do firms experience when they try to move to solution-based rather than product-based selling? How do you sell a complex product or service that does not yet exist (in other words, one that has to be developed for that customer)?
- Transitioning to Key Account Management: What are the organisational implications of moving to key account management? What is the key account manager role, and what kind of people make exceptional key account managers?
- Business-to-Business Pricing: How can companies develop and implement value-based pricing strategies? How do suppliers price, when they are selling solution packages rather than products?
- Customer Profitability: Is KAM profitable? How can firms manage their key clients more profitably? How do firms make decisions abut internal resource allocation?
- Supplier Relationship Management: How do customers select, measure and manage their key suppliers? How do suppliers become key suppliers? Are suppliers better off being Tier 1or Tier 2?
Strategic Sales and Sales Management (Prof Lynette Ryals, Dr Javier Marcos)
- Sales Force Development: In which way, and for whom, are sales development interventions effective?
- Team Selling and Account Management: Why are some sales or key account managers/teams more effective than others?
- Sales Leadership: How do you motivate and lead sales teams for maximum performance?
- Strategy Implementation: What are the key impediments and facilitators for the implementation of sales and customer management strategies?
- Target Setting: What are the key elements of target setting processes and what impact do they have on behaviour and performance?
- Compensation: What are the appropriate design parameters for incentive and rewards schemes in sales and business development functions?
- Performance Evaluation: What are the effects of sales performance measuring and evaluating systems on the individual? And the organisation?
- Personal Sales Performance: What are the intrinsic and extrinsic drivers of personal sales performance? How are these influenced by context and personal characteristics?
These doctoral research areas could be researched using qualitative or quantitative techniques.
Candidate Profile
Candidates should ideally have at least three years of marketing or sales experience; however, candidates from other disciplines may be considered. A Masters degree is desirable but not obligatory. Candidates with interests in this area are invited to make contact with Professor Lynette Ryals (lynette.ryals@cranfield.ac.uk), or Dr Javier Marcos (javier.marcos@cranfield.ac.uk) setting out a preliminary research agenda as a guide to discussion and indicating what reading you have so far done around your topic.