This book bills itself as "the reference handbook on key account management" and its 460 pages certainly deliver on that.   It covers every aspect of the subject from strategy to the analysis of competitors in accounts and from partnering with key accounts to how to build a culture in which key account management can thrive.  Noel Capon is an academic who has consulted widely for decades and the book is a summary of his consultancy experience and a masterly synthesis of all the research in the field. 

Unless your life is dedicated to key account management or you are planning a complete revamp of how you handle your key accounts, this is probably not a book to sit down and read, but rather one to consult when you have a specific problem. 

But the book is certainly comprehensive, with chapters on the job roles and organisation of key account management, and two chapters on key account planning as well as chapters on partnering with key accounts and managing key accounts.  At the back are detailed exercises.

The book certainly demonstrates just how much you need to do to make key account management a reality.  The enormity of the task indicates why relatively few companies evolve effective account management systems without recourse to outside experts!  Putting such systems in place calls for big internal changes and dedicated teams with clear ideas of what they are doing and where they are going.

“He suggests a detailed analysis of specific competitors.”

Capon is particularly interesting on assessing and understanding competitors’ presence in an account: "Too often companies look only at domestic competitors and are surprised when global players move in."

He suggests a detailed analysis of specific competitors (see diagram).  From this analysis should come answers to these questions: "What will the competitor do to reduce its own costs and better position itself for price reductions at the key account?  What will the competitor do to increase the value it offers the key account to better position itself?  What objectives will the competitor set at the key account?  What specific action programmes is the competitor likely to implement? What other specific resource allocations will the competitor make at the key account?"

And finally all this should enable the account manager to work out how the competitor will react to the suppliers’ proposed initiative and how it is likely to respond to it.

Capon goes on to look at how an account manager should size up competitors’ presence, suggesting that he or she should know the answer to these questions at divisional level within the customer: "What are our various market shares at the key account? How does that compare to our competitors?"

He also looks at satisfaction surveys and suggests that, whilst they are useful, "when supplier firms lose business, typically the key account is not unsatisfied with the supplier firm!"  Often a satisfied customer will switch suppliers because of a better price and, for Capon, the crucial issue is the drivers behind the decisions made by the key account.  This again is analysed in detail.

It is perhaps disappointing to find that the measurement of the profitability of key accounts is consigned to a five-page appendix, particularly when Capon admits in the first paragraph that "systems for measuring customer or account profitability are more rare (than systems measuring product profitability)".  Given that we are all in the value creation game, isn’t accurate measurement of vital importance?  And shouldn’t it be the measurement we seek to use for all our actions?

Key Account Management and Planning by Noel Capon is published by The Free Press, ISBN 0-7432 1188-X, Price $45.00.