Key Account Management: Marketing’s Impact. An interview with Bev Burgess

Recently, SI interviewed Bev Burgess, a B2B services growth specialist, on the topic of marketing’s role in Key Account Management (KAM) programs.  Bev is Director of UK-based consultancy The Capsicum Group, and a recognized expert in the process of applying strategic marketing insight to grow key accounts.  She has assisted many technology-based corporations across Europe successfully implement an account-based marketing (ABM) model.

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Solutions Marketing: How an MBA Course Changed my Perception of Marketing

Marketing for most MBA students who don’t have a business background is a  mystery. To me, Marketing conjured up the following concepts -- creatively promoting existing products, new products being launched, brands, and advertising.   Our International Marketing course at the Hult International Business School (HIBS) in fact covered these facets of marketing – and quite a bit more.  I found Marketing to be much more strategic and critical to a company’s success than I had expected.

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Solutions Marketing: How Avnet Applied Change Management Principles to Make the Transition from a Products-Based Company to a Solutions Company

We recently conducted a poll and asked what the biggest challenge in moving from a product-oriented business focus to a more customer-centric, solutions oriented approach was.  I was surprised that an overwhelming percentage of the respondents selected   “managing the cultural and behavioral change” as the thorniest change that they had to make.

“I’m not surprised at all”, said Steve Church, Chief Business Development Officer at Avnet, Inc. 

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Key Account Management: What the Best Companies Have Done to Improve Their Programs

The Focus of our Research

In a previous blog post, we introduced 8 Critical Success Factors for Protecting and Growing your Best Accounts  based on a recent study completed by Solutions Insights and Hult International Business School.  In that study, we conducted primary and secondary research on over 20 of the best Key Account Management (KAM) programs in many global industries.  In addition to what we consider “baseline” critical success factors reported in our earlier post, we also identified what leading companies have done in the past year to improve their programs.   Our goal was to determine what the best programs were doing to maintain their leadership position – and two big trends stand out.

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Solutions Marketing: Back to the Basics - What is the Definition of a Solution?

I had two conversations with senior level marketers at large B2B technology companies last week about their solutions businesses.  In both conversations, we realized that we had different views and definitions for the term “solution”.   In both situations, it wasn’t just a matter of semantics – a lack of a common definition of what we were talking about led to different opinions of how solutions should be developed and marketed.

Why a Common Definition is Important

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Solutions Marketing: 8 Critical Success Factors for Protecting and Growing your Best Accounts

Our Latest Research Study at Solutions Insights:

For reasons that we have discussed in previous blogs, a robust, effective Key Account Management (KAM) program is often a characteristic of solutions-driven companies.   Many of the companies that we have worked with have seen a KAM structure as an important vehicle for gaining a deep understanding of a customer’s needs and opportunities, leading to the creation of high-value solutions.

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Solutions Marketing: Have you Experienced the Shift from Services to Solutions?

 “Build a strong services business.  That’s where the future revenue for technology companies will be”…

The Drive to Build a Services Business
Technology-based companies saw the gold glittering up in the “services” hills.  Build out a solid professional services capability, the advice was, and you’ll get a nice pop to your overall revenue stream.   Create more assessment, installation and education services and you’ll not only grow revenue but you’ll also build stronger customer relationships.

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Solutions Marketing: How Invensys built a Business Value Solutions Model that Moved it out of a Commodity Business

The Challenge

Many technology companies that have served the manufacturing and process automation markets have struggled to get technology innovation accepted, resulting in a concentration of products that are seen to be commoditized and generic “for the plant floor”.  This is a story of a company that was able to break out of this syndrome and find a way to develop and deliver high value, differentiated solutions to its customers.

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Solutions Marketing: 5 ways to use Social Media

It’s easy to get caught up in the buzz, and the hype, around social media. I’ve been working with many B2B companies to help them figure out when and how to use social media in their business.  The answer is always a bit different depending on the product or service. One area that few people have written about is how to use social media for solution marketing. Let me demystify the topic a bit by sharing five ways I’ve seen it really work.

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Solutions Marketing: The Skills Gap Between Product and Solutions Managers

Developing new products is a well-defined, broadly practiced business activity.   Over the past decade, structured processes have provided the guidance that product managers have needed to create new products with increased efficiency and unparalleled levels of quality. The Stage Gate methodology led that way, and has been subsequently followed by the PACE approach and then the “process du jour” – Agile Product Development.

  

While these processes have been hugely beneficial to developing new products…..what about solutions?  Can highly experienced and skilled product managers apply what they know about creating new products to developing robust solutions?

 

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