Paper info

Factors Affecting Key Account Manager Performance

Olavi Uusitalo and Tommi Mahlamäki

The paper was published at the 25th IMP-conference in Marseille, France in 2009.

          In Key Account Management (KAM) a company analyses its customer relationships, prioritizes them, and manages them in a coordinated way. Successful KAM relies on the identification of Key Account Manager responsibilities and roles. Individual performance as a Key Account Manager requires a special set of skills. This paper tackles the issue of how to define the performance of a Key Account Manager.         This paper looks into the relevant literature to find common ground regarding Key Account Manager performance, and reports the results of a survey of 180 Finnish Key Account Managers. These Key Account Managers were asked structured and open-ended questions about the factors affecting their work performance. On the basis of the literature and the survey, this paper aims to develop a model of Key Account Manager performance. Conclusions and ideas for future research are discussed.