Even the best-run companies can and do commit errors regarding the customers they service and the accounts that they manage. Some companies, thinking that all their customers are equally important, commit the often fatal mistake of giving each and every account the same level of importance and try to serve these disparate accounts and customers equally. And even if this mistake does not lead to a meltdown, it can result in a drain in resources.

It is thus very important for companies to learn which customers are more important than others and to treat them accordingly.

Key account management or KAM is the management of those customer relationships that are considered most important to a company. Key accounts are defined as those accounts which are held by customers producing or responsible for the bulk of the profits for a company and/or those which have the potential to do so.

Key account management is now firmly recognized as an essential component of business success. This is because companies only have a finite amount of resources to spread around, and, especially in today's uncertain times, can ill afford to spread themselves too thin. If you are intent on practicing key account management in your company, then the identification of these customers is one of the most important actions you could ever undertake in the course of your work for it.

In his book How Come You Can't Identify Your Key Customers?, author Peter Cheverton offers readers a 10-step process for teasing out key accounts and stratifying a company's accounts list by order of priority - into key accounts, key development accounts, maintenance accounts, and opportunistic accounts. By working through his plan, readers will understand how to define, communicate and achieve the key objectives of KAM in order to make a company a winner.