Mastering KAM excellence: achieving meaningful growth from top accounts

With roughly half of European Medicines Agency (EMA) approvals now for specialty drugs, biopharmas are changing how they engage with key customers. Complex patient journeys, with multiple treatment options, mean what was once a single prescription decision has evolved into many interdependent decisions. Other stakeholders – including key opinion leaders (KOLs), specialty physicians and payers – also shape clinical practice.

To generate more value from top customers, leading biopharmas are reassessing their approach to key account management (KAM). Historically, customer-facing functions were set up to optimise healthcare professional (HCP) interactions and insights. Over time, this resulted in overly product-focused account plans, a limited understanding of customer decision-making and a failure to capture account insights systematically. Today, many organisations have a sales-dominated approach to KAM, even though creating value requires close coordination between cross-functional teams.

Veeva analysis shows that while alignment is generally good, key accounts are often under-called relative to their potential value. Analysing how well biopharmas focused on key accounts in breast cancer in the UK as an example, we found that one in five key accounts are underserved, while achieving an above-average share of voice significantly increases the chance of a brand being included within the formulary of an account.

Account-based selling and strategic KAM are sometimes conflated despite myriad differences. Account-based selling is foundational and an effective way to manage most accounts (‘KAM for the masses’) while strategic account management focuses on building long-term partnerships with a few high-value accounts to shape clinical practice. Before changing your approach, it’s important to decide which strategy to apply to each account. Usually, this means weighing market complexity (eg, payer affordability, volume of patients, competitors, etc) against potential value.

To move from account-based selling to strategic account management, cross-functional teams may need to collaborate differently on strategy, insights, planning and execution.

Commercial teams usually prioritise key accounts based on sales potential. Additional criteria may be required to decide which are most important to your organisation, such as an account’s openness to partnering or collaboration opportunities on clinical trials.

Once your cross-functional teams have prioritised high-value accounts, identify the best value proposition for each. Segmenting by need uncovers the right engagement strategy: ie, an account under budgetary pressure will require a different approach from one intent on specific clinical outcomes.

When account insights are recorded and shared systematically, the whole organisation benefits. By centralising feedback from account stakeholders on their experience of doing business with you, account plans can reflect the current customer context.

Visibility of patient pathways in account plans can help determine account tactics and priorities. Teams can understand the pain points and developments on the ground – whether low (or slow) diagnosis or limited adherence and follow-ups – and approach key customers with the right propositions.

To move from transactional conversations toward strategic partnerships, account teams need support to define, create and manage shared value opportunities. Otherwise, they will be tempted to go it alone – and miss the chance to increase value for the whole organisation.

Effective internal planning brings together all relevant stakeholders: cross-functionally and between the account and customer teams. To be anchored in shared value creation, a joint business plan with customers should agree on shared objectives and priorities, commit resources and be transparent on progress.

Account plans set by commercial teams must be simple and intuitive enough for other functions to execute. Account teams will find it easier to collaborate from an integrated plan, particularly if tools provide visibility of their activities to those outside customer relationship management..

Progress is invisible without good data. A holistic set of metrics could incentivise the right behaviours. Setting up a measurement framework representing different cross-functional outcomes, including medical and market access, can enable account teams to adapt quickly to results.

Empowering account teams to use tools and apply new skills may lead to structural changes. Perhaps you’ll decide to hire account leads for your top ten accounts, or appoint a cross-functional leader to incentivise conversations beyond sales.

Biopharmas that invest in strategic account management will become true partners to their most important customers, helping to reshape clinical practice for improved patient outcomes.

Read the full white paper to learn how to transform KAM in your organisation.