Key account management

The businesses already in your region are among your most valuable sources of new investment. Foreign-owned companies expand, relocate functions, and make decisions about where to grow next, and those decisions are influenced by the relationship they have with the place they are in. Key account management is how a region makes sure it is in the room when those decisions are made.

We work with regional governments and investment agencies to build and manage those relationships: identifying the foreign-owned and high-growth businesses that matter most, understanding their expansion plans, and turning that understanding into landed projects, retained jobs and further investment. 

Our team has done this from inside government as well as for it. Team members have worked for the Department for International Trade (now DBT), account managing around 80 foreign direct investors each in priority industries including advanced manufacturing and technology, and collaborating with the Office for Investment and DBT’s HQ specialists.

Who do we help?

We support investment promotion agencies, growth companies, combined authorities and county councils that need to build and manage relationships with the foreign-owned and high-growth businesses already in their area. Recent key account management clients include the West Midlands Growth Company and Leicestershire County Council. 

How can we help?

Building and managing an account portfolio

We start by expanding the list of accounts a region knows about, then build a managed pipeline from it. For Leicester and Leicestershire, we increased identified accounts by 30%, arranged meetings with over 30 regionally-based foreign direct investors, and built a pipeline of 30 managed international accounts. From those, we developed account plans that identified 42 projects, 280% of target, and implemented them to five wins, 166% of target.

The Key Account Management Toolkit

Our proprietary Key Account Management Toolkit sets out the actions needed to convert a lead into an outcome. We use it to scope each client’s expansion plans and requirements, identify the challenges and support they need, build an informed account plan efficiently, and keep every interaction directed toward a tangible result.

Working as one team with local stakeholders

Key account management only works when the region’s own partners are aligned behind it. Our “one-team” approach coordinates national and international stakeholders around each account. On the DBT-funded Leicester and Leicestershire programme, we worked closely with seven district and borough councils to streamline delivery. 

Specialist secondments

We are able to provide investment agency specialist secondment services.

Reporting

Our reporting is built around what public sector clients need to evidence. For Leicester and Leicestershire, we produced DBT-aligned monthly reports and kept DataHub updated with progression status. For the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Combined Authority, monthly management reports gave a programme-wide view and a view per service line.

Recent delivery

• Leicestershire County Council Key Account Management programme: 30 strategic relationships developed with foreign-owned businesses, generating over 300 jobs and over £33m in capital expenditure over 18 months. 
• West Midlands Growth Company, DBT SEIF Account Management: within three months, over 60 businesses were contacted, five were added to the client’s CRM, eight company meetings were booked, and two project progressions secured representing 500 new local jobs.
• Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Combined Authority: a medical device company expansion secured, creating 200 high-value jobs.