The account relationship strategy a company chooses to follow represents the type of relationship, it is going to develop towards its customers. Within the account relationship strategy, there are three different kinds in which the relationship of you and your customer can be differentiated: The transactional relationship, consultative relationship and enterprise relationship.
In my following term paper I would like to show you what the key elements of every relationship is and for further explanation examples will document every relationship. At the end a real life example will show an industry which is right now making a shift from transactional relationship selling to a consultative approach.
2. Main Body 2.1. Transactional relationship
2.1.1. Definition and explanation
The transactional approach is mostly common where customers can quite easily switch their businesses from one supplier to another, just depending on who offers the lowest price for them.
The effort done by the company to customize a product for a single customer isn’t that big. As well as customer service. It is limited to a certain extend. So a transactional relationship is one in which the relationship is generally based on the need for a product which is highly competitive priced and is of acceptable quality. As already indicated before, the main difference between transactional relationship and the other two types of relationships is that it is very often based on a personal relationship between individual buyers and sellers. The personal contact is here just between the salesman and the customer.
Trust is here a key element of the relationship, because you know your contact person, your personal salesperson now for years. He won’t normally trick you. But the problem is, if another competitor is able to offer the same or a similar product for a cheaper price and its quality is as well on high level, you easily lose your customers. There isn’t a strong connection between