Diana Woodburn

Dr Diana Woodburn BSc, MSc, MBA, PhD, FCIM

Visiting Fellow, Cranfield School of Management


Since 1997 Diana has developed as a KAM specialist, spearheading Cranfield’s and Warwick’s initiatives in Key/Strategic Account Management, including research programmes, seminars and the Cranfield KAM Best Practice Research Club and Warwick’s Strategic Sales and Customer Management Network. She has written reports, articles and co-authored the leading book on KAM with Professor Malcolm McDonald, entitled ‘Key Customers: How to manage them profitably’, now updated and republished as ‘Key Account Management: The definitive guide’ (3rd Ed). In 2014 she co-edited, with Dr Kevin Wilson, ‘The Handbook of Strategic Account Management’, a domain-defining collection of papers from academics across the world. Diana’s PhD is one of the very few focused on K/SAM, and she continues to be involved in both the theory and the practice of K/SAM.

As an expert tutor, Diana has delivered about 200 KAM courses to over 3,000 key account managers, directors  and senior managers, arguably more than anyone else in the field. She has huge experience of the issues key account managers encounter and how a wide variety of companies have approached such issues, and from that experience and her research interests, she has developed many of the teaching concepts and implementation tools that are commonly used in KAM across the world.

As a consultant, Diana helps companies apply and embed KAM principles into practice, covering projects like key account manager profiling and job descriptions, development plans, organisational structure, key account selection, key account analysis, strategy and planning. She has delivered several major global programmes, some spanning several years, to develop world class KAM. Clients include a wide variety of companies: to name just a few – Tetra Pak, a number of leading insurance companies including Axa, Scottish Widows, Norwich Union and more, Chevron/Texaco, De Beers, Halcrow, EMC, Panalpina, Rexam, SCA, Janssen-Cilag, Actavis and several other pharma companies.

Diana worked as marketing practitioner in heavy industry, lighter industry, consumer goods and services. Her range of sectors, countries and marketing specialisms is unusually broad, giving her a deep understanding of the business issues faced in implementing strategies as well as formulating them, particularly in business-to-business and B2B2C marketing. She graduated from Manchester University with 1st Class Honours BSc and MSc in biological chemistry.

The Key Account Journal is a not-for-profit publication. It is managed by an Editorial Board and is supported by business schools with a strong faculty interest in Key and Strategic Account development. It is published by the Key Account Management Group which is a division of the Sales & Marketing Consulting Group.

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