A Day in the Life of – Jeffrey Krampah-Williams

Job title

National Key Account Manager – Santander

Brief overview of role

The role of a Key Account Manager is to develop and build strategic commercial business to business relationships with our intermediary partners in the mortgage market. Intermediary partners are the advisers who recommend our mortgage products to their clients – so it’s important we maintain good relationships with them. We are responsible for all aspects of our relationship with our key accounts including performance management, business quality, sales activity and marketing. We also manage the marketing budget for key relationships and agree a business plan for marketing activity, which can include networking events, conferences and editorials.

What does your morning routine look like?  

In my role I need to have several different morning routines depending on what my diary looks like. I could be travelling across the country, working from the office or working from home. I find that I often have the best start to my day when it begins with a moment of prayer. I often have the bad habit of checking my phone soon after I wake up and get a couple of emails sorted that I need to get fired off.

What does a typical afternoon look like?  

A typical afternoon for me usually consists of a few meetings as well as working through my to do list and returning my emails and phone calls. I do often try to block out some time out during the day just to have a bit of a break and get refreshed to go again. The ideal work finish time would be 5pm, however that never seems to be the case and I always go over. Realistically I would try to stop at 6pm and have a hard stop at 7pm unless I have an evening event I need to attend with work.

What do you find to be your most productive time of the day?

I generally find I am most productive in the afternoon. Usually at this point the majority of my meetings have been completed and I have looked though all of the figures and reports I need to, updated all the systems and trackers and I can start looking at responding to my emails and completing my to do list.

How do you manage your time to ensure you have a good work / life / home balance?

I believe the best way I do this is to set myself some hard stop times. It is easy to put in extra hours and work all night as there is always something that needs to be done. I set my set two stop times, one is a soft stop at which point I won’t respond to any phone calls until the next morning and then I have a hard stop at which point I will close the laptop and walk away from the desk. I believe it’s important to set yourself boundaries to ensure that you don’t burn out and to be able to give the people you care about in your life your time and attention.

What is your favourite part of your working day in your role?

I find my favourite part of my working day is communicating with my key accounts. There are some really nice and interesting people in our industry and I love to find out more about them and how we can work better together.

What does a typical dinner time look like in your household?

A typical dinner time in my household usually is me contemplating what can be easily made in a short space of time. I am not the best of cooks so I like to keep it simple.

What do you do to unwind?

I am a football fan and so I do enjoy watching a good game of football. Unfortunately, being a Manchester United fan, it hasn’t been a great way to unwind in recent years, but hopefully better times are ahead. I also do love a bit of Netflix and spending time with friends and family.

If you could give one piece of career advice what would it be?

My one piece of advice would be to always strive to be the best in your current role and ensure you gain some skills that will help you in your next role.