SAMA Excellence Award winner for Outstanding Young Program of 2023 outlines its blueprint for SAM success.
When LP Building Solutions created a strategic account management (SAM) program in 2018, as a critical element of the company’s growth strategy, it transformed LP from a commodity-driven mindset to what they are now: a value-added building solutions company.
“LP changed our company name from LP Building Products to LP Building Solutions in 2018, which has taken us on a journey away from being simply a manufacturer of products to a specialty solutions provider, co-creating value for our customers,” said Lori McWain, Director of National Accounts.
Blueprint for transformation
In late 2017, the company’s Senior Vice President (SVP) of Sales and Marketing began to champion the need to transform LP’s national accounts strategy and relationships. To lead this change, he hired the company’s first Director of National Accounts to build the organization and lead the team on their transformational sales journey. In addition, LP established strong relationships with third-party consultants to assess, train, and coach the team according to SAMA best practices. This included an initial assessment by interviewing key LP cross-functional leaders as well as many of LP’s largest customers.
For starters, LP redrew the map and created a focused national accounts team. Instead of having national account managers who oversaw multiple key customers each, they expanded the team and gave each person one strategic account.
Next, they created a unified front by establishing cross-functional teams, effectively connecting sales, business development, marketing, the supply chain, and customer service to support their largest customers.
“The SAM program has heavily influenced our five-year sales strategy. It is critical to our approach as we focus on what is needed to grow the business,” McWain said. “Instituting SAM has created a cultural shift throughout our sales business, including adjusting LP’s approach to staffing and talent acquisition, training, retention, and career pathing.”
Key components of LP’s SAM program
Executive sponsorship: Like many flourishing SAM programs, LP shares a similar
hallmark of success — executive sponsorship.
“Having executive support is fundamental in driving strategy and culture, and ultimately providing resources to support continued growth,” McWain said. “Gaining executive sponsorship requires a consistent cadence of communication around results and an intentional effort in building executive relationships between LP and our strategic customers.”
When LP’s SVP of Sales and Marketing presented the shift in the company’s sales strategy to their Board of Directors, the new, customer-centric approach was key to growth, as was implementing a SAM structure and plan that aligned with the business objectives of LP’s partners.
Organizational structure: Internal alignment was also critical to success. LP aligned their structure to meet the needs of their most important customers, driving mutual growth around common strategic opportunities. Two national account directors now oversee teams of cross-functional members to meet the needs of their largest accounts.
“Aligning priorities across all internal stakeholders and establishing metrics to support overall customer growth objectives is key,” said McWain. “This includes establishing joint business plans and goals, and then rewarding customers and team members with compensation such as rebates and bonuses that reinforces strategy-driven performance.”
Business Development Managers (BDMs): Newly created regional account managers penetrate locally and extend national agreements to the regional level. These BDMs align with the growth strategy for each strategic account in their region and collaborate between the strategic national account manager (account vision and strategy) and the territory sales manager (execution and tactics).
Dedicated account-based marketing: This support includes custom marketing managers, plans, and resources that create targeted marketing for LP’s most essential customers.
“Successful selling has only been possible through a focused co-creation strategy with our customers,” said McWain. “We are no longer selling to our customers, but instead are working with them to identify their key challenges and then bring solutions to help them transform the market using LP solutions.”
Cross-functional teams: Core and extended cross-functional teams were assigned to support each strategic account, including the creation of additional account-specific roles in customer service, technical support, analytics, and programming support.
“As we have grown in our SAM capability, we have recognized the value and need of cross-functional participation across our accounts,” McWain said. “Focused sales are great, but the only way to get to true account management is a full cross-functional approach.”
Process: LP’s creation of best practices centers around becoming more strategic to their most important customers and is based on principles and practices from inside the SAMA community.
“Cultural and behavioral change is much more difficult yet absolutely required for sustainable growth,” said McWain. “If strategy is set by executive leadership but does not get full support and buy-in throughout the organization, then it is worthless. We know and consistently emphasize the need for ongoing buy-in across the organization to support and elevate the needs of our strategic customers. Building and maintaining a culture of partnership has been critical for our success.”
Technology: LP began implementing changes in Salesforce that aligned to the customer engagement roadmap. These include heatmap and dashboard capabilities that create a common language around LP’s key customers, as well as visibility and growth opportunities, organized by customer, geography, and product line/solution.
Collaborative account planning: LP facilitated collaborative planning sessions with their most strategic customers to drive co-creation of growth strategies, shifting from a quarterly business review to annual and quarterly joint business planning.
One specific example is a recent meeting where LP hosted five of the key divisions of one of the largest building products distributors in the U.S. to discuss how LP and this customer can grow together in the market. This meeting created several new work streams, and plans are in place to jointly address market challenges in sales, marketing, and logistics.
Training: All of LP’s national account managers have been (or are being) trained through SAMA’s CSAM program, enabling them to fully understand and execute the frameworks of co-creating value, account planning, leading with influence, and coaching on SAM behaviors. The entire field sales team began value engagement training in 2022 and continues to do so as an integral part of LP’s onboarding and sales training.
Results
As a 2023 SAMA Excellence Award winner, LP’s sales journey from transactional to transformational is yet another testament to the power and value of strategic account management. This holds true especially for organizations that have either just launched their SAM program or are laying the groundwork to start their own SAM journey.
LP’s return on investment of SAM practices is undeniable. Their business results are measured both by individual customer growth goals and by their strategic customers’ impact on LP’s overall growth goals and objectives. A few results include:
- Significant revenue growth with their largest customers, which doubled their market share with their strategic customers across targeted product growth metrics.
- Increased digital marketing presence with their largest customers’ websites, including LP being the top searched siding brand on their largest customer’s website and the most active e-commerce brand on the website of one of their strategic dealers.
- Collective growth and sales with the company’s strategic customers, including expanding their mix to include LP’s premium value-added oriented strand board (OSB) portfolio, known as LP Structural Solutions. LP’s OSB business segment has shifted from 38% of total sales volume being value-added OSB (62% commodity) in 2018 to 48% of total sales volume being a premium value-added product (52%commodity) in 2022.
Advice for other young SAM programs
As LP hits their stride, with success under their belt, McWain has a few words of wisdom for organizations that are just stepping onto the path of strategic account management.
“This is a journey! Do not expect internal and external stakeholders to understand immediately,” she said. “You must invest the time and energy into establishing the value over time. Both patience and courage are critical.”
But above all, collaboration and value co-creation are key.
“Focusing on joint needs will always lead to stronger, more sustainable growth than individualized needs,” McWain said. “Sales cannot do this alone. Cross-functional participation at LP and our customers has unlocked significant growth opportunities and strong partnerships. All levels of the organization need to understand why SAM is important and know how their role contributes to the success of the relationship.”
When there is need for guidance, McWain added that both veteran and newly minted SAM programs can always tap SAMA, the world’s foremost knowledge exchange on strategic account management.
“For what you don’t know how to do, seek out resources from SAMA and SAMA consultants, to help fill in the gaps as you learn your way there,” she said.
A longer version of this article was published in the 2023 fall issue of Velocity magazine.