Strategic Account Management Association
Dedicated to helping strategic account managers and key account managers manage improve relationships with their most important customers
What can the experience of 9/11 teach us about helping our customers through the pandemic? We ask SAMA’s own Chris Jensen – who, on the morning of Sept. 11, was a sector head for the global leader DHL.
Listen to this episode of The SAMA Podcast here.
By Robert Hueber, Business Unit Director, Packaging, Herrmann Ultraschall
Artur Wagner, Founder and Partner, MP Consulting
Today, an increasing number of medium-sized B2B technology companies are establishing a global strategic account management (SAM) program for their most important customers. This was not always so. In the past, CEOs of such companies did not believe that customers, vastly larger than themselves in size, would be interested and willing to engage in a partnering and co-development process.
The SAMA slogan “It’s not about size, but all about relevance!” can become reality if the foundations for such a program are laid and a systematic process for building a SAM program is established.
We are convinced that our findings are perfectly applicable to larger companies as well. Many of these have already implemented a SAM initiative, but not all are reaping its benefits. This, we will argue, is mostly due to a sub-standard design and/or faulty implementation.
The aim here is to provide a specific methodology for assessing an optimal level of customer-centricity and the best way for integrating the SAM organization into the matrix organization.
Continue reading “DESIGNING THE CUSTOMER-CENTRIC ORGANIZATION: A NINE-STEP GUIDE TO LEVERAGING A SAM PROGRAM AS AN ENGINE FOR SUSTAINABLE GROWTH”By Tania Lennon, Global Space Lead, Talent Assessment and Leadership, ZS Associates, and Namita Powers, Principal, Customer Engagement Excellence, ZS
ZS has conducted extensive research into strategic account management success profiles. Using in-depth profiling, behavioral observations and manager reviews, ZS has identified critical competencies, skills and characteristics that drive high-performance outcomes in SAM roles, such as a shift in focus from achieving goals to achieving success and a more sophisticated approach that ZS identified in women account managers.
While there were some clear themes in the drivers of success for SAM roles, there were also some gender differences in how they achieved success. The graph highlights the key areas of difference between successful men and women SAMs.
Women SAMs demonstrated more sophisticated skills in three key areas important for success.
Continue reading “Interesting!: New research shows male and female account managers take different paths to SAM success”