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Industrial goods, SAMA training and certification, Strategic account management process

Once you’re in, you’re in: A SAM-tested process for expediting human interactions to acquire invaluable customer knowledge

By Saleh Al-Ben Saleh, Strategic Account Manager, Emerson

Expediting “inside” knowledge of your strategic account(s) is vital to realizing indisputable value for both you and your customer. Human interactions are invaluable to gaining this knowledge, but issues of location, time and logistics make accelerating these interactions a common challenge for SAMs.

Here I present a tactical approach that covers best practices showing human interactions success for one strategic account site, taking into consideration the following three key metrics likely to contribute to successfully accelerating human interactions (and, thus, inside knowledge) at a selected strategic account site:

Interaction time with individual strategic account client(s) during a single day visit
Relationships built/strengthened, quality of information gathered, initiatives/opportunities realized
The number of potential touches created for future visits

Before getting started, let’s look at four facts we need to accept in order to understand the value of the approach I call “Once you’re in…you’re in.”

Strategic accounts often have multiple scattered facilities, yet you only have eight hours per day to spend on a customer visit. So you should spend that time wisely, and by wisely I mean on valuable client touches.
While most clients claim to have open arms to meet and explore business-related issues, the reality is that priority takes precedence, and planning for meetings is a time-consuming task for all parties.
Even with a solid agenda, it will be difficult to facilitate several formal meetings on the same day at the same location.
Unplanned, stand-up meetings can be just as important as well-prepared meetings — if they are executed in the right way, with the right talking points and objectives in hand.

Putting all the above points into the context of expediting “inside” knowledge of the client, we can agree that SAMs would be wise to leverage any planned customer meeting to generate additional valuable but unplanned meetings during a single customer site visit. Picture yourself jumping from one purposeful interaction to the next, all day long in the same place. This is the main reason I have chosen to call this this approach “Once you’re in…you’re in.”

It’s not that hard. On a typical customer visit, we probably have at least one scheduled meeting of between 30 minutes and two hours, out of a total of seven hours (the typical daily window for meetings). The challenge is to see how much of these seven hours we can use to create human interactions. I propose that the answer is “all of them” – if you prepare well, remain alert and act quickly.

The following six-step methodology has worked for me in my career as a SAM.

#1. Start with the “T.” The “T” stands for “them” in the “TUFA” concept, a process for building on your existing target customer profile or creating one if none exists. The “U” stands for us, “F” for fit and “A” for action. Your customer profile should include all information on your history with the customer, including past performance, ongoing initiatives, an organizational chart and a social chart. Make sure to compile a list of all gaps in your customer profile. All this intelligence should be written and organized in a way that will help you drive fruitful conversations with the targeted account clients. Pro tip: Make sure to use open-ended questions to allow more talking space for your clients.

#2. One planned meeting to get in. If you are calling on an established customer, start from the end and follow up on a hot topic(s) with your assigned focal point. If it is a new customer, you may need several exploratory meetings to identify the right people with whom to interface. In either case, once you have secured your meeting, you should be able to develop others for mutual benefit.

#3. Jump to the unplanned meeting. Through the profile you have developed in step one, and/or through your scheduled meeting(s) from step two, updates, initiatives and challenges will present themselves to you in one form or another. Whenever possible, seek to learn the champions of these items and ask to meet them while you are onsite. Most likely, you will be able to track them down for short, fruitful, stand-up meetings. Repeat this as many times as your schedule allows. After each interaction with a new champion, make sure always to exchange contact information, which you will need to schedule follow-up meetings.

#4. Think client and “walk the talk.” Eventually, a picture will emerge, and the potential for the next meeting will follow accordingly. Clients will frequently use three evaluation tools to decide whether or not they want to continue developing a relationship or not:

How much you understand the business from the client perspective
How well you can build mutually agreed-upon action plans for both sides
How fast you are able to “walk the talk,” deliver as promised and follow up on other commitments as well

#5. Enhance the “T.” Make sure the gathered information in steps two, three and four are reflected on the profile you created in step one. Having an updated profile will allow you to see the big picture clearly, plan your next visit and identify the people you want to interface with either through planned or “spontaneous” meetings.

#6. Do the loop. Now start again from step one and move through the process again.

Once you capture the value from undertaking this process, you can draw imaginary lines between the steps, create additional steps and add “sub-steps” as needed. I think of this as a best-practice template, which I encourage you to adapt to best fit your circumstances.

Conclusion

When trying to expedite constructive human interactions within your strategic account clients, you must endeavor to find the “sweet spot” between formality and informality. If your process is overly formal, you risk missing out on potential customer touch points and slowing progress. If your process is overly informal, you may get more customer touches, but your conversations will be less constructive and new relationships much less “sticky.”

The goal is to have as many meetings as possible in a single day, continually leveraging the information gained from past interactions to garner new ones. When executed to perfection, you will move from unplanned meeting to unplanned meeting. Success is never guaranteed, but based on my experience, this approach will give you the best chance of expanding your customer footprint over the long haul.

SAMA training and certification, Strategic account management process

Creating joint solutions: Drive execution and communicate value (Part 3)

By Phil Styrlund and James Robertson

In the first two posts of this series, we discussed how larger business forces are pushing companies to rethink how they work with their customers, and how the most advanced companies are responding by systematically plumbing their customers for insights they can use to jointly create new sources of business value. In this post, we move on to the fun part: creating joint solutions, driving execution and communicating the value.

Create joint solutions

In this crucial phase, the company and customer:

Agree on and apply an approach to creating joint solutions that leverage the enterprise resources, capabilities, enablers and strengths of each organization
Collaboratively engage in structured ideation and brainstorming to identify “beyond-the-product/-service” enablers and generate potential solutions
Screen solutions and enablers for inclusion, exclusion or further development considering their relevance, impact and feasibility
Align, engage, and commit relevant resources to develop the prioritized solution(s)
Value engineer to optimize the solution for impact and differentiation considering solution components and enablers that can be added, eliminated, elevated or reduced
Prototype and test the solution with emphasis on agile development — testing early and failing fast, at the lowest cost

At the outcome of this phase, both organizations have co-created a joint solution relevant to the prioritized opportunity and have agreed to move ahead to build and validate the business case, communicate compelling value and to pilot and then implement the solution, joint initiative or new business model.

Our proposed approach for creating joint solutions starts with a prioritized customer “CareAbout,” aligns relevant products and services, and integrates enterprise capabilities beyond the core product/service that impact what the customer and/or end-user cares about most.

A structured approach for creating joint solutions

Central to successfully creating joint solutions is the ability of each organization to leverage its enterprise-wide capabilities. Value enablers are defined as any asset, capability, company strength or resource beyond the core product or service offering. While the idea of drawing on relevant cross-business, enterprise resources to co-create solutions with strategic customers sounds logical, fundamental and simple, in our experience it’s not always easy — and not common practice.

For many co-creation initiatives, this is where the “rubber meets the road”: when the joint solutions team engages and requests relevant resources, beyond the product, from across the business. To facilitate access to solution enablers and support their integration into new, “beyond-the-product” offerings, we suggest the following:

Ensure executive-level support and communication of the “grander why,” i.e., why creating value with strategic. customers is central to your company’s strategy and success
Engage and align the “critical crowd,” i.e., relevant internal stakeholders — early in the process — well before you make a specific request to invest their time and resources.
Build a comprehensive list and categorize enabling capabilities around core value themes such as reducing cost, improving efficiencies, growing revenue and elevating the customer experience.
Identify customer and company gaps in capabilities, i.e., value enablers, that are missing yet critical to co-creating value. Determine if these are capabilities you can build, buy or source from elsewhere.
Identify and engage “owners” of key value enablers using the customer’s voice to articulate why these capabilities/resources are important, the impact on the customer’s business, the value to the company, the cost of inaction, the joint solutions roadmap and “what matters next.”
Leverage relevant enablers to co-create solutions using structured brainstorming and creative design thinking to generate concepts and potential solutions.
Move forward to prototype, test and refine your solution.

Communicate value and drive execution

In this phase, the company and customer:

Develop their business case and compelling customer value proposition
Establish and execute their plan to deploy the joint solution/initiative
Agree on a governance framework, project plan, scorecard and review cadence to drive joint initiatives forward, faster
Reflect to capture lessons learned, build on what’s working, and assess opportunities to adjust strategy and scale solutions

Quantifying and communicating compelling, differentiating value to key stakeholders within the customer’s organization, and to the customer’s customer, is fundamental and essential to the practice of co-creating value.

Ultimately, if the value of your solution is not recognized, believed in and accounted for, your company will not be able to capture and realize the value co-created in the joint solutions process.

Value propositions are a well-established, yet often poorly practiced, concept in sales and marketing. Through research we’ve established that fewer than 10 percent of customers see their suppliers “creating real value, and being worthy of a long-term strategic relationship.” As one customer commented on their supplier’s value proposition, “This sounds like brochure-speak.”

We need to ask ourselves the question, “Why do value propositions seldom resonate?” Based on our research and work with clients, we’ve established that when compelling value propositions DO resonate, it is because they:

Focus on what matters most to the customer
Clearly articulate the differentiating value of your solution compared to the best alternative
Are quantified in the customer’s currency
Provide evidence of impact and proof of your company’s ability to deliver

A compelling value proposition will include these characteristics.

We suggest a simple value creation framework to collaboratively develop your compelling, relevant, quantified and differentiating value propositions. The framework provides a non-prescriptive structure for communicating thought and enables authentic articulation of your joint solution’s impact on the customer’s top “CareAbouts.” This framework, structured around four words — them, us, fit and proof — assures relevance and resonance by aligning what you bring (i.e., your solution) with the customer’s major needs and priorities.

Them: What do they care about? We need to truly understand what our customers care about. What keeps them up at night? What are their key issues and concerns? What is important to them? How are they measured, paid, and rewarded?

Us: What do we have? Here’s where you articulate relevant products, services, and value enablers. What pertinent capabilities and assets can you bring, beyond and/or wrapped around core products and services?

Fit: How does what you have impact what’s important to the customer and customer’s customer? Quantify and describe the impact of your solution on the key issues, concerns and value drivers of your customer and customer’s customer. Articulate your solution’s difference compared to the next best alternative.

Proof: Prove it! Provide the examples and evidence of the value you will bring and demonstrate proof that you can deliver and execute.

Applying this framework guides us to create, articulate and quantify customer-centric value propositions that resonate and enable the company and customer to realize value created through the joint solutions process.

Like what you’ve just read and want learn more? The Summit Group facilitates SAMA Academy’s CORE 2 workshop, “Co-creation and quantification of value.” Click here to learn more about SAMA Academy, to see a list of upcoming workshops and to register.

This is the final installment of a three-part series. Read parts one and two.

SAMA training and certification, Strategic account manager skills and competencies

When selling innovation, the biggest challenge is mental

The academics Thomas Steenburgh and Michael Ahearne set out recently to uncover why companies are so much more successful at developing innovations than they are at commercializing them. To get answers, they undertook a thorough review of the academic literature, conducted one-on-one interviews and led several formal studies with B2B companies. You can read a summary of their results in Harvard Business Review here. The following interview took place earlier this year between Steenburgh, of the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business, and SAMA’s editors.

SAMA: Why did you set out to investigate new product sales specifically? Why are they so important?

Steenburgh: My observation is that if you look at where companies spend their money, new products always take a lot of energy. If you look at the types of organizational structures they use, they’ll have market development boards, product boards. No money gets put into sales. And yet the sales process for new products is totally different because you’re asking people to do a very different thing. We know most new product launches fail, so we wanted to find out: Why does it work that way?

There’s a McKinsey study that asked leadership teams about their confidence across a range of processes. Their confidence in developing beta testers is very high. But developing pilot users post-launch? No confidence. So as soon as you go to commercialize your new product, you have no idea what the customer wants? It’s craziness.

SAMA: Was there anything in your findings that surprised you?

Steenburgh: Probably the biggest challenge sales reps have when selling new products is emotional — managing your emotions, managing your perception of the product. My experience with salespeople is they have thick skins. But it turns out that with new products there are a lot of challenges that need to be addressed that you don’t have with existing products.

SAMA: Like what?

Steenburgh: The only training that gets done these days is product training: features and benefits. One manager told us, “When I talk to my reps, they know the product well enough, and they know the market well enough. But when I ask them, ‘Why aren’t you going in and selling the product?’ It’s because they don’t want to appear stupid.” The market is moving quickly, and they have a psychological need to be the expert in the market, and they just didn’t feel confident in their own abilities.

SAMA: You’re asking the customer to be a guinea pig, especially if it’s a brand new product. The reps are asking themselves, “Do I really want to risk my reputation with this customer I’ve worked so hard to create a relationship with?”

Steenburgh: We looked at differences in behavior between reps who were successful with new product sales versus ones who weren’t. One of the things the successful ones do is they anticipated that the challenges in the buying process would occur later in the sale, and they developed a plan to manage customer expectations at that time. Also, the reps who are really good at selling new products are much better at figuring out which customers to target and which to avoid.

SAMA: **In your HBR article, you write that the best companies customize their training to meet individual needs and tie assessments to performance. Can you talk about why this is so critical?**

Steenburgh: We did a couple of studies with companies where they did competency mapping, and it’s interesting. It depends on company sophistication. Some companies don’t do anything. Some will develop competency maps but never tie anything back to behavior. The better companies create job descriptions from the competency maps, and then they measure their reps through competency assessments and use this to drive continual improvement. They may try to look at quantitative performance metrics like revenue, profitability and customer satisfaction, and tie it to the competency assessments to give them a better sense of how to write job descriptions.

A step further would be to create company-wide training based on those findings. For example: I see reps need to have a growth mindset, so can I institute some training that speaks to this? Now, the very best companies go one step further and say, “I’m going to put this into my daily coaching process.” They measure reps individual by individual and then develop a coaching process that helps people in the dimensions that matter — and I know what dimensions matter because I tie the competencies back to performance.

We studied five companies and mapped competencies back to what actually worked in the market, i.e., what created the most revenue from new products, and if I were to advise companies on how to use this, I would tell them this: Use some kind of competency assessment, and introduce individual coaching to help reps become more open minded, to cultivate a growth mindset, to develop more long-term thinking and to become more adaptable. But it has to be a constant coaching process.

SAMA: In my own career, I found that solutions needed to be sold at a much higher level at the customer.

Steenburgh: Selling new products is very analogous to making the switch from selling products to selling solutions. It’s change management. A lot of companies think they can solve this primarily through incentives, but incentives alone won’t fix it. The behavior change is too big. Salespeople get excited at the beginning [when selling new products], but they don’t have the structure or support to make it work in the long run.

SAMA: And these are smart companies! Yet I see company after company that invests 5 or 6 percent in R&D every year – an enormous amount of money – but when it comes time to roll something into the marketplace, especially in B2B, the product just kind of “escapes.”

Steenburgh: I think the main difference with B2C is you don’t have as complex a decision-making unit. If you buy a car, that’s a complex decision, but it’s typically just two people. In B2B, you have a lot of players and that just makes it much more complex.

SAMA: Where do soft skills fit in?

Steenburgh: It’s definitely the emotional side, the psychological side, that doesn’t get addressed in these sales. The easy thing for me to do is product training because that’s what I know. It’s easier to talk about “speeds and feeds,” but it’s much harder to go out to the customer and talk about how a new product will change the game because there will be way more “window shopping.”

What I mean by that is that customers have an incentive to engage with you to learn about what’s going on in the marketplace. That’s not your incentive as a seller. If I call on 100 customers, five will be interested. It feels good, but 95% of them are going to be wasting my time. It’s seductive when you’re selling new products to be getting good feedback, but it evaporates in the long run. So it’s the soft side you need in order to read people, to figure out which customers will be genuinely interested and to handle rejection.

One thing that jumped out at me in our research is that businesses feel strongly about having great processes on capital approvals and project approvals for developing new products. But when it comes to having the right organizational structure in place to support bringing new products to market…having the right H.R. support network in place, for instance…they don’t feel so confident.

SAMA: 3M has always fascinated me because they are one of the few traditional B2B manufacturing companies, and they say that every year they aspire for 30 percent of their next year’s revenue to come from new product sales. Have they figured out something no one else has?

Steenburgh: There are companies that do it better than others, but I think it’s mostly a management challenge. If 3M makes that their mantra, then by putting that number out there it attracts a certain type of talent and it reinforces that there’s no escape, so to speak. It absolutely has to be part of the culture.

SAMA: We get asked a lot about the Challenger sales model and whether it can co-exist with SAMA’s more co-creative approach to creating value. What we’ve learned is that the Challenger is good — if you’re on the outside looking in. But if you’re the incumbent, you’re almost playing on the customer’s desire to stay with the status quo, where it’s better to not use that confrontational/challenging approach. It speaks to this whole not to sell the new product, less risky not to disrupt the customer.

Steenburgh: What you’re asking the reps to do is be a change agent externally in a situation where they have no control. They’re all leading without authority. So if you think change management is difficult internally, just imagine the external challenge.

One of the things we say in the article is that SAM can be a great place for establishing the right learning processes on the sales side. We know that co-creation of value is important, but mostly on the product development side. What we’ve seen is that if you can use some of those SAMs to help learn about the internal sales processes that they can be very helpful in designing a process for new product selling. It’s like a coach for the mainline rep. Management is much more likely to take a long-term view of strategic accounts than for mainline accounts. With new product selling, it’s going to take me a long time to sell. I need consistency, need to know how the buyer buys, and I need to know I’m not going to be jerked around. I can give the product the time it needs. Those relationships matter. The long-term focus mattes. It’s the right part of the organization to establish a beachhead.

SAMA: And based on the relationships they have, the customers are more willing to take that risk as well.

Steenburgh: That’s right. There’s that trust. It should be an easier leap for the customer to make on a new product if I’m a strategic customer, because what it means is that — if the vendor is really sophisticated — we’re having high-level quarterly meetings. The SAM might even have the CEO’s ear, or someone on the executive board. So if something goes wrong, I know I can raise the alarm and something is going to happen. Whereas, if I’m not a strategic account, if this thing breaks what am I going to do?

But it can cut both ways. If you have a great relationship, you don’t want to put it at risk. You need to have the culture of, “This is what we do. We’re going to work with you to get this right, and we’ll both be on the cutting edge together.” Those are the types of relationships you want to develop for new product sales.

SAMA: At SAMA we very much believe in competency assessments and their necessity for turning good SAMs into great SAMs. And we’ve seen research showing that the best SAMs can outperform their peers by a factor of three or more.

Steenburgh: I don’t have public data around individual performance, but I recall a study or a book showing the effectiveness of Net Promoter Scores across a wide variety of industries, and the results showed that the difference between average and below average is a 2x bump in revenue and profitability. And then the difference between average and superior was a 6x jump. In other words, the difference between poor performers and the very best performers was a factor of about 12. People that are really effective in this, they’re off the charts.

Want to learn how SAMA’s tailored, competency-driven training can transform your good strategic account managers into great ones? Click here to learn about our training philosophy, our Certified Strategic Account Manager (CSAM) program, and to see a schedule of upcoming training academies.