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Break & Glue: The art of capturing complex mega-strategic accounts in CRM to get the most from account planning tools

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

A while ago, I came across a discussion about the optimal way to capture strategic customers in a customer relationship management (CRM) tool in a way that enables effective, efficient account planning using account planning applications or tools.

As a SAM, you may be thinking, “This sounds like a no-brainer.” Each customer gets a single CRM record and thus – since all the major account-planning tools link to and mirror the company’s CRM on a one-to-one basis – one account plan. If your customer is relatively small, this is probably the correct approach. But what if you are dealing instead with a massive, intricately complicated account? Moving forward, I will refer to such an account as a “complex mega-strategic account.”

If you are a SAM assigned to a complex mega-strategic account, you will be targeting different levels across multiple geographies and lines of business at your customer. In my experience as a SAM covering just such a mega-account, it is impossible to create an account plan that encompasses the varied, disparate goals, strategic drivers and buying behaviors housed within such a large, diverse customer.

Traditionally, you would have two options for tackling this problem:

(1) Create a single CRM record for the entire strategic account, yielding one gigantic account plan to cover this hydra-headed customer.

…OR…

Create a separate CRM record for each entity within the mega-customer, yielding dozens or even hundreds of separate account plans.

I have chosen to do neither, devising instead a third option which resides between these two options. I have struggled to devise a catchy, all-encompassing term for this option, so I will refer to it moving forward as the “Break & Glue.”

In this piece, you will learn:

My definition of a complex mega-account
Why the traditional way of representing customers of this complexity in CRM is not conducive to account planning tools
What the “Break & Glue” concept entails
A methodology for executing the “Break & Glue”
My recommendations for introducing this best practice into your company

The complex mega-strategic account

So what is a complex mega-strategic account? This is a client that has several business lines, each of which has operations worldwide – a company like Procter & Gamble, Exxon Mobil, PepsiCo…you get the idea.

Take as an example a company operating in my own field: Chevron. Chevron has lines of business for oil and gas upstream, renewables, chemicals and more. Each of these business units is effectively an account unto itself. Drilling down into just the upstream line of business, Chevron has different types of operations in North America, Africa, the Middle East and many other far-flung regions. Each of these entities can and does function as an autonomous entity, with its own strategic drivers, buying behaviors, delegations of authority and more – and that’s just for one business unit of this massively complex company.

Figure 1 shows a generic – and drastically simplified – organizational chart for one complex mega-strategic account. As you can see, a complex mega-strategic account may include an almost limitless combination of geographies, functional areas and lines of business, all distributed over several organizational levels. Some of these units will share similar traits – but many will not. So what’s the optimal way for a SAM to conceptualize his or her customer?

**Figure 1. A Generic Complex Mega-Strategic Account**

A note on account planning tools

I realize that some people reading this may wonder why they even need an account planning tool when all the information they need about their customer resides in their CRM platform. There are many articles that explain why CRM is insufficient for account planning, but here is my take. While the CRM is designed to enable the work of the sales and account management team by recording pertinent information about the customer, I think of it mainly as a bridge to the account planning tool, where the best SAMs live and breathe. And since pretty much all strategic account planning tools work in a similar way – by linking each CRM record to a corresponding entry in the account planning tool – the way that the SAM chooses to record his or her customer in CRM has enormous implications on how he or she will conduct account planning for this customer. This is the crux of the article: to reveal what I believe to be the optimal way to organize the customer in CRM with a goal of getting the most from our strategic account planning tools.

Options for capturing your complex mega-strategic account in CRM

When faced with a complex mega-strategic account similar to the one depicted in Figure 1, SAMs have traditionally used one of two methods for covering their customer in CRM.

Standard Option #1: Map the entire organization into one account as shown in Figure 2.

Pros: This is the simplest solution requiring the lowest upfront effort. It will yield an easy-to-remember, go-to place for this customer.

Cons: You will end up with a massive, blended account, which will make it nearly impossible to create a detailed, actionable account plan.

Standard Option #2: Consider every entity at each level as a separate account as shown in Figure 3.

Pros: You will capture the account in tremendous detail.

Cons: You will focus your account team’s efforts on the low-level customer vision and individuals who lack decision-making power – at the expense of the power players, who drive the customer’s true strategic vision. Additionally, you will burden your SAM team with an excess of customer information, preventing them from focusing on and documenting what’s really important. This will lead to less valuable information and inhibit the sharing of insights among SAM teams.

Option #3: Analyze the account to identify the smallest organizational parts that operate as independent entities and map them accordingly in your CRM, aka “Break & Glue.”

Pros: You can cover multiple areas of the customer without having to sacrifice the granular detail that’s so critical to account planning.

Cons: It requires more upfront work.

In case it isn’t obvious, I consider “Break & Glue” the ideal process for covering a complex mega-strategic account. In the sections that follow, I will offer a methodology you can use to apply this to your complex mega-strategic accounts.

The “Break & Glue” process for complex mega-strategic accounts

For complex mega-strategic accounts, I recommend a two-phase process for visualizing the optimal customer structure before importing data into CRM.

Phase 1: Break (apart) the account

Analyze the account. In this step, you map the client’s structure without relying on any interpretation or extrapolation from the SAM. This is Account Mapping 101. You should expect to wind up with something similar to the organizational chart depicted in Figure 1.
Break apart the client structure. Your goal is to break apart the account into its constituent parts according to a set of guidelines shown in Figure 5. This will guide you toward the optimal CRM record(s) and, eventually, to efficient, effective account planning.
Capture this structure in your CRM. It will then be automatically mirrored in your account planning tool.

Phase 2: Glue the account (into CRM)

Define/create the client’s corporate account in the CRM. Your CRM system may already have a record representing the corporate level of the complex mega-strategic account. If not, it is wise to create one. Map/link the defined accounts to this single corporate account in the CRM. This step will complete the mapping of the complex organization in the CRM.
Start building your strategic account plans using your planning tool for each “account.” This should include both the “parent” (i.e., corporate) and “child” (i.e., the independent identities you’ve identified) accounts.

The main drawback of this approach is that it requires a lot of upfront work. It may take a few tries to nail the right structure, but the result will be more robust and actionable account plans than previously possible using the traditional approaches outlined above.

Finding the optimum size by breaking apart the complex structure

We agreed that we need to break your account into smaller parts/clusters, each of which will be represented by an individual CRM record. Each cluster may consist of one or more physical assets or teams, and this is maybe the most important thing to remember: We are searching for the smallest parts of the organization that behave autonomously. If you break the account into units that are too big, your entities will contain within them more than one sub-entity operating independently and having its own business drivers and decision makers. If you make your units too small, you will be focusing attention on stakeholder and business drivers that aren’t truly strategic to your customer.

To define the optimum size of each unit, I recommend asking five critical questions as shown in Figure 5.

Every customer and company situation is different, so you will have to arrive at your own process for determining the ideal clusters within your complex mega-strategic account. The process is more art than a science. In my experience, this exercise usually yields a series of units sitting at the director or department level as the optimum level for a single CRM record. But what if you find the optimal point is at the VP level or business-line CEO level? While this doesn’t necessarily indicate a flaw in your process, I would suggest that you stress test your assumptions and recheck your work. After confirming your conclusions, move forward and reflect this group under a single CRM record.

With this preparatory work complete, you can begin the hard work of deeply understanding your customer. After you have created your parent and child CRM records for the complex mega-strategic account, you will have an account planning tool that automatically captures this critical information. You can then use the account planning tool to paint a robust, beautiful picture of the strategic account by adding:

Internal structure
Key stakeholders
Spending behavior
Business model, business drivers/initiatives
Value chain (suppliers, partners and key customers)
Ongoing and potential business

It is vital to create and share actionable account plans that reflect the customer’s mindset and business drivers. These will determine all future interactions with the customer. By illustrating all this relevant information and progress with customers, the account planning tool simplifies the SAM’s performance monitoring and improves decision making. Since the CRM is always linked to the planning tool, any critical sales activity will be mirrored from the CRM into the planning tool, enriching the picture with more vivid colors and details with little effort from the SAM.

Introducing this new process at your company

So you’re a SAM covering a complex mega-strategic account, and you want to implement the “Break and Glue” approach. You can expect to encounter resistance, so here are a few pieces of advice to make the process go smoothly.

Explain the “why.” Before stepping in, all team members need to understand the rationale and, most importantly, the benefit of this journey. To be successful, you need your sales team to be onboard.

Take it one step at a time. Create a plan in advance to break your complex mega-strategic account into smaller accounts. Then you can add those smaller accounts in the CRM one by one before finally linking them to the corporate parent account.

Populate. As you shape the complex mega-strategic account and build it piece by piece in the CRM, make sure all team members make their work trackable.

Refer to the organizational chart and account plan whenever possible. Your team members will react better if they understand the relationship between any issue and existing information about the client’s business drivers, initiatives and stakeholders.

Correctly place contacts and opportunities. For each identified, independent piece of the complex mega-strategic account, place contacts, leads and opportunities in the correct CRM account. You may find yourself moving some misplaced data from one CRM account to another. This action is essential to creating a functioning account plan.

Create a CRM parent record for the corporate level. It is always wise to create a CRM record reflecting the customer’s CRM record reflecting the customer’s corporate level:

You will capture the contacts, opportunities and leads relating to the customer’s corporate level.
It will allow the SAM to do high-level account planning and make it easier to present the corporate account plan to internal management.
CRM’s analytics capabilities will be able to consolidate data from CRM “child” records to the “parent” (corporate) level. This will eliminate manual work while also providing live analytics to support discussion and decision making.

Conclusion

At the end of 2017, roughly 60,000 multinational companies operated worldwide, among which 2,000 controlled 65 per- cent of global market capitalization. These companies own or control nearly half a million subsidiary companies, each likely having multiple business units operating in various geographies. These companies alone generated roughly $9.5 trillion, or roughly half of the global economy. Using simple math, it is highly likely that any SAM reading this article already takes care of one or several pieces of these giant clients.

By applying the practice described here for Breaking & Gluing complex

mega-strategic accounts in CRM, I humbly believe this may revolutionize how many organizations manage their complex mega-strategic accounts.

I am a big believer in the concept of TUFA, put forward by Performance Methods, Inc., which stands for Them, Us, Fit, Action. In my mind, the “Break and Glue” exercise will guide you to better understand and plan your complex corporate level. Other CRM records will act as child accounts reflecting the clusters you have identified as explained earlier in this article. There are three main reasons for creating a mega-strategic account and thus improve your ability to coach your global sales team for better results – a great outcome indeed.

Saleh Al-Ben Saleh is a strategic account manager for Emerson. He is also a graduate of SAMA’s Certified Strategic Account Manager (CSAM) program. You can find him on LinkedIn here.

Account-based marketing, Strategic account management process

How Aramex’s Young SAM Program Provides Strategic Value and Impact

By Shahaboddin Wahdatehagh, Sr. Director Global Account Management, Aramex

Aramex is a leading global provider of comprehensive logistics and transportation solutions, headquartered in Dubai and listed on the Dubai Financial Market. Aramex services include international and domestic express delivery, freight forwarding, integrated logistics and supply chain management, and e-commerce solutions. The company has grown into a global brand and a market-leading express delivery and logistics services provider to the Middle East and other emerging economies.

Aramex was the recipient of the 2021 SAMA Excellence Award for “Outstanding Young SAM Program.”

Responding to Market Shifts

The logistics and transportation industry has been going through big changes in recent years, thanks in part to challenges wrought by new competitors who have disrupted the industry through technology. Additionally, customers have started to explore greater independence through forward integration (a push by carriers entering the freight-forwarding business) as well as through backward integration (insourcing, in some cases, the capabilities needed to manage express and domestic deliveries).

“In response to these market shifts, Aramex decided to move from a purely product-oriented approach to a market-shaper approach through deep integration with its customers.”

To succeed, we established four objectives that went beyond technological changes to include people and processes.

Form an organizational capability around co-creating products and solutions with our customers
Redesign our philosophy around our customers’ needs
Make a positive business impact on our customers’ operations
Ingrain a deeply customer-centric vision and mission for sales.

We needed a different sales strategy and go-to-market approach with regards to strategic and global key accounts, as our existing country-focused structure could not support, let alone scale, the required new concepts.

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Account-based marketing, Strategic account management process

ACCOUNT-BASED MARKETING FOR STRATEGIC ACCOUNTS

By Dominique Côté, Owner and Founder, Cosawi and Principal, The Summit Group and Kate Burda Owner and Founder, Kate & Co. and Principal, The Summit Group

With customer integration increasing, it creates additional complexity to build trustworthy relationships and partnerships. SAMs’ own organizations are evolving and often centralizing, adding more to the SAM’s plate not only in terms of skill set but also number of accounts, expectations for growth and required competencies.

SAMs are being stretched thin, from both a customer and internal perspective. Today’s SAM really does feel like she/he needs superpowers to do the job.

Complexity breeds ingenuity

We are living in a world of skyrocketing complexity and information overload, and one of the key pressure points that we see is the increased complexity and diversity of types of customer problems suppliers are asked to solve.

Facing more complex and broader issues, SAMs have no choice but to engage differently to differentiate themselves.

Living as we do in a world overloaded with data, we increasingly look to technology to help us deliver valuable, relevant customer hindsight, insight and foresight. But to do so requires better data management, including a mastery of how disparate data sources connect and communicate in order to translate this information into relevant customer insight and foresight.

As the closest person to the customer and the owner of the customer-supplier relationship, is the SAM or KAM alone with all of the demands wrought by the new economy? Hardly. Every superhero needs a partner, and the very best SAMs know when and how to bring the best people to the table to ideate, innovate and create impact for their customers.

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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.

Strategic account management process

Six actionable steps toward preparing financially quantified value propositions for strategic accounts (Part 2)

By Malcolm McDonald, Emeritus Professor of Marketing, Cranfield University School of Management

In part 1 of this series, we talked about the benefits of creating financially quantified value propositions, shared a self-assessment to determine your organization’s maturity in this critical realm, defined the concept of “added value” and briefly shared a six-step process for creating financially quantified value propositions. This installment spells out how to translate your strategic account analysis into a financially quantified value proposition.

At the end of the previous post, we introduced a six-step value propositions process. Here it is again, in case you missed it.

Provided you have done all the work of steps one through three (“Define target market,” “Identify buyers” and “Added value analysis”), you are now ready to financially quantify your value proposition. Now we are glad to offer you our unique proprietary summary of all the foregoing.

The following table summarizes all the analysis referred to above except Porter’s Value Chain, and it represents a major part of step four (i.e., “Financial quantification”) above.

Financially quantified value propositions analysis summary, part 1

Next, we bring you the single most important figure in this post, because it summarizes everything we have said about how to develop financially quantified value propositions for strategic accounts as a result of Porter’s Value Chain analysis. This also plays a major part of step four of the process outlined above.

Financially quantified value propositions analysis summary, part 2

The following graphic shows what a summary might look like as a result of going through the process outlined above:

The penultimate step

Before presenting your financially-quantified value proposition to your customer, there is, however, one further piece of work to be done: You will need to classify it according to the structure below. This corresponds to step five (“Categorize”) in the six-step value proposition process above.

The reason for this is that not all financially quantified value propositions have the same immediate value, and so if you are able to categorize and present them like this, you will stand a much better chance of being listened to and, more importantly, understood. All that remains now is step six (“Communication to target customers/markets”), which will be the topic of a future blog post.

The final piece

This is not the place to go into lengthy and complex explanations of return on investment (ROI), internal rate of return (IRR), net present value (NPV) and payback, but particularly for more sophisticated customers it is necessary to calculate the financial return on what are frequently substantial sums invested in purchasing goods and services

Some customers are interested only in payback over a 12-month period. Others are looking at return on investment over a longer timeframe. Each method attempts to summarize a set of cash flows from a project into a single indicator. Each has its intended purpose, and each has its strengths and weaknesses — so it is prudent to be prepared to present your case taking into account the particular interests of the customer. Incidentally, we offer tailored software to make such calculations easier.

As we said earlier, there is obviously a lot more detail involved in going through the six-step process shown in the first figure in this post, and it requires substantial effort and skills on the part of the supplier — which leads us to one final point:

Strategic account managers and senior salespeople today need business acumen to demonstrate the value they can bring to the customer and the financial literacy to support it.

To do this, they need not just product knowledge but insights gleaned from industry knowledge and from a deep understanding of the customer’s business.

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.

Customer buy-side perspective, Strategic account management process

Six actionable steps toward preparing financially quantified value propositions for strategic accounts (Part 1)

By Malcolm McDonald, Emeritus Professor of Marketing, Cranfield University School of Management

This is the first post of a series exploring why financially quantified value propositions are critical for success with strategic and key accounts.

The crucial importance of money to customers

Even a cursory glance at the SKF pricing example shown below illustrates the dramatic impact that is possible as a result of preparing financially quantified value propositions. (SKF is the global engineering group that specializes in ball bearings and assemblies.)

Our definition of a value proposition is “the translation of the supplier’s offers into monetary terms that demonstrate their contribution to the customer’s profitability.” The key phrase here is “customer profitability,” because if you can prove that dealing with you will make your customer richer, they will buy from you.

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Strategic account management process

Creating joint solutions: What the best do differently (Part 2)

By Phil Styrlund and James Robertson

In the first post in this series, we examined how market disruption, changing buyer behaviors and other factors are rendering traditional sources of growth – like internal research and development of products and services, pricing, and branding – inadequate. To grow profitably in today’s business market, companies have no choice but to engage with their customers and partners to co-create new sources of value by deepening insights, aligning goals, developing joint solutions, leveraging mutual capabilities and executing together.

That was the what. Now let’s move on to the how.

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Strategic account management process

Creating joint solutions: The WHAT and the HOW of becoming and remaining relevant

By Phil Styrlund and James Robertson, The Summit Group

This is part one of a three-part series. Parts two and three are available here and here.

Persistent, disruptive forces impacting profitable growth are intensifying and, as a result, companies in many industries face slower growth and accelerating commoditization of product and service margins.

Given marketplace complexity and dynamic shifts in how customers buy, traditional business models are threatened, and new strategies and capabilities for driving growth must be more intentionally developed. In this series of posts, we will outline a pragmatic yet powerful framework for co-creating solutions with strategic customers.

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