Strategic account manager skills and competencies Archives - Strategic Account Management Association blog

Strategic account manager skills and competencies, Uncategorized

Character Matters: Learn How to Become a Better SAM

By Rowena Abrahams, Contributing Editor, SAMA

“Who you are matters as much as what you do.”

Dr. Fred Kiel, co-founder of KRW International, a global leadership consulting firm and Kelly Garramone, CEO of KRW and Executive Director of the KRW Research Institute, prove that character “isn’t kumbaya.” Kiel is often referred to as a sage in the field of character science. He and his team have a large practice working with C-suite leaders across the nation. In 1993, Fortune magazine did a feature story on Kiel using for the first time the “coach” metaphor that is frequently used in business literature today.

Character may sound like a soft topic but Kiel and Garramone’s research shows that character is a critical component of leadership that delivers bottom line results. We can also argue that character is essential for SAMs whose reputations define their brand and whose brands determine their career.

Tough Leadership ≠ Good Leadership

The dominant view held through the 20th century was that tough leadership generates results. Leaders believed that the “soft stuff” was nice but unimportant as it does not bring value to the bottom line. Only the hard driving person who tells the truth and is brutal delivers results.

This same belief rang true in the world of sales training. In the past, sales has done a disservice by being in the business of creating human doings not human beings. The philosophy existed that if you “do this and do that” you will create results.

Today, we see that who you are matters as much or more than what you do. We have seen too many examples of Harvard MBAs who are sitting in jail because of their misbehavior.

Continue reading →

Industrial goods, Strategic account manager skills and competencies, Technology

Servitization 101 – How servitization can strengthen your relationship with your key accounts

By Neil Tumber, Relationship Manager, Advanced Services Group

Just like data, automation, Industry 4.0 and the Internet of Things (IoT), servitization has become something of a buzzword – and for good reason. Servitization and advanced services offer the potential for organizations to significantly transform their business models to deliver even greater value to customers while also increasing their own profitability. But what do we mean by servitization, and what exactly are advanced services?

In this post, we will explain everything you need to know.

What is servitization?

Servitization is a term used to describe a journey of transformation, specifically: the innovation of an organization’s capabilities and processes to better create mutual value through a shift from selling products to selling product-service systems that deliver a desirable outcome for the customer. So, for example, instead of manufacturing and selling a machine tool and ending the transactional customer relationship there, a business instead might produce and sell the machine tool as part of delivering a contracted support and maintenance service.

Servitization: a practical example

An example of servitization is Koolmill, a business in the UK that works with the Advanced Services Group at Aston Business School. Like several manufacturers, Koolmill was originally set up to produce and sell machines – in Koolmill’s case, rice-milling machines. However, much of its customer base is in low-income regions of countries such as China and India, where the price associated with milling-machine ownership is considered prohibitively expensive. To overcome this challenge, the business transitioned to a servitized approach, offering rice-milling-as-a-service.

Continue reading →

Strategic account manager skills and competencies

THE 10-K FILING: THE MOST IMPORTANT DOCUMENT THAT SAMS NEVER READ

By Jacques Sciammas, President, Selling to Executives

In the age of convenience, where same-day deliveries have become the gold standard and news articles are now conveniently timed down to the second, our need for accurate and concise information has never been more pressing. So why on earth do we still bother with documents numbering hundreds of pages, sans picture and color? Truth be told, 99 percent of us don’t bother reading these documents at all. They make great paperweights, but if asked about specific details, most of us might offer an uneasy grin, knowing that we have companions-in-arms, equally guilty of shirking that responsibility to read altogether.

The 10-K report: Why bother?

You’re familiar with a company’s annual report, right? But very few bother with the 10-K. And for those of you who have heard of it, do you really understand its value? Unfortunately, due to its no-color, no-graphics (thereby implying “no fun”) standard format, a format mandated by the Securities and Exchange Commission, the 10-K is easily the most overlooked, undervalued and – shockingly – untouched research document.

In my personal experience as CFO for several large corporations, where I chaired the Capital Committee (i.e., the committee responsible for overseeing purchasing decisions), I met thousands of salespeople and strategic account managers through the years, and I would say that no more than 3 percent or so had bothered going through my company’s 10-K. Now, those familiar with the 10-K may be groaning out loud and thinking, “Who is going to actually read that monstrosity?!!” And it’s true. It would be similar to “indulging” in the U.S. tax code, a document filled to the brim with dense terminology and one-dimensional creativity.

“Stop Jacques! The 10-K is tedious. I’ d never get through it, despite my and your good intentions!”

Fair enough, but let me put forth the good news [Drumroll, please!]: One doesn’t need to go through the entire document to gather the most crucial nuggets of information. While it’s true that the top executives and their legal teams are involved in the creation of the 10-K, what makes this document vital to SAMs and GAMs are the highlights (and confessions) stealthily included – and typically ignored. These highlights can assist SAMs and GAMs enterprising enough to sleuth them out to establish strong credibility and relevance with the C-level and to truly differentiate themselves from their competitors.

Continue reading →

Strategic account management program organization, Strategic account manager skills and competencies

“LIQUIDITY,” ORGANIZATIONAL RESILIENCE AND YOU

By Arun Sharma, Professor, Marketing, Miami Herbert Business School, University of Miami

Arun Sharma will deliver a keynote address at the 2021 SAMA Annual Conference (May 24-26). To learn more, or to register, visit the conference website.

Resilience is an organization’s ability to withstand a major disruption, recover quickly and adapt to the changing environment. During the COVID-19 pandemic, some firms have flourished while others in the same industry have floundered. To give a couple of examples: Among department stores, Nordstrom has demonstrated resilience by dramatically increasing online sales; as a result, they have excelled. Arch competitor Neiman Marcus, on the other hand, has declared bankruptcy. In telecommunications, while most firms have posted strong results, Digicel has declared bankruptcy. Researchers who have studied this topic have found that having flexible resources (monetary, assets-based and human), flexibility and adaptability increase organizational resilience.

Classifying organizations

To better understand why some organizations exhibit resilience while others do not, we conducted interviews with senior executives, analyzed industry and firm performance, and examined extant academic research on organizational structure, resilience and liquidity. Liquid organizations develop and execute strategies faster than their competitors, they change direction and accelerate rapidly, and they are ambidextrous – by which we mean they can simultaneously leverage their existing competencies (“exploitation”) while at the same time they discover and harness new opportunities (“exploration”).

The first thing we did was to classify the organizations, at which point four distinct organizational categories emerged:

Hierarchical. In hierarchical organizations, every employee reports to one and only one supervisor (except for the CEO). This is the classic, pyramid-shaped organizational hierarchy. Most government entities, and many corporations, follow this organizational form. It is typified by slow and deliberate decision making, a decision-making process that is rigorously codified and decision making authority that is rigidly prescribed.

Matrixed. Matrix organizations are designed to increase teamwork between internal-facing (e.g., marketing, R&D, finance) and external-facing departments (geographic and product market). Most employees have dual responsibilities: to the function to which they belong (e.g., marketing) and the market in which they operate (e.g., Latin America). A matrix organization is typically visualized as a rectangle with internal functions (horizontal lines) and markets (vertical lines) forming the structure. Most modern organizations follow a matrix structure. Unfortunately, the amount of teamwork expected in matrix structures has not materialized, and rather than focusing on making the best possible decisions, negotiated decision making is the norm.

Entrepreneurial. Entrepreneurial organizations are unstructured, where both functional roles and reporting structures are flexible and adaptable to the context. Employees typically perform multiple functional roles, and decision making is decentralized and team-based. Due to the lack of structure, these firms are typically small and have fewer employees. Decision making is quick, and the organization is adaptable. However, scale and growth require organized decision making, and most entrepreneurial organizations shift towards matrix or hierarchical organizations as they grow.

Liquid. Liquid organizations use team-based structures to increase the quality, speed and innovativeness of outcomes. They focus on skilling their employees in multiple functional areas and create organizational relationships to become more flexible and adaptable. Liquid organizations combine the speed and flexibility of entrepreneurial organizations with the scale of global organizations.

Resiliency of organizations

Our second project involved examining the context under which each organizational form would be most successful. In analyzing our data, we identified two dimensions that affected organizational success: the degree of disruption and resilience. Then we moved on to identify the context under which each type of organization would be most prone to success.

We found that hierarchical organizations are only successful when there is a limited need for resilience, and disruptions are limited and short term. That is because hierarchical firms are slow to recognize disruption and tend to be deliberate (i.e., slow) in making decisions.

By contrast, matrix organizations tend to be more resilient and able to make decisions more quickly – but only when disruption is limited. This is because the matrix organization’s complex structure makes rapid strategic and tactical decision making very difficult. For this reason, matrix organizations are best suited to times that require high degrees of resilience, but only if disruption is limited and short term. Extensive academic research shows that matrix organizations function favors stable environments but falter when conditions are prone to changing rapidly.

Entrepreneurial organizations are flexible, which equips them for addressing major and long-term disruption; but they struggle to exhibit resilience because they do not have the resources (monetary, assets-based and human) to sustain them during long-term disruptions.

Finally, our research found that liquid organizations are best suited to thrive when resilience and adaptability are most in demand. Liquid organizations are both resilient (thanks to their scale) and possess the ability to sustain and grow through major disruptions due to organizational speed, flexibility and adaptability. In our research on the impact of COVID-19, we find that the most successful and resilient firms have been those that are the most liquid.

Our Recommendations: Liquidity and you

To increase resilience, we recommend that leaders take steps to increase organizational liquidity.

Specifically, we recommend they take three steps:

Create and use teams to increase liquidity and quality of deliverables. We suggest that executives form teams by pairing people from different vertical markets or functional areas. (For more on creating teams within the strategic account management program, see “Addressing the New Normal: Creating Liquid Strategic Account Teams,” in the Fall 2020 issue of this magazine.)
Increase the multifunctional expertise of executives through training and assignment.
Reduce boundaries between the firm and suppliers by creating teams that include people from both firms.

In summary, our results suggest that leaders need to focus on increasing resilience by increasing liquidity. While the emergence of multiple highly effective vaccines portends an end to this global recession, it surely won’t be the last time organizations face conditions requiring high resilience levels.

Arun Sharma is a marketing professor at the University of Miami’s Herbert School of Business, has published extensively on strategic accounts, and is ranked in the top 1% of all marketing professors. Find him online at https://www.theliquidorganization.com/.

Strategic account manager skills and competencies, Technology

Back to the Future: F2F selling is returning, but virtual selling is here to stay

Jonathan Hughes, Partner, Vantage Partners, and David Chapnick, Partner, Vantage Partners

Just when customer account teams and salespeople were beginning to grow accustomed to virtual-only sales and account management, a return to (some) face-to-face interactions is on the horizon. Customer-facing teams need to continue to up their virtual game, even as they learn how to optimize a balance of virtual and in-person engagement.

COVID-19 has accelerated a trend already underway toward increased virtual interactions between customers and their suppliers. As vaccines are distributed and we move beyond the most acute phase of the pandemic, most salespeople believe virtual selling is here to stay. According to research we conducted during the second half of 2020 (involving salespeople and sales executives at more than 100 B2B companies), just 31 percent of respondents said they expect to return to pre-pandemic levels of in-person sales activities (Figure1). A strong plurality expects to transition to a hybrid model that optimizes both in-person and virtual selling, while more than one in four expects virtual to become their primary means of interacting with customers.

**Figure 1: Percentage of salespeople who expect virtual selling to persist post-COVID**

Continue reading →

Strategic account management program organization, Strategic account manager skills and competencies, Technology

Ten insights on the future of SAM

By Nicolas Zimmerman, Editor-in-chief, SAMA

Whether you’re struggling to survive the pandemic or thriving and experiencing unprecedented growth, one thing is clear: We are experiencing radical shifts in how we conduct business with our most strategic customers. As conveners of the largest community in the world dedicated to strategic and key account management, one of SAMA’s foundational purposes is to help our community both adapt to what’s happening right now and prepare for what may happen next.

At the 2020 SAMA Annual Conference (held virtually Nov. 9-11, 2020), we pulled together a group of the smartest, most sophisticated observers, students and practitioners of strategic account management for a conversation on “The Future of SAM.” Highlights are presented below, and the full panel is available on demand by registering for the virtual conference here.

Moderator: Jim Ford, Chief Commercial Officer, Solecta, and Chairman, SAMA Board of Directors

Panelists: Jennifer Stanley, Partner, McKinsey & Co.; Dino Bertani, Executive Director, International Strategic Account Management, Allergan Aesthetics; Harvey Dunham, Managing Director, Strategy and Marketing, SAMA; Tom Hablitzel, Senior VP, Enterprise Clients, Sherwin-Williams Company; Jim O’Leary, Global Practice Chair, Corporate Affairs, Edelman

#1. Shifting from focus on shareholder value only to stakeholder value as well – and a broadening understanding of what stakeholder value means.

O’Leary shared takeaways from Edelman’s most recent Business Roundtable, which highlighted the growing emphasis placed on a company’s role in society – from environmental impact to social justice and diversity/inclusion. Non-traditional sources of value will play a growing role in how stakeholders evaluate the impact of companies and their strategic accounts efforts.

#2. Sales and account management – no longer an expense but an investment.

While firms once viewed sales as an expense, in this environment it’s clearly an investment. O’Leary’s advice: Projects with the best “story” will be funded and resourced first. His other advice:

Expand whom you interact with at your customers
Focus more than ever on active listening. Only by making astute observations will you uncover potential new sources of value.
Make sure your internal stakeholders understand the value your program brings to customers and, through them, to the firm. If they don’t grasp it, you may become the target of cost cutting and/or restructuring.

#3. Centralized beats diffused.

When companies shift their programs into the regions or business units, Bertani says, you risk adding inefficiencies, redundancies and opportunities for misalignment. You also risk sacrificing a common strategy, methodology and customer experience.

#4. SAM will become (if it isn’t already) the standard bearer for all sales.

From Stanley’s perspective, SAM already serves as a beacon for what it means to be a sales professional–particularly when it comes to the rigor SAMs bring to account planning, solutions co-creation with customers and articulation of unique value propositions.

#5. Centers of Excellence (CoE).

Bertani says these centralized groups of SAM experts can and should be leveraged as the catalyst for instilling the mindset, skill set and processes for distinctive go-to-market and customer-centric engagement models.

#6. Agility is the new stability.

In disruptive times, leaders need to increase their organizations’ agility by focusing on what really matters and making much faster decisions. Bertani recommends trading perfection for simplicity. “I’d rather be approximately right,” he says, “than exactly wrong.”

#7. Those who have the data, and use it wisely, will control the playing field.

If you’re accumulating data on your customers and even your customers’ customers, how are you using it to develop insights that lead to innovative value propositions? How are you linking it to your core business strategy?

#8. In just a few months, COVID accelerated digital adoption as much as 10 years.

What this means is a vast proliferation of data on customer behavior. Those companies that both control the data and utilize it most effectively to glean customer insights will be the ones who will control the playing field. Stanley predicts that digital adoption will spare SAMs from much of the day-to-day “firefighting” of the job, freeing them to look into all this new data and distill it back into insights about their customers.

#9. The profile of strategic account teams will shift dramatically.

New and different skills will be needed to analyze all this new data and make use of it, leading to teams that include not only data scientists but also behavioral scientists and others with non-traditional sales skills. Teams will also need to become flatter, less hierarchical, in order to move quickly and with agility.

#10. Customers will reward suppliers who successfully blend a great digital experience with the human touch.

When McKinsey surveyed B2B buyers to see whether they prefer to buy digitally or from people, the answer, overwhelmingly, was “it depends.” Turns out customers are much more likely to reward suppliers with sole-source contracts when they excel in both areas and know which channel is right for which kinds of interactions.

Want more? A recording of the discussion, more than two-dozen breakout sessions and keynote presentations is available for unlimited, on-demand purchase. See what you missed here.

Strategic account manager skills and competencies

Five Key Principles for Successful Negotiations

By Kunal Bhatia, Senior Global Account Director, Johnson & Johnson

Over the course of this year we’ve experienced tremendous change. Whether it’s the way we work, the way we socialize or the way we get around, the COVID-19 crisis has fundamentally changed pretty much everything. Having shifted mostly to the virtual arena, negotiation is no exception.

As both a global account director AND the parent of young children, I can’t overstate the importance of negotiation skill. Whether it is negotiating a multimillion-dollar contract, compensation particulars with a potential employer or appropriate screen time with your children, strong negotiating acumen is critical for survival.

While virtual negotiations might be perceived as time and cost efficient, if they’re not done right they can hinder social awareness, social interaction and cooperation. Having worked in different countries, cultures and roles, I’m cognizant that myriad nuances must be taken into consideration to promote smoother, less contentions negotiations. However, I have observed that the need to be a skilled negotiator is agnostic of culture, industry, profession and job level and that certain negotiating principles are near universal.

Here are my top five.

#1: Make the first offer. There is a widespread belief that it is wise and strategic to let the other person make the first offer. However, there is virtually no research that supports this claim. In fact, research shows a strong and powerful positive effect of making the first offer.

Admittedly, it does takes courage to make an offer, especially in situations of ambiguity or when you’re in a low-power position. However, first offers have a strong anchoring effect, which exert a strong pull throughout the rest of a negotiation. Even when people know that a particular anchor should not influence their judgments, they are often incapable of resisting its influence. As a result, they insufficiently adjust their counter-offer away from the anchor.

#2: Focus on differences. Conventional wisdom says that we negotiate to overcome the differences that divide us, so we look for win-win agreements by searching for common ground. Common ground is generally a good thing, yet some of the most overlooked sources of value arise from “differences” among the parties.

Differences of interest, priority or hierarchy-of-needs can open the door to unbundling different negotiation elements, leading to outcomes that potentially give each party what it values the most, possibly at the least cost to the other.

#3: Zoom-in on interests, not just issues. Three elements are at generally play in a negotiation:

• Issues: on the table for explicit agreement

• Positions: where each party stands on the issues

• Interests: each party’s underlying concerns.

Don’t just negotiate the issues. Great negotiators understand that the dance of opposing positions is only the surface game, and they focus instead on probing behind their counterpart’s positions to identify their full set of interests at stake. Before any negotiation begins, seek to understand the interests and positions of the other side, and weigh/measure them against your own interests and positions.

#4: Listen. There’s a widely held assumption in the business world that negotiation is mostly about talking and that the best negotiators are the best conversationalists. That view overlooks perhaps the most crucial aspect of the negotiation process: listening. In the words of de Callières, “one of the most necessary qualities in a good negotiator is to be an apt listener.” Your attention should be focused on the words and actions of the other side, your own words and actions, and the effect of your words and actions on the other side.

#5: Help your counterpart sell. The person on the other side of the table might agree that your offer is reasonable, but they will still reject it if they can’t sell it to others in their organization. Your job as a negotiator is not simply to convince the person with whom you’re negotiating but also to help them be an effective ambassador for you when they speak to their boss, their board, their partners or others who have a stake in the outcome. Keep an eye on all of the people who can influence the negotiation on their side and help craft a narrative that will allow your counterpart to get the buy-in he or she needs.

Final thoughts

These are some key principles that have helped me negotiate large and complex contracts at work and also keep the peace with my young children at home. One bonus tip from personal experience: To be a good negotiator, you must practice patience.

Patience is difficult, especially when you have a deal that is constrained by a time limit imposed by a leader or a contract expiry. But if you’re impatient or time constrained by a deal that isn’t moving fast enough, you may make unnecessary concessions in order to get it over the finish line. This can have long-term consequences.

It can also be counterproductive, as the other side may be less satisfied with a concession made easily in quickly, as they will perceive it as being of low value. Practicing patience, whether with your customer’s Procurement team or with your children, encourages flexibility and provides time for the other side to accept otherwise-tough choices.

Further reading:

“6 Habits of Merely Effective Negotiators”

“Should you Make the First Offer?”

“The Art of Deal Diplomacy”

“Five Reasons Good Deals get Rejected”

“Investigative Negotiation“

Kunal Bhatia is senior global account director at Johnson & Johnson, where he has worked for 16 years in a variety of sales, marketing and leadership roles. Connect with him on LinkedIn.

Podcast, Strategic account manager skills and competencies, Technology

Creating meshed relationships: A conversation with Arpedio co-founder Ulrik Monberg

If you aren’t building and maintaining deep, wide relationships inside your strategic accounts, you’re in trouble. We talk to the co-founder and CEO of Arpedio about the importance of creating meshed relationships with your strategic customers.

Listen to this episode of The SAMA Podcast here.

Podcast, Strategic account manager skills and competencies

Getting inside your customer’s head: A former CFO on how companies make investment decisions

Ever wonder how your customer’s finance team evaluates supplier proposals? It’s a lot easier to position your company’s value when you understand how the customer buying team thinks. Chris Ferguson – who has worked as an investment banker and held executive roles in sales and in finance – spills the beans.

Listen to this episode of The SAMA Podcast here.

Podcast, Strategic account manager skills and competencies

Helping your customers through crisis: Lessons learned on Sept. 11

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.