Technology Archives - Strategic Account Management Association

Strategic account management process, Technology

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…

(2) 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.”

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Technology, Value co-creation

Turning lemons into lemonade: Five ways to reset on customer management fundamentals in a post-pandemic world

By Dave Duke, Co-Founder and CCO, MetaCX, and Joel Schaafsma, Research General Manager, SAMA

Turning lemons into lemonade. It is one of the most optimistic cliches known to man – and with good reason. The phrase tells us to have a positive mindset and look for the good when faced with a dire, and potentially devastating, turn of events.

The pandemic has presented an opportunity to reflect on what matters most in our personal and professional lives. In business, it has created an opportunity to reflect on how companies are managing customers, and it has given customers a window of opportunity to re-evaluate their supplier relationships to determine which partnerships are truly valuable.

History has shown us that when companies invest in their customer relationships during major downturns, the recovery period is faster and, ultimately, buyer relationships end up stronger than before. When going through a challenging time, it is important to understand how the people behind their customer logos are impacted.

Here are five things you can do to get back to the fundamentals with your most strategic customers:

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Strategic account manager skills and competencies, Technology

The Future of SAM – Revisited

This blog post is based on a keynote presentation from the 2021 SAMA Annual Conference. The session was moderated by Jim Ford, Chief Commercial Officer, Solecta and SAMA Chairman of the Board. Panelists’ remarks have been paraphrased for this blog post.

The future is now.

After 14 months of chaos, now is the time for SAMs to learn from the past and prepare for the future. Regardless of the organization we work at, we could be outspent, out resourced or out marketed but we do have the opportunity to outthink our competition. The challenge is to visualize what that future will look like.

Over the past 12 months, SAMA has established a knowledgeable point of view based on hundreds of webinars, the SAMA Experts Council and countless interviews with members. From all this, we stress tested long-held views about strategic account management. We acquired real-time, relevant insight from the world’s best practitioners and thought leaders in the SAMA community.

Panelists: the three experts of SAM

Karen Passmore is Partner at the management consulting firm McKinsey and Company where she works on organizational design and go-to-market strategies with a focus on breaking down organizational silos. She also works on sales effectiveness and has recently done some innovative work around omni-channel excellence.
Frédérick Kahn is Global Vice President of Sales at Wavelength Pharmaceuticals. He is a savant in bringing SAM programs to life, revitalizing SAM programs and helping get the most out of a SAM program from a structure and talent perspective. On a global scale, he’s worked for Hovione, Lonza and other private equity and venture capital organizations.
Kaj Storbacka is a professor at Hanken School of Economics in Helsinki and Founder of Market Shaping Lab. He has served on the board of directors at SAMA. He’s a global thought leader around business-model innovation, market design and disruption. He’s authored more than a dozen books and is a frequent guest speaker around the globe for corporations, executive education and various industry communities.

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