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.”
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.
At SAMA we strive to be innovative in how we deliver value to our customers, and that means experimenting with different formats and media for learning, training and networking. That’s why we have partnered with Edmund Bradford, a former global account manager who is now an author, educator and game designer. He is the managing director of Market2Win and developer of SAM2Win, the world’s first online game that teaches strategic account management.
SAMA Assistant Director of Knowledge & Training Dave Schweizer recently sat down with Edmund to discuss the SAM2Win training/simulation, which SAMA will offer beginning in November.Their interview has been lightly edited and condensed. You can listen to the entire interview here:
Dave Schweizer: Thank you for joining us, Ed. So what exactly is the SAM2Win program?
Edmund Bradford: As far as I know, it’s the only game in the world that actually teaches strategic account management, rather than selling. I think the best way to think about it is it’s kind of like a flight simulator for account managers and teams based on over 30 years of research and experience from myself and my colleagues, both practitioners and academics. In the simulation, we have five global companies all competing for the business of one complex global account. Each company typically has about one to five players, who act as the account manager or act as an account team if they’re playing as a team. And the participants or the teams play against each other — not against the computer — with all the fun and irrational behavior that generates from that. And simply, the winner is the company that makes the most profit at the end.
DS: In the simulation, participants can make certain decisions. What kind of decisions can they make, and how do they enter those?
EB: We pose three big questions to the participants. The first big question is “Where should we compete in the account?” In other words, which sales opportunities are the best for the future? We want them to be future-oriented in this. So, “Where should we compete in the account?” Sales opportunities, in other words.
Second question is “How do we beat the competition?” Which, in other words, really means, “How do we craft superior value propositions that fit current and future needs of customers and that will also beat any other competitor offers out there?”
And finally, the third question that they need to think about is, “When do we want to see the results?” So do we have lots of time in front of us, or do we need some results here in this particular period that will affect the kind of decisions the account makes? So it’s sales opportunities within this account, how to invest to generate the best customer value, share of wallet and profit (both for now and for the future) and how to invest to outsmart the competition.
We also look at the decisions, and analyze those decisions and provide feedback on how they’re making those decisions. So we give course correction guidance as we go through the simulation.
DS: How are the outcomes of each decision calculated?
EB: We typically run about five decision rounds in the simulation. When each decision round closes, our software engine compares all the decisions made by the different companies, and the companies that grow the fastest are those that invested most effectively in creating the best value propositions and the best sales opportunities.
So it’s all about getting your strategy right, getting the tactics right for how you are generating value and making sure that your decisions and your thinking are better than the competition. It looks at all the decisions from all the teams and says, “Who’s making the best decisions from the customer point of view and, therefore, from a customer point of view, where would you place your business?”
DS: Sounds like a very complicated thing to develop.
EB: I would say probably 10 years of real experience of creating and supporting account programs in companies went into it. Even before we put the software together, there was a lot of research and experience that went into it because we really wanted to get it right.
DS: That’s very impressive. So what knowledge can the participants expect to gain from the simulation?
EB: Well, there’s a huge amount, both in terms of knowledge and skills. First, they learn how to apply a good needs-based segmentation to the account. One of the first real wins is for them to go back to their account plans, get back to their strategic account analysis and say to themselves, “How should we divide up this account? Maybe there are cross-division, cross-country needs, which are similar. We just need to find that ‘golden vein’ of needs that run across the whole account.”
Second, we teach some great tools about how to pick the best sales opportunities for the future. So “Where should we focus our spend effort to generate the best long-term relationship with the account for the future?”
Third, it’s about developing superior value propositions — understanding what value actually means, crafting value propositions that are superior to anything the competitors are providing and making sure that we communicate that to customers.
Fourth, I think it’s about just getting better strategic customer analysis. For example, in the simulation, there’s a big procurement piece. With our good mutual friend David Atkinson, we’ve put a lot of good thoughts into the simulation around understanding procurement and how to align our account strategy with the procurement strategy — seeing how we’re positioned in the eyes of Procurement, both as a supplier and also in terms of our category of spend.
Those are the big knowledge areas, but I would also say: learning the art of strategic focus. So many account plans have this idea that we’re going to compete everywhere, against all competitors, in all sales opportunities, equally all of the time. And every time there’s an RFP coming up, we’re going to leap on it with all our resources. And the trouble is there’s not enough time to understand what the genuine needs are, and so that leads to shallow value propositions, very poor co-development of value and then stressed, unhappy and dissatisfied customers.
DS: Fantastic. How much time per week should participants expect to allocate for this program?
EB: You’re talking really about two days of effort over 16 weeks, and that equates to roughly about one-and-a-half hours per week. So it’s not nothing, but neither is it going to take over your life.
DS: How else do participants benefit from the simulation?
EB: Well, I’m glad you asked, Dave. First, it’s about account leadership skills, particularly around strategic thinking and execution. Participants become good at sort of rising above the details to understand the future, to not get buried in all the data. They become basically good at sort of, you know, seeing the companies play, understanding their future, recognizing their company’s place in that future and learning how to get there. So they are proactively aiming their company at a good place in the future rather than being dragged into bad places by the customer or by the competition.
Second, I think the benefit is that players are free to fail. The simulation allows an opportunity to experiment and take risks in a safe environment. And the nice thing is that no one gets sacked from playing the simulation. You learn from the mistakes and think about how you can apply the lessons learned to real life.
Third, players become very good at thinking about the issues and putting account plans together.
An unexpected result that I’ve seen: When we get people from different functional backgrounds, we see better alignment because – whether they’re coming from Finance or Logistics or Marketing – playing the simulation, they get a better understanding of what account management is all about. People end up sharing a common language. Some of the best games I’ve seen have been from cross-functional teams from the same organization.
DS: Do you have any tips on how to win?
EB: Do you watch “The Great British Bake Off”? Well, if so, you know Paul Hollywood. He’s asked, “Any final tips before the competitors go out there and bake their cakes?” I’m a little like Paul: I don’t want to give too much away. But I’ll say two things. Number one: Do your homework. Number two: If you’re losing, it’s probably because you’ve misdiagnosed the real problem. I’ll just leave it at that.
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.
The core of strategic account management is the strategic customer value process. Most of the time, the value packages a SAM proposes to a customer will involve the contribution of several business units and countries from across the enterprise, which is most often organized by product groups, business units (BUs) and geographies. Here we encounter one of the preeminent challenges of making SAM actually work, namely designing and delivering a value proposition that cuts across all silos of product groups, BUs and geographies. This is what we mean when we talk about internal alignment. (Similar issues can exist at the customer organization, but we’ll keep our focus on internal challenges here.)
SAMA research has shown, time and again, that there are four broad areas that explain the success or failure of a SAM initiative in overcoming the challenges of a siloed, or matrixed, organization. Incredibly, our research shows that as much as 40 percent of a company’s internal alignment success (or lack thereof) can be attributed to skills and competencies of its SAMs.
The other three critical factors responsible for internal alignment success are alignment processes and tools (20%), customer governance (20%) and human resources management systems, especially compensation systems (20%). We’ll start with alignment processes and tools, of which one stands out: the strategic account planning system and its resulting account plan execution.
Alignment processes and tools
For an example of successful account planning and execution, we can look at Johnson Controls, a global technology and industrial company that (among other things) provides products, services and solutions to optimize energy and operational efficiencies of buildings. With one of its strategic accounts, a national industry leader employing 199,000 people across nearly 300 sites, Johnson Controls realized its existing planning system failed to deliver a common vision or strategy to leverage the power of JCI’s entire company. The relationship was plagued by poor communication, a perception of poor delivery, inconsistent pricing across sites and overall poor relationship management. JCI found its solution in designing an effective account planning process, which served as a management tool to allow perfect execution across BUs and countries for the one global customer.
What was the solution to the poor alignment between JCI and its critically important customer? First, JCI established a SAM as a single point of contact with the customer and the key driver of an integrated account management strategy. It became his responsibility to develop an integrated account management plan to further strengthen the customer relationship, drive account growth and improve customer satisfaction. The SAM also became responsible for aligning the JCI account team with client A’s account team and for establishing a common vision and goals to meet the customer’s business objectives. So how did he tackle the job?
Step 1: assemble the team. Step 2: build the account plan. Step 3: organize joint planning sessions with client A.
As part of this planning session, JCI developed four key focus areas for both organizations: mutual value creation; alignment, namely fit between both companies in terms of goals, values and culture; relationships, meaning the degree to which both companies’ teams are able to work in a trust-based environment; and growth, meaning the increase in overall business value and volume, and results from collaboration, mutual innovation and joint planning.
Beyond the joint planning session, JCI organized a showcase visit for core personnel from the strategic account to visit JCI’s corporate offices for a series of discussions and visioning sessions on leveraging the full power of both organizations for future success. The key objectives of the showcase visit included improving the customer’s knowledge of JCI’s key offerings; aligning the two companies’ goals, values and culture; defining improvements in JCI’s support and relationship management; and improving the current buying process, including but not limited to the pricing model that had previously been inconsistent and ad hoc.
The business results were impressive and included improved customer satisfaction, profitable growth, pipeline growth, pipeline growth for new opportunities and improved operations efficiency and standardization. The new account planning system created disciplined alignment and disciplined execution, showcasing to the customer a significant and ongoing level of commitment to joint development processes, leveraging capabilities of both organizations to achieve remarkable outcomes.
Customer governance
Another incredibly powerful alignment system is customer governance, which allows companies to create a tailored “board of directors” to manage a specific strategic customer. This board of directors ideally is composed of the main stakeholders within the siloed organization, such as BU or country executives and corporate executives.
A very powerful business case comes from the Siemens customer governance organization.
For Seimens’ corporate strategic accounts, customers are segmented by industry sectors such as energy, food and beverage, healthcare, automotive and more. Each vertical has a designated market development board (MDB), and these boards have the following decision areas:
Decide the nomination and cancellation of the corporate strategic accounts
Approve the appointment of the corporate strategic account managers
Approve the strategic account business plan
Approve the project development teams assigned to major projects
Approve the quarterly established MDB scorecard, budget and resource allocation
Approve targets for the corporate strategic account managers and foster their training and coaching
When you look at the overall responsibility wielded by the MDBs, you understand that this is a powerful force for aligning the siloed organization and designing and delivering the customer value proposition.
Compensation systems
The final puzzle piece of successful internal alignment is human resource management and compensation systems. For years SAMA has been conducting highly rigorous compensation studies for national, strategic and global account managers. Time and again, the coherence between metrics/measurement of the SAMs and the compensation systems in place have been singled out as paramount in ensuring the alignment of the entire account team to customer commitments.
Strategic account management is a medium-term journey, so if the compensation of the SAM is 100 percent short-term focused (i.e., based on quarterly quotas) then we have an incoherence between metrics and compensation. To give another example of misaligned compensation, imagine a SAM managing a global customer with critical team members spread across the globe. If the team members in different geographies are compensated based on their local results, there’s a incoherence with the idea of managing the customer globally. For this reason it is critical that corporate executives and the corporate HR organization design specific compensation systems for strategic account managers that will be coherent, in terms of metrics and measurement, and that will incentivize the behavior and activities they wish to get from the SAM and the account team.
To sum it up, management systems process and organizational design that favors alignment – such as strategic account planning, customer governance entities and thoughtfully conceived compensation systems – are all critical elements for fostering alignment across the enterprise. But the most powerful lever to create the necessary internal alignment needed for SAM remains the leadership competency and skills of the strategic account manager.
