Account planning Archives - Strategic Account Management Association

People & Problems: The core of strategic account planning

By Richard Scheig, Chief Revenue Officer, Upland Software

The view from where I sit as Upland Software’s Chief Revenue Officer is a profoundly interesting one. Our revenue teams are physically distributed through time zones and countries, as well spread across 25-plus product lines that serve industries from healthcare to tech. These complex operations alone would be enough to keep anyone’s head buzzing. But as a provider of a robust set of sales management and methodology capabilities, our teams work with some of the biggest sales organizations in the world. This gives me insight into the state of enterprise sales organizations outside my own, lending me a bird’s eye view into the ways that revenue teams are embracing the current state and accelerating the digital transformations that have become all the more urgent for every one of us over the last two years.

What I see from these dual worldviews is twofold: First, that the global pressures stemming from COVID and supply chain squeezes are throwing roadblocks in the path of us all. And second, while no one is immune to these challenges, the strategic account planning approaches that drive success today aren’t unique to any particular industry or business size. The foundational principles that move the needle are ones familiar to any sales leader: relationships and insights. It’s how faithfully (and effectively) we execute on these principles that makes the difference.

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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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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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