In this episode, SAMA’s Harvey Dunham talks with Arun Sharma, one of the most widely published authors in the strategic accounts arena and a foremost authority on “liquid” organizations. He is a professor of marketing and vice dean of graduate business programs and executive education at University of Miami’s Herbert Business School. His faculty bio is here, and his personal website is here.
Full transcript:
Harvey Dunham: So Arun. It’s great to be able to reconnect with you.
Arun Sharma: I am really excited to be on this podcast with you, Harvey. I have been working in this area of strategic accounts for maybe 30 years. You would find it interesting that I’m the second most published author in that area. So I’ve done tons and tons of research in this area, but recently my interests have moved towards a concept called liquidity. And I’ll explain that to you when we start talking about the trends, what we see with COVID-19, et cetera.
HD: Great. Well, let’s, let’s just get right to it and start right there. I mean, I know you’re doing research on how companies are responding to the COVID virus. What are you hoping to learn?
AS: So, uh, Harvey. I’m going to interrupt just one second, just so that people understand. They all know you, but I’m a professor in the Miami Herbert School at the University of Miami, and my interest has always been in the area of sales. And just to give you a background, about four years ago when disruption started hitting industries, uh, people came to me and said, “Folks, uh, you know, tell us more about disruption.” So we created a model of disruption and we started showing it to folks, and the people came back and said, “Um, you know, this is interesting. But you know, it’s unpredictable.” Just like COVID-19 was absolutely unpredictable. So how should companies, including sales organizations, prepare for these kinds of disruptions as they come?
Continue reading “Your secret weapon in times of uncertainty? “Liquidity””