More sessions will be announced soon. Stay tuned for additional speakers and topics.
Keynote
From Surviving to Thriving: How top growth firms have cracked the code on interacting with strategic accounts
October 13: 1:00 pm – 2:15 pm
McKinsey Partner Jennifer Stanley will share findings from their latest global survey on B2B buying and selling, which covered ~4000 decision makers across 13 countries and 34 sub-sectors.
Keynote
The Future of SAM Talent: Closing the talent gap
October 14: 9:00 am – 10:00 am
The Strategic Account Manager role is becoming one of the most critical and hardest to build capabilities in B2B organizations. As customers become more complex, buying journeys more digital, and value creation more dependent on ecosystems, …
Track
Critical Skills for Strategic Account Managers
Beyond the Template: What best-in-class account planning actually looks like
October 14: 2:15 pm – 3:30 pm
Too many account teams equate account planning with completing a template. The result is a document that gets built once, filed away, and never shapes a customer conversation, while the strategic thinking that creates mutual value never happens.
Track
Critical Skills for Strategic Account Managers
The Adaptability Advantage: Future-proofing strategic accounts
October 13: 2:45 pm – 4:00 pm
Strategic account management has always been about balancing structure with flexibility. But in today’s environment, where customer priorities shift overnight, executives rotate regularly, and disruption is constant, process and planning are not enough. The ability to adapt is the new strategic differentiator.
Track
Critical Skills for Strategic Account Managers
The Human Advantage: Building Competitor-Proof Customer Relationships in an AI World
October 14: 10:15 am – 11:30 am
AI is changing Strategic Account Management by making information, analysis, and content available to everyone. But one competitive advantage remains uniquely human—trusted business relationships.
Track
Critical Skills for Strategic Account Managers
Three Seconds to Magic: What great SAMs do before the reactive brain takes over
October 14: 12:00 pm – 1:15 pm
The moments that shape a strategic account are often the ones no one planned for — a hard piece of feedback, a renewal at risk, a troubled implementation, or a customer challenge that catches you off guard. In those moments, your brain wants to react fast. Great SAMs know how to slow …
Track
Critical Skills for Strategic Account Managers
We’ve Got You: Turning trust into your greatest strategic account advantage
October 13: 4:30 pm – 5:45 pm
As AI and automation become the new standard, human connection will increasingly become the ultimate differentiator. This session will explore how emotional intelligence, trust, and a co-creating mindset can transform customer relationships into lasting strategic partnerships. Through …
Track
SAM Program Design, Structure, and Management
Centering the Client Organization in Global Account Management Practice
October 14: 2:15 pm – 3:30 pm
This session will explore the key enablers and barriers in global account management (GAM), highlighting four crucial doctoral research findings that organizations should consider when structuring, implementing, or evaluating GAM partnerships, in terms of The Four C’s Model.
Track
SAM Program Design, Structure, and Management
Communicating the Value of the Strategic Account Management Program to Internal Stakeholders: Lessons learned
October 13: 2:45 pm – 4:00 pm
Strategic account management (SAM) programs deliver measurable value, but that value is often invisible to the internal stakeholders whose buy-in determines whether a program survives budget cycles, leadership turnover, and competing priorities.
Track
SAM Program Design, Structure, and Management
Executive Sponsorship or Sabotage: Practical insights for engaging leadership to accelerate strategic account relationships
October 14: 12:00 pm – 1:15 pm
Executive sponsorship can be a powerful catalyst for strategic account growth — or, when poorly orchestrated, create more friction than value. In this highly interactive session, participants will share real-world best practices, hard-earned lessons, and common missteps in engaging C-suite executives …
Track
SAM Program Design, Structure, and Management
KAM Strategy: From decision to delivery
October 14: 10:15 am – 11:30 am
How does an organization move from “We should do KAM” to “We deliver measurable impact”? In this session, Terumo Interventional Systems pulls back the curtain on its end-to-end journey of adopting and operationalizing key account management.
Track
SAM Program Design, Structure, and Management
The Lighthouse Effect: How a Center of Excellence anchors the strategic account journey — plus lessons from the Arcadis transformation
October 13: 4:30 pm – 5:45 pm
Most SAM journeys do not fail on strategy. They stall on sustainability. The roadmap is built, the methodology is chosen, the program launches with energy, and then momentum quietly leaks away. Competency models multiply, training drifts from the account …