2026 SAMA Annual Conference List of Sessions

Presenter: Chris Wells, Director Strategic Accounts, bioMérieux

This session will provide an overview of the annual governance program used at bioMérieux to guide strategic account management. The discussion will cover a practical sequence of steps, including the development of account plans and supporting tactical plans, target setting, and the ongoing discipline of account selection and deselection. The session will also examine the methods and metrics used to support these decisions and track progress over time.

Presenter: Dennis Chapman, President and CEO, The Chapman Group

This session explores how strategic account management (SAM) teams can harness voice of the customer (VOC) insights to demonstrate program impact, deepen client relationships, and drive growth. Attendees will learn how to collect, analyze, and present impactful relationship VOC data to showcase SAM outcomes and any additional improvement efforts necessary in terms that resonate with executives, account teams, and cross-functional stakeholders.

Presenters: Adrian Davis, President, Whetstone Inc; Todd Rupp, Strategy & Enablement Lead Key Accounts, Pfizer

In a complex, highly regulated environment, Pfizer faced the challenge many leadership teams encounter: how to move beyond SAM training to a sustained behavioral change that drives measurable business results. Working with Whetstone Inc., Pfizer’s leaders redefined how medical, sales, and operations work together on key accounts — creating a single, disciplined rhythm that delivers strategic impact without adding layers of bureaucracy.

In this 75-minute interactive session, Todd Rupp and Adrian Davis will unpack the leadership decisions, governance structures, and change enablers that allowed this transformation to take hold and scale. You’ll see how senior leaders aligned multiple functions, built accountability into the culture, and kept executives engaged over the long term.

Benefits from attending this session:

• Understand the five-stage leadership journey from strategic design to collaborative impact, and how to adapt it for your environment.
• Learn how to align multiple functions into a unified account rhythm that accelerates results.
• Discover how to embed development into real work tied directly to revenue, retention, and strategic objectives.
• See how micro-habits and peer-led conversations reduce resistance and speed adoption.
• Walk away with methods to measure impact, maintain momentum, and strengthen executive sponsorship.

Presenters: Martyn Poller, Director / Managing Partner, Axiomata

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.

This session explores adaptability as a measurable, coachable capability that sits at the heart of modern SAM programs. Drawing on research with AQai and live case examples from industry, we’ll show why adaptability isn’t just a personal trait but an organizational competency, and how it directly influences account retention, growth, and value realization.

Key learning outcomes:

• Understand adaptability as a strategic SAM competency and why it matters now more than ever.
• Discover practical methods to assess and build adaptability within account teams.
• Learn from case-based examples where adaptability turned disruption into growth.

By embedding adaptability into account management programs, organizations don’t just survive disruption, they convert it into a competitive advantage. SAMs who can flex, pivot, and reframe are the ones who will continue to earn C-suite trust and deliver measurable outcomes in uncertain times.

Presenter: Bill Dwoinen, CRO, Mural

When go-to-market (GTM) teams aren’t aligned, friction creeps in, slowing strategy, stalling execution, and draining morale. In this session, Mural CRO Bill Dwoinen shares new data on where collaboration drag is costing companies the most and how smart, cross-functional leaders are solving it. Learn how Bill and his counterparts in marketing and product built a new GTM planning rhythm that increased velocity and reduced silos. Walk away with practical templates and frameworks you can apply to your own 2026 planning process.

Presenter: Dee-Dee Van Wormer, Sr. AD, Customer Facing Effectiveness, Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals; Malaea Seleski, Director of Strategic Account Management Training, Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals

Building a world-class strategic account management (SAM) function requires more than appointing account managers — it demands deliberate structure, aligned leadership, disciplined enablement, and a culture committed to continuous improvement. In this in-depth 75-minute session, leaders from Boehringer Ingelheim will share how they designed, launched, and institutionalized their strategic account management program office from the ground up.

Attendees will learn:

• Critical success factors in establishing a foundational structure of a SAM program office — including clear roles, responsibilities, and organizational integration.
• Recommendations for SAM team training that spans core SAM principles to advanced skills that are both practical and engaging.
• How industry-recognized certification supports a culture of continuous improvement
• How to secure and sustain strong executive sponsorship to champion the SAM program across the organization.

Participants will leave with practical, replicable insights they can apply to strengthen or launch their own SAM programs

Presenters: Namita Powers, Principal, ZS; Amelia Summerell, Associate Principal, ZS; Manasa Billa, Engagement Manager, ZS

In today’s dynamic commercial landscape, speed to impact is everything. When implementing a new key account management strategy, companies need to quickly show proof points and be ready to adapt as theory meets the real world. Hypercare is a strategic approach that goes beyond a traditional pilot, enabling organizations to proactively invest in capabilities, close operational gaps, and accelerate outcomes. This session will explore case studies of how ZS has operationalized hypercare, sharing proven frameworks, best practices, and lessons learned from real-world implementations. Attendees will hear impact stories that illustrate how hypercare unlocks initial impact, translates to sustained performance, and catalyzes executive engagement / buy-in. For KAM programs undergoing a transformation, hypercare offers a blueprint for rapidly taking strategy from theory to impact.

Presenters: Dominique Cote, CEO & Founder, Cosawi; Kate Burda, CEO & Founder, Turning Point

There’s no shortage of ABM frameworks, canvases, and buzzwords. What’s missing is the impact inside real strategic accounts.

In this session, we unpack why many ABM programs stall at campaigns, content, and technology stacks — and how to redesign them around what actually drives results: account-team ownership, value co-creation, and customer outcomes.

Drawing on field-tested work with strategic and key accounts, we challenge tech-first and marketing-only thinking and reframe ABM as a customer-led, team-enabled operating model.

You’ll learn how to move ABM from tactical messaging to a visible driver of growth, loyalty, and defensibility — where the SAM/KAM orchestrates, marketing amplifies, and every action is anchored in the customer’s business and journey.

Presenters: Brooke Spatz, Enablement Director, Polaris I/O; Michelle Curtis, Director of GTC Programs, Polaris I/O

Strategic account management was never meant to be a solo sport, yet many SAM programs are asking individual account managers to carry the full burden of research, insight development, and strategic thinking — on top of managing complex relationships and growing revenue.

This session is designed for program leaders, enablement, and L&D teams responsible for improving how strategic account teams operate and perform. It introduces the commercial insight strategist (CIS) capability as a practical way organizations are rebalancing work across the SAM team without burning out sellers or relying on heroics.

You’ll explore how CISs support SAMs by focusing on what most teams struggle to do consistently: identifying early customer signals, interpreting what’s changing in the customer’s world, and translating that insight into action before opportunities are fully formed. Through real-world examples, we’ll show what happens when teams try to sell without this capability — and how outcomes change when insight work is treated as a dedicated, repeatable function.

This session will help leaders understand:

• How insight responsibilities can be distributed across the SAM team instead of sitting solely with the seller.
• The core competencies and behaviors that define effective commercial insight strategists.
• The business case for investing in insight capability, including examples of improved focus, stronger pursuits, and better use of seller time.

Presenters: Phil Styrlund, CEO, Summit Group; Adrian Davis, President and CEO, Whetstone; Brian Kiep, COO, Valkre; Brad Weintraub, Senior Vice President, Global Strategic Accounts Program, AVI-SPL

Session Overview:

Discover how to transform your sales organization by elevating average performers to top-tier status. This session provides actionable strategies and real-world insights to help you scale excellence across your team.

Key takeaways:

• Practical roadmap: Proven steps to shift average performers into high-impact contributors.
• Real-world example: How AVI-SPL integrates thoughtware and software to drive sustainable behavior change.
• Future outlook: A glimpse into the next generation of key account management (KAM) enablement.

Presenter: Francois Safi, Senior Manager of KAM & Sales Efficiency Office EMEA, Terumo Interventional Systems

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.

Attendees will hear how the company made the strategic decision to pursue KAM, what it took to translate that decision into action, and the realities of implementation inside a complex, global organization. Francois Safi will share candid insights on what worked, what didn’t, the roadblocks encountered along the way, and the internal shifts required to gain traction.

You’ll walk away with practical lessons you can apply whether you’re just beginning your KAM journey or looking to strengthen execution in a mature program — along with a forward-looking view of where Terumo is headed next in its evolution

Presenters: Jenya Kubashevskiy, Director, Revenue Management Labs; Todd Snelgrove, Senior Managing Partner, Experts in Value

Complex B2B deals demand pricing strategies that work across customer tiers, long sales cycles, and diverse global markets. In this session, you will learn how to maintain profitability and consistency while meeting different customer needs. We will cover how to segment and adapt pricing for distributors, end-users, and partners without losing coherence. We will also cover how to keep pricing relevant during lengthy negotiations and adjust to shifting market conditions without compromising value. You will gain practical tools to balance pricing consistency with local cost, competitive, and regulatory realities.

Presenter: Nancy Murray, Director of Key Account Management, Allnorth Consultants Limited

It’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking SAM programs can only be implemented effectively by the big companies, with big teams and big budgets.  In small and mid-sized firms, where strategic account management is every bit as critical, the reality often feels about as smooth as trying to ride a bicycle while you’re building it. But for a lean organization focused on growth, the secret lies in the ability to take a structured, disciplined approach, pivot when needed and create a strong foundation to build on.

Drawing on the first two years of lessons learned at a 1,000-person multi-disciplinary engineering firm still working on building their bicycle, this session will explore the practical side of the SAM program journey in a mid-sized company. From team engagement to account selection and account planning to implementing a right-sized tech stack, you’ll hear about what worked well out of the gate and what had to go back to the drawing board. You’ll come away from the session with practical strategies for building and evolving your program that will help you keep the bicycle upright and moving forward — even when you’re still building it.

Presenters: Shawn Parker, Executive Director of Strategic Accounts & Corporate Group Sales, Hilton; Muriel Carroll, Managing Director of Corporate Strategic Accounts, Hilton

In 2025, Hilton introduced its executive sponsorship program for global platinum key accounts, spotlighting a strategic framework to deepen relationships with top-tier clients. The session drew strong engagement, with presenters representing governance, SAM leader, and SAM practitioner perspectives, sharing the program’s structure, rules of engagement, and early implementation insights.

For 2026, Hilton is returning with a follow-up session that explores how Hilton has evolved the program over the past year. Attendees will gain a behind-the-scenes look at:

• Program Maturation: Updates on segmentation, executive alignment, and measurable outcomes.
• Governance Enhancements: How Hilton refined its sponsorship tracking, scorecard implementation, and executive training protocols.
• SAM Leadership Perspective: Lessons learned in scaling the program across regions and account tiers.
• Practitioner Insights: Real-world application, client feedback, and relationship impact.

Presenters: Carrie Welles, Partner, Think! Inc.

Margin pressure is not new — but at Ciena, leaders recognized that winning better deals required more than sharper tactics or one-off training. Faced with increasingly complex deals and aggressive price pressure, Ciena shares how they transformed negotiation from an individual skill into a scalable, repeatable system for margin optimization. Ciena deployed a strategic, yet simple framework, embedded into a customized deal database used across the sales organization. The system reflects real-time leader sales strategy, shifts seller behavior, and elevates deal quality. In less than four months, this changed how leaders review, coach, and approve opportunities. Attendees will learn what worked, what challenged adoption, and the critical leadership actions required to move negotiation from theory to execution — turning price-led conversations into value-driven outcomes at scale.

This session is designed for strategic account leaders and managers responsible for improving deal quality, margin, and negotiation consistency across complex accounts.

Participants will leave with practical insight into how to:

• Operationalize your negotiation strategy.
• Help account teams reframe customer decision-making away from price, without losing momentum or trust.
• Enable execution at scale.

Presenter: Dennis Chapman, President and CEO, The Chapman Group

Many organizations say they are customer centric. Few are. In strategic account management, true customer-centricity is not about sending surveys or hosting quarterly business reviews — it’s about co-creating value, anticipating needs, incorporating feedback into account plans, and aligning deeply with the customer’s strategic goals for mutual benefit.

This session exposes the gap between perception and reality, and equips SAM leaders with the metrics, behaviors, and frameworks that prove they walk the talk.

Presenter: Adrian Davis, President and CEO, Whetstone Inc.

Strategic account managers face a unique challenge: Customers want relevance, clarity, and strategic insight — yet most SAM conversations stay stuck in information sharing and solution pitching. Storytelling remains the most underused capability in SAM, despite its power to deepen discovery, align stakeholders, and translate complex strategy into compelling narratives.

In this 75-minute interactive session, Adrian Davis shows how the hero’s journey — introduced in Adrian’s book, “Heroes, Villains, and the Thrill of Professional Selling” — has become a favorite framework among SAMs for raising the quality of strategic conversations.

The session goes far beyond theory. Participants will first learn the model, then use it as a diagnostic tool to analyze real customer situations and finally apply it to craft strategic stories that motivate action.

The session is designed for busy account teams who need practical tools they can use immediately with their strategic customers.

What you’ll take away:

• A clear method to use the hero’s journey as a discovery framework to uncover goals, obstacles, and internal dynamics.
• A practical tool to analyze any customer situation and pinpoint the real strategic tension that needs to be solved.
• A step-by-step narrative structure SAMs can use to influence executives, align internal teams, and elevate account conversations.
• Techniques to transform data, insight, and account plans into stories that drive urgency and commitment.
• Real examples that show how SAMs have used this framework to win support, deepen engagement, and create momentum inside complex accounts. 

Presenters: Bill Ford, Founder, Prime Meridian Group; Kirollos Hanna, Director of Pharmacy, Minnesota Oncology; Brittany Danoski, Regional Executive Director of the Clinically Integrated Network (CIN), Trinity Health Mid-Atlantic

Pharmaceutical decision-making has become more complex, interconnected, and value-driven than ever. Strategic account managers face mounting pressure to move beyond access and create partnerships that resonate with top executives. In this dynamic panel discussion, senior leaders from the pharmaceutical C-suite will share what truly drives their decision-making — what makes them engage, what keeps them skeptical, and how they measure long-term value in their external partnerships.

Attendees will walk away with a rare insider perspective on:

• How C-suite executives align partnerships with corporate strategy.
• The top three priorities shaping pharma’s external collaborations in 2025–2026.
• Common pitfalls that derail otherwise promising partnerships.
• Practical advice on becoming a strategic ally instead of a transactional vendor.

This workshop is designed to help strategic account managers refine their approach, strengthen executive engagement, and create mutually valuable partnerships with top pharma decision-makers.

Learning objectives:

• Understand the evolving priorities of pharmaceutical executives in today’s competitive and regulated environment.
• Identify the key drivers and decision-making frameworks that influence partnerships at the executive level.
• Learn actionable strategies to position yourself as a trusted advisor to the C-suite.
• Avoid common mistakes that erode trust and credibility with pharma leaders.

Presenter: Craig Jones, Managing Director, Performance Methods Inc (PMI)

Can your customer articulate the value of partnering with you and your organization when you are not present? What would they say to their leadership when asked why they should continue to work with you and your organization? Is it in their words, or is it your terminology? Is it clear, concise, and compelling?

SAMs and KAMs must equip and enable customers to articulate the value and business outcomes they receive beyond price. This requires leveraging the entire organization to co-create value and differentiate themselves the customer’s from other options.

In this interactive session, you’ll learn actionable insights and tools to empower your key sponsors to become influential advocates. We’ll move beyond discounts and rebates, exploring how to co-create and articulate value clearly, concisely, and in a compelling manner. Specifically, you will learn to:

• Conduct targeted research to deeply understand your customer.
• Craft compelling reasons for engagement.
• Discover and validate what your customer values most.
• Articulate value in a clear, concise, and compelling manner.
• Leverage past successes to drive future value co-creation.

Presenter: Hajo Rapp, SVP SAM & Sales Excellence, TÜV SÜD AG

Customers in the digital environment expect partners to collaborate with them on solutions that understand and address their world and their challenges. The session explores what works, what doesn’t, and why selling twice (first internal, then external) is often necessary in a fast-changing landscape. We will touch on how to create and drive an integrated account-team approach, align goals, deliver consistent messaging to the customer, and deal with different cultures.

Presenters: Todd Burgess, Senior Director of Business Consulting, ZS Associates; Steve Phillips, Associate Principal, ZS Associates

Your customer’s senior executives think differently, decide differently, and expect to engage differently. Yet many SAMs still bring “account manager energy” into rooms that require “executive partner presence.”

This session focuses on developing the gravitas, communication skills, and strategic framing needed to succeed in C-suite engagements. We’ll explore how SAMs can quickly align on what matters most to senior leaders, tell compelling value stories that link to their business priorities, and handle challenging questions with confidence. Drawing on ZS’s recent research on the evolving competencies required for successful key account management, we will share examples of how to elevate and coach executive presence for key account management. Attendees will leave with practical tools for elevating their team’s influence and becoming the executive partner their customers seek.

Presenter: Scott Benjamin, Partner, PMI

Most sales professionals deeply understand their own product’s features and functions — but far fewer truly understand their competitors. In today’s hypercompetitive markets, that gap has real consequences. Competitive blind spots shape how customers evaluate options, how value is perceived, and ultimately who wins or loses strategic accounts. If you don’t understand how customers compare alternatives, you’re often negotiating from a position of weakness without realizing it.

This session challenges participants to rethink competitive strategy at the account level. We will explore how competitor awareness directly impacts customer decision-making, pricing power, and negotiation outcomes. This is a hands-on session where participants practice with frameworks to analyze competitors through the customer’s lens, anticipate competitive moves, and position their solutions more effectively — so they can differentiate with confidence, protect value, and win more consistently.

Presenter: Jacques Sciammas, President, Selling to Executives

This 2.5-hour interactive workshop, led by a former CFO responsible for evaluating investments and selecting vendors, is designed specifically for strategic and global account managers who must engage effectively with C-level decision makers to win complex B2B deals.

Drawing from the SAMA Competency Model and proven executive-selling methodologies, this session equips participants with the financial and business fluency required to influence executive thinking, align proposals with strategic priorities, and articulate clear business outcomes.

Participants will learn how executives define value, how to interpret and leverage financial statements, how to connect operational improvements to financial impact, and how executives prioritize investments. Using simple frameworks, attendees learn how to identify financial pain points, align solutions to business priorities, and confidently conduct high-quality business conversations with any executive. Participants leave with sharper financial insight, stronger business understanding, and the credibility needed to elevate their influence on key accounts.

Presenters: Mark Bourgeois, CEO, Oratium; Tim Pollard, Founder, Oratium

Customer conversations can go wrong in myriad ways and no small wonder: they are one of the most-challenging business environments SAMs face. To succeed you must be a masterful story creator AND a masterful storyteller. Additionally, you must be adept at: asking and fielding questions, handing objections, managing room dynamics and the clock, and driving the discussion towards the outcome you desire.

But get it right: Master the small attributes common to all great conversations and you wield one of the most powerful levers you can use to drive sales.

In this workshop, Oratium will share the critical skills and capabilities needed to design a world-class solutions narrative and deliver it effectively in an engaging and dynamic customer conversation.

We’ll discuss how to craft a customer conversation that fits the way the brain works, how to truly master the execution of that conversation through AI-augmented coaching and practice, and ultimately how to measure what matters in commercial conversations so you can use “big data” to improve the conversations that truly drive sales lift.

Using real-life customer examples and proven processes and tools, you’ll leave knowing how to drive sales lift via effective, compelling customer conversations.

Presenters: Erik Rippon, Director Strategic Accounts, Sonoco; Brian Dietmeyer, CEO, CloseStrong.ai

This session features executive lessons on how Sonoco embedded strategy into everyday account decisions.

Strategic account leaders invest heavily in frameworks, playbooks, and training, yet many continue to face a persistent challenge: leader strategy that does not translate into consistent execution across deals. The issue is rarely the strategy itself, but the absence of a system that operationalizes strategy day to day — one that sustains behavior change, provides leadership visibility, and scales best practices beyond individual talent. In this case study session, Sonoco shares how they addressed this gap by shifting from episodic training to a continuous, AI execution-centered model known as Precision-Guided Selling (PGS). You’ll learn how Sonoco embedded leadership priorities directly into the daily decisions account managers make, at every opportunity and at every stage, while giving executives real-time visibility into how strategy is being applied across the strategic account portfolio.

Participants will gain insight into how Sonoco:

• Governed strategic execution without adding management overhead.
• Scaled consistent strategic account behaviors across teams and markets.
• Increased coaching leverage and accountability for frontline leaders.
• Shifted from lagging performance metrics to actionable execution intelligence.

Designed for strategic account leaders, this session provides a practical blueprint for transforming strategy from a plan into a repeatable, observable, and measurable execution system, at scale.

Presenters: Brad Weintraub, Senior Vice President of Global Strategic Accounts Program, AVI-SPL; Erin Doughty, Director of Global Strategic Accounts Program, AVI-SPL; Mil Shah, Vice President of Global Accounts, AVI-SPL 

In this session, you will learn about three different perspectives involved in the account plan process at AVI-SPL. From leadership, program, and SAM perspectives, we will explore what is most impactful for each. Focused on the balance between finance, strategy, and action, we share how we ensure account planning is meaningful and effective for each. 

Presenter: Dan Kosch, Co-CEO, IMPAX 

As SAMs, our roles are important. To do our jobs well, we need to interact effectively with people at all levels in the customer’s organization. However, the senior executive level — where the business impact of our solutions can truly be appreciated — remains challenging to access. We recognize that to sell the value of our solutions, we must reach people who can understand it, but that doesn’t make it easy. When we do get to these executives, we have to be so good that they invite us back. 

In this session, you will learn how to:

• Efficiently understand your customer’s business environment and leverage that understanding to gain access to senior-level executives. 

• Speak their language and position your solutions in terms of the critical business outcomes they care about. 

• Deliver your message in a customer-focused way, so you are perceived as a credible business resource, not a vendor. 

Presenter: Mark Shonka, Co-CEO, IMPAX 

As SAMs, a strategic customer isn’t just a customer; they are more like a territory. In an era of increasingly aggressive growth targets, maximizing that territory is more critical than ever — especially as companies are looking to SAMs to drive their overall revenue growth targets. Simply gaining a renewal or an extension is no longer the goal — dramatically increasing the value of the relationship (and the revenue associated with it). 

In this session, you will learn how to: 

• Develop an effective network with long-lasting, win-win relationships providing access to insight and key players. 

• Uncover new opportunities through effective interviewing skills. 

• Deliver customer-centric presentations illustrating the value you have created together and setting the stage for your next request.

Presenters: Steve Andersen, President and Founder, Performance Methods, Inc; David Adams, Partner, Performance Methods, Inc. 

What does it mean to manage your account “like a business?” It means managing the account with an “account business plan” that provides a vision for strategic growth, and activating this plan as a guide to the actions you and your team will take to co-create customer value. 

Like any effective business plan, this approach must ultimately result in revenue generation and account growth, but evolving your account planning process and account plan to this level of execution and impact can be challenging. Far too many people, even in the SAMA community, tend to regard the account plan as more of a data repository or “form,” an accountability document that they receive limited value from, yet find themselves investing significant time and effort into updating and keeping it current.

But there’s good news! If we adopt a different mindset about the purpose of our account plans and establish clarity as to the account planning levers or “pressure points” that must be identified and activated to discover, validate, activate, pursue, and capture these revenues, the account plan can become much more than just a “form” — it can and should be evolved into a proactive and predictable revenue generator.

In this interactive 60-minute working session, participants will select a strategic/key account and benchmark their execution of best practices that can enable account growth and revenue generation. As the model is unpacked, key areas of emphasis and discussion will include:

• Where will you look for account growth and revenue this year (value targets)? 

• Who will you need to align with to ensure you have clarity and visibility to these value targets? 

• Why do these value targets matter to your customer’s key stakeholders? 

• Why do these potential growth areas matter to you and your team (How much is it worth)? 

• What does success look like to these stakeholders, and what business outcomes do they expect? 

• How will you pursue these potential sources of revenue, and whose help will you need 

• When should you pursue these value targets, and how should you prioritize them 

• What could potentially stop you (or impede your progress) and can these obstacles be removed?

Attendees will leave the session with an understanding of the revenue-generation model for evolving account plans — to identify and prioritize focus areas of growth that can be shared and strategized with their cross-functional account team members post-conference. 

Presenters: Joe Marsh, Director, Account Management, TreviPay

Artificial intelligence (AI) is no longer a future concept; it’s a present-day differentiator in strategic account management. At last year’s conference, AI was the hot topic. This year, we’ll go beyond the buzz and explore how TreviPay has put AI into practice to streamline account management processes and empower teams and our organization to work more efficiently.

This session will highlight enterprise-level applications of AI that reduce manual effort, improve data visibility, and support more informed decision-making. We’ll share examples of how AI tools are helping account managers prioritize better, personalize client interactions, and stay ahead of client needs, without increasing workload.

We’ll share practical examples from TreviPay’s journey, including lessons learned, measurable impact, and how AI is reshaping the role of account managers in complex B2B environments.

Key takeaways:

• How AI is being used to enhance strategic account planning and execution.
• Real-world examples of AI tools improving client outcomes at TreviPay.
• Frameworks for integrating AI into account management workflows.
• The evolving role of account managers in an AI-enabled enterprise.

Presenters: Joshua Dey, SVP Global Accounts, The Summit Group; Mandie Kaminski, Director of Strategic Account Management Learning and Development Excellence, Johnson & Johnson

This interactive session highlights best practices in matrix teaming drawn from real-world strategic account collaborations within a leading pharmaceutical organization. Anchored in the Collaborative Quotient (CQ)™ framework and the 7Ds of Leading High-Performing Teams, it explores how account teams’ partner across divisions — and with key external partners — to orchestrate customer impact, influence without authority, and lead effectively across boundaries. Through live examples and shared field insights, participants gain practical ideas to strengthen alignment, collaboration, and value creation in complex account environments.

Presenters: Ed Wallace, Managing Director of Human Capital, AchieveNEXT; Grant Wallace, Inside Sales Specialist, AchieveNEXT

You’ve worked hard to develop outstanding customer relationships by being the real personal value proposition for your company’s brand. AI has emerged as a tempting short cut for various aspects of your account management work. This highly interactive breakout session based on MIT AI certification research will help you take the guesswork out of using AI and develop practical, repeatable approaches for making AI a true business partner.

Learning Objectives / Key Takeaways. By the end of this breakout, SAMs will be able to:

• Strengthen their personal brand by building and maintaining professional relationships that create a competitive edge.
• Identify when to use AI tools versus human judgment (the EYE test) to make more effective business decisions.
• Use AI effectively in day-to-day work to:
  • Address and overcome objections.
  • Support successful negotiations.
  • Demonstrate ROI with data.
  • Craft clear, persuasive messaging.
  • Streamline research and preparation.
• Create a simple, actionable AI plan to apply new skills immediately in their role.

Presenters: Khushtar Pandit, Manager, ZS; Alex Simon, Principal, ZS

AI is everywhere in the conversation, but how much of the promise is becoming real in key account management? This session takes an honest look at where AI adoption in KAM stands today, drawing on real examples and evidence from organizations putting it into practice.

We’ll explore how teams are using AI to support account planning, customer insight generation, and relationship development, and what kind of value they’re actually seeing. You’ll hear about successes, challenges, and lessons learned from early adopters who are testing the limits of what AI can do for strategic account management.

Attendees will leave with:

• A grounded view of how AI is really being used in KAM organizations.
• Examples of measurable impact (and where results are still emerging).Practical insights to guide your own AI journey
• in account management.

Join this session to separate the hype from reality, and see where AI is truly starting to make a difference in how we manage and grow strategic accounts.

Presenters: Heidi Tripp, Program Manager, Customers, Axis Communications; Kerri Sutherland, Manager, HR Business Partnerships, Axis Communications

Resilience is no longer a ‘nice to have,’ it’s a core competence needed for all. Resilient teams and individuals adapt faster, sustain performance under pressure, and emerge stronger from challenges. According to McKinsey research, resilient organizations outperform their peers during periods of uncertainty by adapting faster and recovering stronger.

This session explores the science and practice of resilience. We will examine how resilience fuels sustained success and how every person, regardless of title, can strengthen their ability to adapt, recover, and grow. Attendees will learn practical tools and strategies to cultivate resilience at the personal, team, and organizational level. 

By the end of the workshop, participants will understand the key drivers of resilience and be equipped to apply them in their daily work, strengthening their own performance and contributing to an organization-wide culture of resilience.

Learning objectives; participants will be able to: 

• Examine the importance and impact of resilience within themselves, organizations, and teams.
• Identify key drivers of resilience (mindset, adaptability, communication, support).
• Develop strategies to strengthen resilience and adaptability in themselves, accounts, and teams. 
• Connect resilience practices to their role and strategy to sustain client relationships through uncertainty.

Presenters: John Shulman, President, Alignor; Pem Shulman, Director of Strategic Relationships, Alignor 

Like it or not, we have entered the age of AI. What does that mean for you? It means procurement at your accounts is using AI tools, and not in a friendly way. AI is changing the game for procurement organizations, who are entering a fevered dream state of access to limitless information and sophisticated tools they can use to pressure suppliers — from price pressure to changing expectations on responsiveness, quality, assurance of supply, and other elements of supplier scorecards. Simply put, business as usual is no longer a viable option.

Join us for a deep dive into the world of procurement’s use of AI models and tools! Learn how accounts are using AI to increase their leverage over suppliers and drive business outcomes. Discover how you can use these insights to challenge account assumptions and influence decision-making in your favor. In this interactive, hands-on workshop, you will apply a proven framework and tools that help you overcome adversity created by account pressure from AI tools and models to find new opportunities to grow your business and deliver greater value for your organization. You will participate in realistic online simulations where you “role play” account use of AI tools to pressure you. This interactive and practical workshop is led by negotiation experts with decades of experience working with both strategic account and procurement organizations, including recent encounters with the latest AI-enabled pressure tactics. You will be able to apply the methodologies and tools from the workshop right away to overcome AI-enabled account pressure and unlock new value going forward. Objectives: 

• Understand the latest and most impactful uses of AI tools and models by procurement organizations. 

• Identify weaknesses and vulnerabilities in procurement’s use of AI tools and models.  

• Apply proven techniques to achieve objectives despite adversity created by use of AI tools and models.