600+ attendees
30+ live, highly interactive sessions
6 outstanding keynotes
Live and on demand
Opportunity is right
in front of you.
When we polled our community in November, 99% of respondents said they had saved or repaired a customer relationship in the past 12-24 months by applying the principles of strategic account management. The companies who emerge strongest from these charged times will be those who adapt the most nimbly to their customers’ changing needs – by being easier to do business with, by rapidly adopting virtual collaboration tools and by effectively articulating and defending the value of their products and services to their most important customers.
In these turbulent times, when our success is so intimately tied to that of our most strategic customers, the SAMA community can be the guiding light that illuminates your path forward.
The 2021 SAMA Annual Conference brings together the largest virtual, cross-industry community of innovators and decision makers focused on co-creating value with strategic and key customers.
#SAMACon
Thank you to our sponsors:
“This is the first virtual conference on this scale that I have attended. Very impressed with the quality of the production and the layout of each day.”
– A 2020 Annual Conference attendee
Impactful keynotes
Leading-edge ideas from stars in their respective fields
Tiffani Bova
Growth & Innovation Evangelist, Salesforce Sales Strategist, Speaker and Author
“Growth is a Thinking Game”
Tiffani Bova
Growth & Innovation Evangelist, Salesforce Sales Strategist, Speaker and Author
Tiffani Bova is the growth and innovation evangelist at Salesforce and the author of the Wall-Street-Journal and 800-CEO-READ (now Porchlight), bestselling book GROWTH IQ: Get Smarter About the Choices that Will Make or Break Your Business. She has appeared on MSNBC, Yahoo Finance and elsewhere, and she has contributed to publications including Harvard Business Review, Forbes, Entrepreneur and Huffington Post. Prior to working with Salesforce, she was a distinguished analyst and research fellow at Gartner, where she earned accolades from the best leaders in the technology world for her cutting-edge analysis and her skill at inventing bold strategies for growth.
Arun Sharma
Professor of Marketing,
Miami Herbert Business School
“Is Your Strategic Account Program Liquid? The Relationship Between Liquidity, Performance and Resilience”
Arun Sharma
Professor of Marketing, Miami Herbert Business School
Dr. Arun Sharma is Professor of Marketing at Miami Herbert Business School at the University of Miami. He has also served as the school’s vice dean of graduate business programs and executive education, and as chairman of the Department of Marketing. He is ranked in the top 1% of marketing faculty.
Sharma’s research interests are in disruption, liquid organizations, global market trends, market structures and market strategy, and he has published over 100 journal articles.
Sharma has considerable industry experience in Disruptions, Liquid Organizations, Customer and Industry Trends, Addressing Heterogeneous Markets, Innovation Driven Firms and Country Strategies.
He has also served as a consultant to several corporations, including Accenture, Agilent Technologies, American Express, AT&T, Audi, AutoNation, Arthrex, AstraZeneca, Burger King, Boston Scientific, Citrix Systems, Coca-Cola, Conagra Brands, Ericsson, ExxonMobil, Goodyear, HP, IBM, Macy’s, MasterCard, Medtronic (Covidien), Motorola, Novartis, PayPal (Xoom), Proctor & Gamble, RCCL, Sandoz, Siemens, Sprint, Visa, Walmart, Western Union and Zimmer.
.
Ed Wallace
President, AchieveNEXT
“Create Competitor-proof Digital Relationships”
Ed Wallace
President, AchieveNEXT
Ed Wallace, President, AchieveNEXT consults with and speaks for corporations and associations across the globe with a client list that is a Who’s Who of Fortune 500 companies. He is the author of Fares to Friends, Creating Relational Capital, Business Relationships That Last, and his most recent the #1 best seller, The Relationship Engine. In addition, Ed is currently on the Executive Education faculty of Drexel’s LeBow College of Business and Villanova University’s Human Resources Master’s program.
Bill Wallace
Executive Vice President, Revenue Storm
“The Three Gears to Power Through Adversity”
Bill Wallace
Executive Vice President, Revenue Storm
Today's business environment has adversity behind every door! Yet how do some people still manage to achieve their stretch goals? Learn the three keystone habits that will have a multiplier effect. Bill Wallace will share practical ideas on how to build these habits into your daily life. You too can power through adversity to success.
Bill Wallace is a proven executive leader who has excelled in both entrepreneurial ventures as well as Fortune 100 organizations. He is known for his ability to work directly with clients to achieve significant sales performance improvements backed by his sought-after coaching and workshop facilitation style. His experience encompasses all aspects of successful sales growth, account management, and strategic marketing.
As an Executive Vice President at Revenue Storm, Bill guides clients in retooling Go-to-Market Strategies, governance, and management protocols to accelerate sales and drive sustainable revenues, as well as aligning functions enterprise-wide to support new approaches. Bill also works with clients as a Revenue Storm Consultant providing executive consulting, leadership training, and coaching for global account growth and sales opportunities.
Prior to Revenue Storm, he held roles as a President, CEO, and COO after having served in sales leadership for years.
Carmen Simon
Chief Science Officer, Corporate Visions
“The Neuroscience of Decision Making: How Business Buyers Frame Value and Make Choices”
Carmen Simon
Chief Science Officer, Corporate Visions
Carmen Simon is Chief Science Officer at Corporate Visions. A Silicon Valley entrepreneur, cognitive neuroscientist, and keynote speaker, Dr. Simon has pioneered a groundbreaking approach to creating memorable messages that are easy to process, hard to forget, and impossible to ignore―using the latest in brain science.
Dr. Simon’s most recent book, Impossible to Ignore: Create Memorable Content to Influence Decisions, has won the acclaim of publications such as Inc.com, Forbes, and Fast Company, and was selected as one of the top international books on persuasion. Dr. Simon holds two doctorates, one in instructional technology and another in cognitive psychology. She also teaches at Stanford University and speaks frequently to corporate audiences on the importance of using brain science to craft communication that is not only memorable but sparks action. After all, what’s the use of memory if people don't act on it?
“The Future of SAM - Revisited”
May 25th Keynote Panel Discussion
Moderator: Jim Ford, Chief Commercial Officer, Solecta and SAMA Chairman of the Board
Panelists:
Kaj Storbacka, Professor, Hanken School of Economics
Karen Passmore, Partner, McKinsey
Frédéric Kahn, Vice President Global Sales, Wavelength Pharmaceuticals
Why this conference is THE must-attend event
Learn from the best
Immerse yourself with live presentations, keynotes and panel discussions from cross-industry thought leaders, and then join in the conversation!
Conversations that matter
Engage in real-time conversations with speakers and 500+ fellow attendees. Go deeper and make one-on-one connections in the networking lounge!
Find the answers you need
Get real-time answers to your most burning questions during live Q&A during each session!
Retain what you learned
Can't make every session? Refresh your memory or catch something you missed by watching all sessions on demand!
Your solutions resource
New this year: Visit our highly interactive virtual exhibit hall to find solutions from our tech partners purpose-built for the work of strategic and key account management.
Networking essentials
Thanks to the latest in virtual networking technology, you will have unprecedented ability to connect with conference presenters and fellow attendees based on shared interests and challenges. For the most powerful networking experience, we encourage all attendees to take the time to complete their full attendee profile.
Three tracks to guide your conference journey and ensure maximum ROI
Critical Skills for Strategic Account Managers
Audience: SAMs – Early Career, SAM team members
An enabled, empowered SAM with the right combination of leadership traits and business acumen is an unbeatable combination. Learn what’s in the DNA of an elite account team leader and how the best SAMs and GAMs orchestrate the strategic value creation process and drive business outcomes for their customers. Sessions will cover managing teams with diverse cultural backgrounds, understanding and outwitting Procurement, using data to bring new value streams to your customer, how to win bigger (and better) deals through upstream certification and specification, and much, much more.
SAM Program Design, Structure and Management
Audience: Head of SAM Programs, Vice Presidents, Chief Sales Officers
Your SAMs don’t work in a vacuum. Without having the right management systems and processes in place to enable them, all the talent in the world won’t make a difference. Learn how the best companies make the business case for SAM, how they structure their SAM program and how they align the strategic account management initiative with their larger corporate objectives. Sessions will cover issues related to internal alignment, executive sponsorship, account selection and deselection, and many other universal SAM challenges.
SAM Talent: Recruiting, Hiring and Retaining Top People
Audience: Senior Management, SAM Program Heads, SAM Managers, HR/Learning & Development
SAMA research shows that nothing influences the success or failure of a strategic account management initiative more than the leadership capabilities of the SAM. Is your organization screening for the right traits, attracting the best candidates, and then enabling your SAMs with the technology, coaching and organizational mettle they need to thrive? Enable your SAM teams by implementing efficient global processes and smart digitalization strategies, and learn to screen for tough-to-train traits that correlate with SAM success.
Attended by companies such as:
...and many more!
Exceptional networking opportunities
While we had been optimistic about hosting an in-person conference in 2020, the safety of our attendees and staff wouldn’t allow it. So we pooled our 50+ years hosting live conferences, partnered with some amazing technology companies and put on a live, virtual conference featuring more than 30 sessions, keynotes and structured networking. Nine out of 10 attendees rated the content “very good” or “excellent.
Virtual Conference Pricing
2021Annual Conference
|
Corporate
|
Individual
|
Non-member |
| Individual | $895 | $1095 | $1295 |
| Team (4-7) - $25 off | $870 | $1070 | $1270 |
| Team (8+) - $50 off | $845 | $1045 | $1245 |
2021Annual
|
Corporate
|
Individual
|
Non-member |
| Individual | $995 | $1195 | $1395 |
| Team (4-7) - $25 off | $970 | $1170 | $1370 |
| Team (8+) - $50 off | $945 | $1145 | $1345 |
| Buy on demand | |||
ANNOUNCEMENT – A message to our 2020 Annual Conference participants
Conference sponsors:
PLATINUM
GOLD
Sponsorship
SAMA’s global audience:
6,000+ members worldwide / 6,750 email subscribers
10,700+ LinkedIn followers / 3,600 monthly website visitors
Industry events used to last a day or two. With the switch to virtual, your investment in sponsorship can stretch to infinity.
Today, we can offer more ways than ever to connect with our global community 365 days a year.
✓Videos ✓Downloadable documents ✓Photos
✓Chat-demo-meeting requests
Making connections is no longer limited to a set timeframe!
✓Podcasts ✓Webinars ✓Training ✓Symposia ✓Research
At the SAMA Annual Conference, leaders and decision makers come together to learn, network and find ideas to their greatest challenge.
Sponsorship opportunities can include:
- Virtual booths with:
- Action items
- Demo requests
- Resource downloads
- Multiple chat features
- Robust analytics
- Branded placement packages
- Gamification
- Sponsored sessions
- Year-long exposure
Contact our team to find out more about sponsoring the SAMA virtual Annual Conference and year-round opportunities.
Harvey Dunham
Managing Director of Strategy & Marketing
SAMA
Dunham@strategicaccounts.org
Linda Carlson
Customer Solutions Operations
SAMA
Carlson@strategicaccounts.org