Wednesday, October 26  |  7:00 AM-8:15 AM

Level: All audiences

Presenter: Shakeel Bharmal, Senior Vice President, The Summit Group

Given the business and personal revolutions and revelations of the past 3 years, it’s time take a good look at how leaders of SAMs work with each other. The broad forces impacting our lives include less in-person time, and the need to re-organize how work fits into life. This has drawn attention to the fact that leaders and their SAMs need to re-evaluate how they work together to balance high performance and work-life alignment. The pressure for performance is higher than ever and SAMs (and their leaders) have more work to do than time to do it. The best and most efficient way to execute a strategy is not always known by the leader, yet they have a responsibility to help their SAMs figure out how to meet their goals. In this session, we will share some approaches and facilitate a conversation on HOW leaders and their SAMs can figure things out together. We will cover the 4 types of HOW conversations and the supporting Leader and SAM competencies that will elevate collaboration.

Wednesday, October 26  |  8:30 AM-9:30 AM

Level: All audiences

Presenter: Bill Moore, President, Industrial Profit Strategies

Supply chain disruptions during the pandemic were a wake-up call to the world and created some of the most challenging times many of us have ever seen. Just when things seemed to be improving, the invasion of Ukraine set other problems in motion that have tangential impacts on many goods and services. Couple that with increasing political tensions around the world, one thing is certain: SAMs need to be thinking many moves ahead. What are some of the tools you have at your disposal to address customer concerns?

What are some of the tactics and strategies you should have at your fingertips as you prepare for both upcoming negotiations and regular business reviews with your strategic accounts?

Join Bill Moore, President of Industrial Profit Strategies, as he tackles these questions and wrestles with current supply chain issues.

Moore brings more than three decades of experience working for an international company that facilitates in more than 80 countries and has sales locations in more than 130.

We hope this session will be full of crowd-sourced information sharing of best practices through our personal experiences.

Wednesday, October 26  |  9:45 AM-11:00 AM

Level: All audiences

Presenter: John Pineda, Partner & Director, Boston Consulting Group

In many industries, digital solutions have become a core part of the innovation, as subscription models are now essential for revenue stability. As companies shift to mainstream these new digital offers, customer-facing executives and their accounts face significant changes in how they choose to monetize these innovations. John Pineda has spent the last 10 years helping decision makers in sales, product, and pricing navigate the transition to new digital offers and pricing models. In this talk, he will cover some of the pitfalls and success factors of this shift and how that effects the value prop for customers.

Thursday, October 27  |  7:00 AM-8:15 AM

Level: All audiences

Presenter: Dave Ward, Principal, Vantage Partners

Rising inflation, geopolitical uncertainty, a looming risk of recession, and delivery challenges due to ongoing supply-chain disruptions. Today’s landscape is a pressure cooker guaranteed to create difficult conversations with many customers. During this session, we will explore how to handle tough conversations in a constructive and collaborative way — without giving in to pressure tactics.

Topics will include how to:

• Initiate challenging conversations with customers, versus waiting for them to do so.
• Combine empathy with assertiveness when confronted with unreasonable customer demands
• Best to negotiate price increases
• Use difficult conversations to strengthen relationships

Thursday, October 27  |  8:30 AM-9:30 AM

Level: All audiences

Presenter: Martyn Lewis, CEO & Founder, Market-Partners

The simple fact that buyers don’t engage with sellers until well into their buying journey is now well accepted, but the disconnect runs far deeper. In this session we will share the latest Market-Partners’ research into how customers buy. We will examine what has changed in the buying journey, including issues related to the pandemic. Based on that understanding, we will then contrast how so many traditional selling approaches are out of step with today’s buyer. We will then share a series of best practices that essentially modernize selling to harmonize with how today’s buyer is buying.

Thursday, October 27  |  9:45 AM-11:00 AM

Level: All audiences

Presenter: Danielle Matteson, Global Vice President of Strategic Accounts, AVISPL

Strategic account management organizations face a multitude of challenges, many of which can spring from missteps in the creation and evolution of the program itself. AVI-SPL has created and sustained a successful SAM program with the goal of driving long-term value with their most important customers. In this session, you will get an inside look at how to design, build, and operate a SAM program that yields award-winning results, including SAMA’s Outstanding Mature Program of the Year.

Key areas of focus include:

DESIGN:

• Create your vision: What is your North Star?
• Craft your center of excellence: What you can learn from product management

BUILD:

• Building the infrastructure (people, process & tools)
• How to translate infrastructure to client-facing features

OPERATE

• Finding the right metrics
• Keeping it alive with a product management lifecycle