CONFERENCE SCHEDULE

Presenter: Joanne Casson, Executive Client Partner, Managed Learning Services, Hemsley Fraser

Reading to the "small print," understanding culture and values, and responding in the moment can transform business prospects. This session will demonstrate how a seemingly transactional relationship can be transformed into a much larger opportunity by listening, reading between the lines and converting unconsidered needs into new business.

Learn how your ability to actively listen and interpret customer needs can open new doors with your clients and help transition your relationship from a transactional provider to a trusted strategic partner.

Presenter: Phil Styrlund, CEO, The Summit Group; James Robertson, President, The Summit Group; Dominique Côté, Owner and Founder, Cosawi, and Principal, The Summit Group; Shakeel Bharmal Senior Vice President, The Summit Group

Strategic customer management is a journey, not a destination. Even companies with formal, highly structured, well-funded and well supported SAM programs will admit that they are just scratching the surface of the potential that is embedded in the strategy. Whether your firm has been evolving its program for many years or you have ramped up your capabilities fast and are already quite sophisticated, this session is designed to focus on the challenges and best practices for programs that are already successful and are striving to become more so. New in 2020, this session is structured to maximize your opportunity to learn from SAMA’s extremely knowledgeable and diverse community of professionals. This dynamically structured framework for discussion will foster an open exchange of ideas to best leverage the collective wisdom of the group.

Presenter: Mark Shonka, Co-CEO, IMPAX Corporation

The role of a strategic account manager is complex, and there are many priorities vying for their time, attention and expertise. They need support and coaching to maximize their effectiveness and impact. Although this coaching can be done by many in our organizations, not everyone is equipped to provide the level of coaching necessary. This session is designed to provide these coaches with insights and strategies they can use to improve their ability to support your SAMs.

In this session, you will learn about:

• Optimal opportunities for coaching
• Challenges to coaching and how to overcome them
• Coaching strategies and techniques

Presenter: Craig Jones, Managing Director, Performance Methods, Inc. (PMI); Marc Warrington, Senior Vice President, Group Distribution Sun Life Financial U.S.

This session will be a facilitated panel discussion featuring expert panelists representing various industries to discuss why, how and when to engage the customer in the account planning process.

Participants will gain insights and learn proven best practices from the panelists specifically focused on:

• Determining the appropriate resources to prepare for collaborative account planning with your customer
• Identifying and prioritizing potential target areas with your customer for mutual value co-creation
• Brainstorming and strategizing to determine the best approach to drive mutual value co-creation with your customer
• Developing and executing action plans to pursue targets for mutual value co-creation and account growth
• Assessing and measuring progress based on mutually agreed upon metrics and success criteria

Craig Jones will facilitate the discussion and introduce an approach developed within the SAMA community to collaborate and drive customer engagement with the account planning process.

Participants will have the opportunity to assess their own engagement of customers and determine the ideal fit for account selection in the collaborative planning process.

Presenters: David Ivester, VP Global Accounts and Projects, Emerson Automation Solutions; Steve Smith, Senior Sales Consultant, Sales Performance International

This session details how Emerson embarked on a successful strategic site-planning journey in close collaboration with Sales Performance International (SPI) and, by doing so, formed a sustaining foundation for co-creation of value with customers, continuous improvement and the ongoing governance of strategic accounts.

Customer focus is one of Emerson’s core values, and leadership drives employees to continuously focus on enabling the customer’s business success. Strategic account management is one significant initiative used to support this endeavor. In a complex matrixed organization, it is essential to collaborate and organize around the way the customer is organized. Subjects covered during this presentation include:

• An overview of Emerson’s strategic accounts program and the tightly coupled strategic site-planning program for operating sites critical to a strategic account. Leading the development and execution of the plan, strategies and team for each respective site is the site team leader, whose development, alignment and collaboration with the strategic account leader is critical to mutually beneficial success for the customer and Emerson.
• Program process, content, and technology tool design and development evolution along with a multi-modality implementation method that helped to address and accelerate required cultural and behavioral changes.
• Finally, a discussion of management sponsorship, plan review cadence, ROI and successes will be covered. At the conclusion of the presentation, participants will leave with a unique perspective of the challenges and successes inherent in designing and implementing combined strategic and site account planning programs in a highly matrixed global sales organization.

Presenter: Bill Wallace, Executive Vice President, Revenue Storm

Mental toughness is the ability to perform towards the upper range of your talent and skills, regardless of the circumstances. But how do you keep your head on straight during an ongoing pandemic? No one wants to read the word “unprecedented” one more time. The world is unrelenting in demanding we focus on the struggle instead of the opportunity. It is time to get some relief and get back to business. So what's the secret of those who thrive in unknown territory like this? What are the practices that allow them to succeed with an unwavering focus? In this session, we will discuss how to mentally thrive during chaotic times and will also cover key concepts to keep you focused on your goals.

An open, free-flowing exchange between buy-side and sell-side about the future, including topics like:

• How are priorities evolving for Procurement, and what does this mean for strategic account managers?
• How will digital transformation impact customer-supplier partnerships?
• When and to what extent do we plan to go back to F2F interactions?

Please come prepared to share and learn!

Join Tim Riesterer, co-author of The Expansion Sale and Ken Powell, Chief Commercial Officer at OSG for a timely discussion about keeping and strengthening your key customer relationships. Are you concerned that your customers might be considering switching? Are there new pressures and new decision makers putting you at risk? Do you know how to protect and leverage your incumbent advantage? Share stories and practices and generate new ideas on maintaining and expanding key relationships.

Jerry Alderman, President of Valkre, will lead this conversation, highlighting practical experiences by SAMA member companies on how they are using technology in this new virtual world. Topics include: Using Account Plans virtually with Customers, Internal Alignment, Account-Based Marketing, Quantifying Customer Outcomes and Integrating the SAMs work with the rest of the organization.

Presenters: Steve Andersen, President and Founder, Performance Methods, Inc.; Dino Bertani, Executive Director, International Strategic Account Management,  Allergan Aesthetics; Myla Maloney, Vice President, Strategic Accounts, Applied Sciences, Premier Inc.  

This session will be a facilitated panel discussion featuring two expert panelists representing pharma/life sciences and manufacturing/technology. Steve Andersen will introduce a tool that PMI has developed from within the SAMA community that provides participants with a model of what great account planning looks like. The session will begin with participants conducting a self-assessment of their own implementations of strategic account planning. Following this assessment, a discussion will be facilitated using the “Great Account Planning” (GAP) model in which the guest panelists will provide insights regarding:

• How their organizations have implemented GAP best practices
• Their experiences and lessons learned in implementing GAP best practices
• Tips on how to get GAP journeys to be “best in class”
• Where they’ve seen the highest returns and the most significant challenges in pursuit of GAP

Specific areas of emphasis will include:

• Culture and leadership to support SAM
• SAM program infrastructure and organization
• Internal alignment and team collaboration
• Growing and leveraging strategic customer relationships
• Value co-discovery and co-creation
• SAM metrics, incentives and recognition
• SAM sponsorship, coaching and adoption

The session will close with participants being challenged to select two GAP categories during which they will proactively seek to drive improvement within their organization and/or account team in 2021.

Presenters: James Robertson, President, The Summit Group; Dominique Côté, Owner and Founder, Cosawi, and Principal, The Summit Group

Congratulations! You’ve just been given charge to lead your company’s SAM program! Where and how do you begin, show results fast and sustain change? Explore a next-practice blueprint and roadmap to accelerate and sustain the impact of new (and revitalized) SAM programs–including lessons learned from leading companies (across industries) as they look back on their SAM journey.

Presenter: Michael Thomas, Principal, Magnetic Consulting; Harvey Dunham, Managing Director, Strategy and Marketing, SAMA; Bill Bardsley, Food and Beverage Segment Director, Schneider Electric; Jeff Raber, Head of Strategic Accounts, Aggreko; Colin Passey, Vice President, DP DHL

Healthy sales teams need capable, experienced resources as well as the ability to provide relevant career growth opportunities for their existing staff. It’s no surprise that using SAMs in a “Player/Coach” role is an idea many organizations evaluate. In general, this leverages SAMs beyond their individual account management roles and extends them additional responsibilities across teams, such as business support, deal and opportunity guidance, and peer-coaching duties. The benefits of helping teams scale without added headcount, as well as bringing new professional challenges to experienced SAMs, are obviously attractive. However, there are very real complexities and issues that need to be addressed in order to make these roles successful.

In this facilitated session we will review real-world feedback and examples of how Player/Coach SAMs can be effective additions to sales teams. We will also draw upon the audience’s experiences and inputs to drive honest conversations about the issues and challenges of executing properly so that SAMs are not put in positions where success is unlikely.

Attendees will leave with a better understanding of approaches toward Player/Coach roles that could be applied in their own SAM organizations, best practices for successful alignment and execution, and specific feedback on potential risks and lessons learned to lower risks and improve effectiveness. Ultimately, a better picture will result of creating the right environment for satisfaction and growth for all stakeholders involved in a Player/Coach structured team.

Presenter: Dan Kosch, Co-CEO, IMPAX Corporation

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

In this session, you will learn how to:

• Efficiently understand your customer’s business direction 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 such a customer-focused way that you are perceived as a credible business resource and not a vendor.

Presenter: Carrie Welles, Partner, 5600 blue; Brian Dietmeyer, CEO, 5600 blue

Digitally enabled buyers are diagnosing their own needs, prescribing their own solutions and are 70 percent through their buying journey before engaging their supplier. Sadly, they also rank their supplier representative ninth out of 10 places they go for insight. Customers are moving through their buying process without your SAM. Yet, year after year, we continue to refresh our same, stale, complicated approach to sales enablement that revolves around sales process when we should be redefining it based on our buyer’s journey instead. In fact, 90 percent of content produced by marketing is not even being used.

This session explores how SAM leaders should think differently about a fresh approach to sales enablement with a focus on the buyer journey. We will share how to develop a roadmap for content and tools that give new buyers a reason to engage with the SAM at every step of their journey. Join us in this practical session to learn a cleaner, more effective and efficient approach to enabling your SAMs. This session’s objectives are to share a modern approach to buyer-focused content and tools strategy; to understand how to leverage buyer-focused content and tools as competitive weapons one opportunity at a time; and to provide templates to map relevant content for each stage of the buyer journey.

Presenters: Ron Davis, EVP, Global Head of Customer Management, Zurich Insurance; Lisa Maggiore, Vice President Global Strategic Account Management and Intermediary Group Sales, Hilton Worldwide; John Gardner, President Global Strategic Accounts (retired), Emerson Automation Solutions; Jonathan Hughes, Partner, Vantage Partners

The more knowledgeable SAMs are about the realities of successful negotiation, the more effective they will be in leading their teams in pursuing the right tactics at the right time to achieve the best possible outcome. This session will address myths and realities of negotiation.

We’re all operating in a competitive world where customers have options as to which companies to partner with. Strategic account management aims to deliver differentiated solutions and innovation to customers through closer collaboration. SAMs have to navigate among the key stakeholders at a customer, which includes identifying who they are and determining how to access them. The customer decision-making process can be complicated, and the more you know about the players and their motivations, the better equipped you can be to engage and negotiate with them.

There’s an art and science to creating an effective strategy and tactics, and central to this is understanding how principles of negotiation can work. The panelists in this session will share their experiences and insights on negotiation, lessons learned and best practices to achieve the best outcomes. We’ll also share highlights from recent research completed by Vantage on buying and selling behaviors, as well as negotiation lessons from their work with the U.S. Army and Navy SEALs.

In a business world characterized by the impact of a global pandemic and fierce global competition and account demands, an organization needs strong and well-founded signals that indicate when key objectives are being met or when trouble is on the horizon. While sales numbers, usually defined as revenue increases, are critical measurements, there are additional Key Performance Indicators (metrics) to consider that give valuable insights to help predict the probability of both the Account and the Strategic Supplier achieving or not achieving their business objectives.

We will frame three topics and hold breakouts for discussions. Groups will reconvene with thoughts on these topics:

1. Voice of Account Feedback; Right/actionable data that determine committed relationships

2. Account/Strategic Supplier Business Metrics; What is driving and influencing mutual actions

3. Joint Scorecards that Validate Mutual Economic Value, ROI for Account and Strategic Supplier

A continuation of today’s keynote panel discussion with open Q&A around the external pressures causing companies to scrutinize their SAM programs. This discussion will continue with your questions and comments on how these factors will impact the future of the program and, ultimately, the customer.

In America, people are calling the 2020 election the most consequential in the last century.  The rest of the world just wants it to be done.  On November 10, hopefully, a winner will have been declared.  We will discuss the legal issues around the election outcome and what it means for how America will be governed.  What policy changes are expected and how will they impact business in the next 4 years.  How can you help your customers prepare for the next 4 years?

The priorities and buying processes of large healthcare providers and payers in the U.S. have been evolving for a number of years, but perhaps never so rapidly as during the current pandemic. COVID has both accelerated and reshaped these trends, creating challenges but also unique opportunities for Pharma and Medtech KAMs. In fact, in many ways KAM in Life Sciences has never been more important.

In this interactive session, the session facilitators will set the stage by sharing new research on healthcare system trends. They will then facilitate a discussion amongst the meeting participants to discuss what the group is seeing and the implications for KAMs in Life Sciences. Summary results from a recent roundtable of Life Sciences KAM leaders in Pharma will also be shared.

COVID-19 has created both challenges and opportunities for those in learning and development.  Most of your company's strategic accounts are in a state of uncertainty.  If your SAMs can bring them insights that provide clarity on the way forward, a quick ROI and hope, the growth of your company will follow. Remember, as many past studies have pointed out: most market share is won or lost in the immediate aftermath of a crisis.  Will your company be a winner or a loser in the epic market- share battle to come? This roundtable is designed to provide an opportunity for anyone concerned about how to pivot and thrive coming out of the pandemic. The discussion will include: 

• What is the role of the SAM during times of change?  
• What SAM qualities and/or competencies are imperative given the forced virtual environment?
• How has your training and development shifted during the pandemic?
• What has proven to be effective in your organization?

SAMA initiated an ongoing, select group of the “best and brightest” SAM Leaders in the SAMA community to openly discuss the biggest challenges and opportunities we face in SAM. We will introduce the "experts" and share the outcome of the first meeting, continuing the conversation on key challenges facing strategic account management.

Discussion questions will focus on SAM and SAM skills needed in 3-5 years, including:

• How do you imagine your SAM program in 5 years?
• How does SAM have a bigger voice in an organization?
• How do you develop the right interpersonal skills to ask the right questions and really get to know your customers?
• TRUST, in this day and age of virtual meetings, how do you build trust?

The successful SAMs will be the ones able to convince and win TRUST. The role of the SAM should be the liaison of the customer in terms of what the customer needs.

Presenters: Phil Styrlund, CEO, The Summit Group; Shakeel Bharmal, Senior Vice President, The Summit Group
Panelists: Dean Mills, Vice President Sales & Marketing, North America, TForce Logistics; David Pyle, Senior VP Enterprise Dealer and Mobility Sales, Cox Automotive; Jacquie Boyer, Vice President, Global OEM Sales, Donaldson Company

Co-creation is an overused term, whose meaning varies in both the minds of customers and our own organizations. Panelists will share perspectives on what “co-creation” really means and discuss the reality of what it takes to truly drive it with top customers. Examples will be shared of segmentation, engagement strategies and tactics that have worked and those that have not, along with the critical importance of alignment, deep understanding of each others’ capabilities, initiative prioritization and shared commitment to co-creation. We will also share a proven framework for helping ensure the customer and our own organizations are engaged, clear on the business case and willing to create innovative solutions together.

Presenter: Hajo Rapp, SVP Strategic Account Management & Sales Excellence, TÜV SÜD AG

Innovations need to be sold twice: first to the sales community and then to the customer. This session draws a picture of the specific environment of selling new offerings based on scientific research as well as practical experiences. It will cover complex decision structures and resistance in customer buying centers, fears and resistance within the sales force and the steps that need to be gone. Based on that transparency we will see and discuss measures for success, the SAM role in executive relations and co-creation, and how SAM can bridge the gap from service development to global sales/commercialization of services across all customer segments.

Presenter: Michael Thomas, Principal, Magnetic Consulting

The concept of a SAM being the “CEO of their own business” is a frequent idea within mature sales organizations. Senior management may be looking to get more business-driven behaviors from their SAMs. Other times they hope SAMs will act with more entrepreneurial agility, counteracting slow internal process or decision cycles. The question remains: Can, and should, organizations attempt to shift SAMs towards a CEO mindset? If so, how can you get there successfully?

In this session we explore the motivations behind the concept and the behaviors senior management hopes to drive. We will discuss the ability of SAMs to stretch into a CEO mindset, both through necessary skills as well as the personality-type expectations. Additionally, we’ll look at a framework for helping SAMs gain a basic understanding of the way CEOs might view the world and simple tools for communicating more like senior business leaders and less like account managers. Participants will leave with a better understanding of the root causes behind the idea, the desired behaviors and the practical challenges in addressing this type of transformation at an organizational level.

Presenter: Kurt Shaver, Chief Sales Officer & Co-Founder, Vengreso

The Internet has brought about sweeping changes in products (e.g. RING doorbell), services (e.g. Amazon) and business models (e.g. Uber). Have your SAM skills kept pace to compete in the digital economy? Sure, you use email and the web every day, but have you built a strong personal brand online? Have you mastered advanced social selling skills? Are you leveraging personal video to differentiate yourself in a noisy marketplace? Digital sales expert Kurt Shaver will explain the top digital sales strategies for 2020 and how you can capitalize on them.

Presenter: Vito Cafagna, Corporate Account Manager, Sonoco; Adrian Davis, President, Whetstone Inc.

Join us for this interactive session where Adrian Davis, President, Whetstone Inc., interviews Vito Cafagna, Corporate Account Manager, Sonoco, regarding his years of experience as a successful SAM.

We’ll explore topics such as selling internally, team alignment, proactively managing your account and avoiding RFPs, rebuilding broken customer relationships, and leveraging executive sponsorship. We’ll also provide time for you to get your questions answered regarding real-life SAM experiences.

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

SAM teams and their organizations need a roadmap to guide their SAM programs and related internal/external efforts. A SAM playbook is that definitive roadmap that transforms concepts into action. Historically, SAM teams and programs have participated in what might be referred to as spot training: training that addresses a specific need, e.g. planning, getting to the C-suite, delivering value. These trainings often do not institutionalize SAM practices across the organization.

How do we align our entire organization with that of our customers on our overall SAM program to enable optimum mutual goal achievement? The SAM playbook is that resource to draw upon to enable an organization to effectively socialize, adopt and execute the right cadence of activities within your SAM system. It serves as the resource for becoming a more customer-centric organization. The playbook begins the journey of becoming “best-in-class” separating your SAM program from other like suppliers.

Key learning points will include:

• The critical components of a SAM playbook
• The value and utilization of this resource – how to operationalize your SAM program
• Recommendations for socializing your SAM program; gaining executive support and alignment
• A SAM charter document
• Sample playbooks with case studies of their use within an organization
• What to do and not to do when creating and launching a playbook.