The world has become a much smaller place, due in large part to the widespread digital shift that transformed just about every industry. What once felt global in scope now feels distilled at national, regional, and local levels. Everything feels seemingly in the palm of your hand. But the more things change, the more they stay the same, especially in strategic account management. Year after year, we continue to hear that the number one problem SAMs face is aligning internal, organizational challenges with external objectives. And with the increase in globalization, those challenges have only been amplified. Join in as Denise Freier discusses the state and challenges of global SAM execution with Chris Deren, CEO of ClarityCX1 and Founder of ClarityES1. Learn the overarching themes that would continue to define strategic account management in 2023 and the years to come.
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Global SAM Execution With Chris Deren
DF: This episode is on Global SAM Execution. This topic has been increasingly important over the years. The phrase “it’s a small world” has become a common reality for many of our strategic accounts. Year after year, we hear that the number one challenge facing SAMs is still the internal challenge within the organization getting aligned to the same objectives. The increase in globalization has amplified that challenge. No doubt. In this episode, we’re going to discuss some of the challenges of getting the geographies and the divisions to play nice and execute consistently.
We’ll explore some of the topics like how differences in culture impact SAM execution and performance globally or what are the differences in SAMs in the US versus Europe versus AsiaPac. Certainly, we want to take a look at some of the biggest challenges and potential solutions with developing Global SAM teams, like leveraging local relationships and metrics for success.
I am so pleased to welcome our guest on this very robust topic. We have a real expert with us. Chris Deren is the CEO of ClarityCX1. They are a Salesforce ISV partner with a SAM application that’s tailored by industry. He’s also the Founder of ClarityES1, a consultancy specializing in strategic account management transformation and capability building.
Prior to his time with Clarity, Chris spent many years in sales and business development roles in the technology sector, including both software startups but also global companies such as IBM and Xerox. Having spent considerable time helping global clients make this transition to strategic account management, Chris brings a lot of knowledge and insights to the topic of Global SAM execution. Chris, let me welcome you to the show.
CD: Denise, thanks so much for that. It’s great to be with you. I’m especially excited about this topic because it is coming up quite frequently. I’m hopeful that this discussion could yield some insights, ideas and observations that might be helpful to your audience and the SAM community in general.
DF: Thank you so much. I appreciate you joining us. Let’s jump right in and get started. You have spent a lot of time with SAM teams globally so what’s top of mind for you? What are some of those things that you’ve observed that our audience might be surprised about or interested in hearing about?
CD: The first thing is that I decided to take a step back and look at this from a little bit more of a holistic level. If you go back throughout the years when it comes to Global SAM, some definable patterns have emerged in different ways. You have companies like IBM, Xerox and Hewlett Packard, who years ago pioneered the art of SAM but a lot of it started because you had big multinationals who went to their large suppliers and said, “We want to be treated as a global account.”
[bctt tweet=”The world is getting a lot smaller. When it comes to global SAM, there are as many things in common as there are differences.”]
The impetus behind that and it wasn’t, in many cases, is that they wanted better price volume, transparency and better consistent support across regions and countries. That was wave years ago. After that, what ended up happening was that those same suppliers started to look at it and say, “There are reasons why we want to initiate this ourselves.” It could be things like higher customer satisfaction, better revenues and better profitability if you coordinate Global SAM with your organization. Everybody got excited about Global SAM and decided to start deputizing and designated a lot of accounts as their global accounts and they went a little bit too far in that.
Some companies then went to a fourth wave where they realized every time you designated an account as a global account, it starts triggering a whole bunch of things that you have to do internally to get it right, everything from scale and capability building to process, models and tool development, right down to incentive comp strategies. That caused the most recent wave, which pulls back and is a little bit more selective when you go ahead and designate an account as a global account. That’s where we are as of 2022.
DF: That’s interesting because I do recall some of those challenges when you go global in all of the internal challenges you have in meeting some of those needs. As you think about the different regions and geographies, are there many differences between a US implementation or a US SAM culture, a European culture and an AsiaPac culture?
CD: Culturally, there are differences in the structure of the local markets in how companies need to go to markets with their products and services. One of the things that have surprised me, especially in the last couple of years, is how many similarities there are. What happened is that I was in workshops in the last few years where a company would invite their colleagues from Columbia to come over to Japan and sit with them for a week and talk about how they implemented strategic account management.
I assumed that folks from Japan and South Korea would not see as much relevance in what the Colombians were talking about. It was exactly the opposite. They were riveted in listening to each other in trading best practices and how they overcame certain account challenges. That brought me back to your comment when you said the world was getting a lot smaller. Both in terms of digital activity and also the global pandemic, it did cause a lot of folks to go online and start conversing with their colleagues internationally. It has broken down the walls a little bit and companies are discovering that when it comes to Global SAM. There are as many things there in common as there are differences.
DF: Is there anything that we should be watching out for in the cultures, different approaches with either SAM training or even interaction with your client?
CD: There are some cultures. I’ve spent a lot of time in Japan in the last couple of years. They’ve been slow to adapt SAM’s strategies, especially if they feel like they’ve been Westernized too much because there’s a big issue in how it adapts to the local Japanese culture and way of selling. Everything is broken down into prefectures.
It’s a very polite society, as you know and they have certain ways to build relationships solely over a long period with a very select number of senior decision-makers. If you look at how things are done in the US or other regions, it’s quite different. It’s much more rapid-fire, all team-based and makes as much progress as you can. It’s very slow and gradual in Japan so you have to adapt your SAM strategy or approach that way.
DF: It’s good to know. We have seen some of that and respect it as well in how they go differently across in covering their customers. I think about what you said about some of the internal challenges that organizations might have if they’re trying to build out a SAM program. I remember challenges when I worked at IBM of different regions and geographies conflicting because a global account may have a small regional location so it’s not that important to that local country but very important to the strategic account. Any suggestions or considerations on how to build out a global program like that facing internal and external challenges?
CD: It brings up this issue of building things from the inside out or the outside in. What I mean by that is that a lot of the operational leverage behind a successful SAM strategy, program and execution are things that are first developed internally, taken out to the market and hopefully executed well. One of the consistent learnings that we’ve seen over the years is that all of these SAM initiatives should have very solid senior leadership support. One of the things that we do to help senior leadership is we help them build a case for change.
Why is it a company adopting a Global SAM? When you get into the why, what’s most important is not what’s happening internally. It’s what the expectations are in the external customer’s mind about how they want to be treated as a global account. They have a very good sense and the end customer is getting a lot smarter in what they want to see and not see in the way a company behaves from a Global SAM perspective.
When we build these cases for change decks, you need to adapt all these internal reasons if we start with what your external customers are expecting in terms of the relationship footprint. What is their vision for where you, as a strategic supplier, can go with that relationship in the next 3 to 5 years? What is it that they want you to understand about what’s going on in their world so that you can adapt your strategy, products and services in such a way that it’s a win-win for everybody involved?
That starts the case for change and then if that’s communicated the right way internally by senior leadership, it starts to solve a number of these issues where you have these silos that get set up or an account is not deemed strategic in one region but it is in another. Once people see that this is the message from senior leadership that they’ve heard from the end customer and decided to retool and re-resource the approach to meet those needs, there are different motivations behind that if it’s done the right way.
DF: That is such an important message for keeping the client at the center of your discussion. If you have differences, yet you’re doing it from the client’s point of view, it’s easier to get to a conclusion. I’m still reminded of internal challenges. You might have to figure out how you bill or invoice globally. How do you ship appropriately? Do issues come up? Have you had clients that have experienced those kinds of challenges and had to work through them?
CD: Not everything is transferrable or relevant from one region or country to the next. Some of our larger customers built out different processes or solutions that work well for them regionally but don’t translate well if another country or region tries to pick it up and use it. This balance that has to be struck of SAM strategies that are globally consistent yet locally relevant and tolerable is one of the key ingredients from what we’ve seen, plus the leadership communication but not everything transfers appropriately.
This balance of taking the more mature markets which started down the SAM path many years ago and then you’ve got other newer emerging growth countries, as they like to call them, that have a SAM strategy that’s either new or in its early stages and it’s not built out. They have to learn from what other countries and more mature markets have done but they also have to have the right resources and tools to allow them to develop and tailor everything locally for that marketplace. It is a balance. This is why it sometimes takes years to successfully build out and execute a SAM’s strategy. It’s not an overnight thing.
DF: I imagine that those local relevant activities or metrics differ by all of the different countries that might occur in.
CD: There are going to be political and social-economic considerations. If you look at the way in the pharmaceutical industry in Brazil or the rest of Latin America, how drugs need to go to market and all the different complexities with HMOs versus supply chain strategies and large public hospitals. Each country does have to be able to raise its hand and say, “We need help in understanding what’s going on here locally.”
We understand that our colleagues in the US, Canada, Europe, AsiaPac and the Middle East have figured out how to execute some of these same programs and strategies and a good portion of it does fit. There haven’t been mechanisms for somebody to help that local country decide how to tailor things for the local marketplace but take advantage of what’s working well that is applicable and relevant from a Global SAM process or strategy perspective.
DF: In addition to maybe the geographic differences, have you found any differences in the industry? Is pharmaceutical different in executing than industrial or hospitality?
CD: I’ll take corporate banking and financial services as an example. Large corporate banks have had a setup for years based on how they do their incentive compensation programs and MBOs. There hasn’t been a lot of motivation for different relationship managers, which is a corporate bank’s term for SAM, to behave well or coordinate with their colleagues in different portions of the bank that are selling different services.
If you’re selling FX, treasury or corporate lending, typically, you don’t interface with your colleagues. It’s been that way for years. What happened in corporate banking now, forcing them down to the SAM route? Two things. First, banking services have become very much commoditized. They pretty much all do the same thing and they all cost the same amount. There has to be something else that will distinguish the value of the eyes of the customer. Here come these young cloud-based FinTechs who have introduced all of their applications and are starting to nibble around the edges of revenue and profitability and taking business away from the large corporate banks.
At the same time, you’ll have the CFO for a large multinational who’s growing very frustrated that they can’t get the 4 or 5 relationship managers at a big corporate bank to coordinate when they arrive on their doorstep. They do things like pricing bundled services, things that are much better for the end customer and they’re also in for the bank if they think about it. Their incentive compensation programs are not set up to support that behavior. That’s very unique to corporate banking, where SAM is the ultimate answer but they have several things that they got to change to get there.
DF: You brought up two very significant challenges. Incentives for sure, even outside of banking, making sure who gets paid for a global transaction where you need local help. Do they share in that? I’d like you to comment on whether you’ve seen anything work better than others. The second thing is who makes the call when there is conflict. Do we need to lean on that Global account manager to break a tie?
CD: This is bringing up an issue that you would’ve experienced in all your time with IBM because IBM is one of the several companies that ultimately got it right when it comes to appointing an account CEO. It’s somebody who creates an organization that has a structure to it where everybody is incented to work together against those common unified account goals. The measurements and the metrics are carefully monitored every month.
That starts to avoid this issue where you have people running around in these global accounts, not talking to each other or in a siloed fashion. Even in some cases, we’ve seen some industries competing with each other where they think that their brand or product should have more airtime inside the account than other views. I’m not saying it’s the answer to everything but I do think it’s one of the core strategies that we’ve seen work well. It is appointing these heads of strategic account teams and carefully monitoring progress.
DF: Is it necessary that those teams have a hardline reporting structure or do you think it could work if it’s a little bit more you report regionally yet take some direction globally? I know that’s a challenge that many of our customers are facing.
CD: We’ve seen it done both ways to varying degrees of success unless you’re talking about the largest of large accounts. I don’t think you have to mandate that there have to be hardline reporting structures. There is room for more of that dotted-line flex type of reporting.
DF: What do you think is critical to success? Is it a C-Suite backing of this? What makes something like this work?
CD: There are two things. One is senior leadership involvement, endorsement and communication around it. They were explaining the why or telling a compelling story as to why this effort is being made. I also think that in addition to things that have been around for years, like QBR’s quarterly business reviews, some companies have turned around to their most senior leader, including the chairman, CEOs and COOs.
Those who have attached account names to them will go out into the landscape and meet and have executive exchanges once or twice a year with some of the largest accounts. Even if there is an account CEO who’s running everything every month, it is important for every senior leadership to show visibility and show their face inside some of these accounts. Sometimes a combination of both is what works best.
DF: With your experience, thinking back on all of the challenges that we might face in a Global SAM program, what comes to the top of what works and maybe what some of the pitfalls were in putting something like this together?
CD: The biggest one is that if you look at the evolution of SAM as we talked about, you’ve gotten to a place where the earlier adapter countries, like the US, Western European countries, the UK and Australia, all prove that as hard work as it is, there is a major benefit in pursuing SAM strategies both for the supplier and the multinational account. However, in the 10 to 12 years since it has started to accelerate, you have all these other countries that, for different reasons, had not yet adapted SAM, were slow to adapt SAM or didn’t have the resources to do it the right way.
You have global senior leaders on the supplier side saying, “We’ve gone as far as we can before we need to have a unified Global SAM strategy.” The problem is that when you go to communicate that, the countries that have already been doing it for 10 to 15 years don’t need your help. The ones that haven’t started yet raised their hand and say, “We need all the help we can get,” are best served so that they can learn from their colleagues who have already done this well.
One common mistake to make is to try to bake the cake internally and push it out. If you announced that there’s a new international global account process and strategy and here’s what it is, you’re in danger of the mature markets ignoring it and the inventory markets not knowing how to implement it without the right help or resources. That’s where you have to slow down. One thing that we see that does work well is if you do these exchanges of best practices and ideas from country to country, especially those countries where they’ve been much more mature with it.
In the city of Chicago, years and years ago, Anderson Consulting, later Accenture, had something called the Anderson Center. They formalized international best practice sharing around account management strategies where they’d have folks from South Korea come in for a week and spend time with the Canadians. They would sit there and talk about these large global, national accounts and who’s doing what that’s working, what suggestions and best practices they have. Even then, they had the idea of doing this dissemination of best practices that worked so well.
That’s the big gotcha in all of this. There is no boil-the-ocean strategy with it. There’s no sense in trying to hunker down inside of global for 12 or 15 months, build something and then try to push it out to the local affiliate countries. It doesn’t work that way. You have to have a hybrid strategy that pulls in what’s working well across the globe for those accounts and that supplier and then figure out how to again, come up with a globally consistent yet locally development strategy where it translates well in Israel for the way that they go to market. It also translates well in Hong Kong for how they have to deal with all the political ramifications in terms of how it affects accounts. You have to have the right people who understand how to rationally these things down at the local level.
DF: Chris, you said it all in that phrase to be globally consistent and locally relevant. If we can pull our teams together sharing best practices, which is a mantra of SAMA in general for strategic account management, that could go a long way in trying to remove some of the barriers and get going forward in a global strategic account program. Any last words of wisdom before we close here?
CD: Don’t be shy to ask for help. This is a message I could put out to your corporate members. There are a lot of moving parts to this. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel. Fortunately, the good news is that there are a lot of things that we can help you see or present to you that have worked well. You don’t have to figure it out all on your own but it is a little bit of an uphill climb for some companies and you shouldn’t be shy to ask for help.
There’s a lot more that we could unpack in any one of these things that we talked about, whether it’s the internal things like incentive comp, process, skill, capability building or cultural differences and political differences across regions. There’s a lot to it. The SAMA members can help each other. We can help them but they should ask for help when they need it because there’s a lot.
DF: That’s great advice. Ask for help. Chris, this has been an extremely engaging conversation and we may have been able to talk another hour or so to deep dive into these areas. I hope we have given our audience some food for thought and the motivation to continue to strive for some seamless global execution because there is no doubt in my mind or anyone’s mind that the global customer is expecting that from our strategic suppliers. Thank you again, Chris, for your insights. I so appreciate you being here.
CD: Thank you, Denise. You are much appreciated. I’m happy to be on.
DF: For more information, please contact us at SAMA or visit the Clarity website. Thank you all for joining us and good selling.
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About Chris Deren
As the Founder and CEO of ClarityCX1, a Salesforce Industry Cloud ISV Partner, Chris brings over 30 years of international experience in building and scaling technology teams and companies. As the Chairman and Founder of Clarity Engagement Solutions, a Dublin Ireland-based firm founded in 2009 now rebranded as ClarityES1, Chris built a global client base in the Life Sciences/Pharmaceutical industry including Novartis, Bayer, Sanofi, AbbVie, BMS and Novo Nordisk. Previous roles in sales, marketing and partner management include time at IBM, Xerox, EDS, KPMG and other Fortune 100 companies.
