Executing a Strategic Account Management (SAM) Program Diagnostic Assessment; Tuning up Your Program!

By: Dennis Chapman Sr., President and CEO, The Chapman Group

What is the next critical action that you need to take in order to retain and develop your most important strategic accounts?

We all need to know before it’s too late!

Diagnostics Influence Next “Best Actions”

The world around us is filled with valuable examples of the importance of ongoing and timely assessments and servicing. A few examples include:

1.  Timely medical check-ups

2.  Proper interval car servicing

3. Airplane preventive maintenance

4. Life and health insurance policy check-ups

5. Soil evaluation for farming and gardening

Strategic account management programs are no different; they also need timely evaluation and tune-ups! There are at least six standard components of any strategic account management program that must be working in sync with one another and always firing on all cylinders. These include:

• Process

• Infrastructure (people resources)

• Methodology

• Knowledge Management

• Skills

• Performance metrics

What do accounts really mean by their actions and words and how can we sell to them?

By: John Cangiano, Senior Partner, The Chapman Group

Let’s introduce a scenario that I’m sure we’ve all found ourselves in. You leave a prospect or one of your accounts feeling good based on the conversation you had with them.  You are anticipating a deal, new business, a saved account, or something positive, and then it all falls through.  What you heard may not be what the buyer or client was in fact communicating to you.  So how do you know what a buyer really means by their actions and words?  One thing we can do is gain a better understanding of the language of the senses - - Visual, Auditory, and Kinesthetic.  We may not be able to actually transit ourselves into someone’s mind to truly understand what they are telling us, but there is a science related to the language of the senses. 

In an attempt to provide you with a top line overview I will give you the basics and hope that you, as a professional sales person, will do further research to better appreciate and understand what I refer to as the “science of language and communication”. 

The first and foremost critical key is to ensure that you are “actively listening”.  I know you are listening, but are you “actively listening” to the customer or prospect and determining their language style?  Let’s review the three key senses unique to each individual to better help us understand what their words really mean.

First, there are visual people.  These individuals describe what they mean through a visual sense.  They require proof based on visual data to get a more detailed insight prior to making a decision.  Visual people often use words or phrases such as, clarification, insight, focus, show me, can I see, or I need a clearer understanding. 

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Is It Time To See If You Have The Right SAM’s?

By: Carl Schwartz, Senior Partner, The Chapman Group

Have you ever asked yourself if you have the right people working for your strategic account management team? The answer to this question can be found when you assess your team within the context of the three following critical success criteria:

1. Skills

2. Expectations

3. Aptitude

People and organizations succeed or fail as a result of one of the aforementioned criteria. Success can be attained with the right skills, expectations, and required aptitude. Studies have shown that more than 60% of the time people fail due to lack of clear expectations. These expectations usually should be set by their managers and the organization itself. People fail approximately 30% of the time due to not having the right skills to perform their mission ably. The least common reason for failure, less than 10%, is not having the proper aptitude.

Is it Reasonable to have Loyal Strategic (SAM) Accounts?

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By: Al Sneddon, Director of Sales, The Chapman Group

That question may be more appropriately put, “What are you doing to insure that you have loyal SAM accounts?” One thing that we know is that the single most predictive indicator of a company’s future growth is the level of attachment that your customers have towards you. Your SAM accounts need to have an emotional attachment to you and your company.

If you believe that it is reasonable to have loyal SAM accounts, the first question to be asked is what metrics and measurements are in place to assess that loyalty? Is account loyalty a priority for your teams? Are Key Performance Indicators in place for your organization and the account? Without the use of these metrics it may be challenging to have loyal accounts.

Asking “Are they satisfied?” is probably the single most asked question by sales teams of their accounts. “Are they satisfied?”, however, is only the beginning measurement. What you really want to know is, “Are they loyal?” You might be wondering why this is the case. This is because we know that loyal customers buy more of our products and services and typically at a higher margin. This is because they have an emotional attachment and view the relationship as something more than just supplier and vendor. They need and want us to be successful side by side with them.

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