Strategic Account Management Blog

A column in this week’s Economist magazine lists several companies taking new directions in the middle of this recession. This is recommended reading for strategic account managers and SAM executives! Cisco, a SAMA corporate member, is among those mentioned. Here.

Like many other companies, especially those that have recently recieved bailout money from U.S. taxpayers, General Motors has endured criticism for holding meetings with key customers at a resort. Earlier this week USA Today gave prominent coverage to GM hosting  its fleet customers at a Chandler, Arizona resort. (See: http://www.usatoday.com/money/autos/2009-05-06-resorts-fleet-gm_N.htm). GM says it has scaled back amenities at the meeting but insists that direct interaction with customers is still necessary to providing excellent service. A GM spokesman highlights the company’s concerns that without holding the meetings GM risks losing critical fleet customers to its competitors. On the eve our annual conference in Florida (conference activities get underway on Sunday), the Strategic Account Management Association is certainly aware of the struggles of our members in deciding whether or not to attend off-site conferences for professional development and education. In the end, every company, every team and every individual must make its own decision. But those who still choose to attend conferences would argue that off-site professional development and face-to-face meetings remain an essential business practice, even in difficult times. In the meantime, SAMA is ramping up its remote learning opportunities though the SAMA Webinar Series. More information at www.strategicaccounts.org.

During an economic recession, a lot of people go to business school, professional school, seminars, certification courses and workshops to improve their lot in the job market. Yet we have a difficult time imagining a skill set that is better suited to a recession than that of a strategic account manager (SAM). Not that SAMs are perfect. They need to hone their skills, too. But it’s hard to imagine a more in-demand skills set.  SAMs understand customer needs and how to unlock new value from existing relationships. SAMs posess the instinct and political savvy to monetize the value they see hidden in customer relationships.

IBM seems to agree, implicitly. The company recently studied the public records of 61 other companies – each with a market capitalization greater than $1.4 billion – whose stock appreciated by at least 5 percent during 2008 (a year when the S&P 500 declined by 37 percent). These companies were the winners during the downturn of 2008. IBM analyzed their strategies and derived general approaches for surviving a downturn. After reading IBM’s report (“Succeeding in the new economic environment,” IBM Institute for Business Value, www.ibm.com/iibv), we simply cannot see how these approaches can succeed without the skill that SAMs offer. IBM says that winners in the downturn do three things. They focus on value, exploit opportunity and act quickly.

The first step under “focus on value,” involves cutting costs. IBM advocates cutting entire projects or groups of projects – rather than just making modest cuts across all projects. This requires hard choices and the implementation of “no sacred cow” rule. If the project is not valuable, it goes away. How can these decisions get made without input from the SAM? IBM’s to-do list for surviving the downturn sounds like a SAM’s job description. “Being able to accurately identify where value is generated at all levels of the organization – from divisions to specific products or offerings to particular customers – is an essential first step.”

In all phases and at all levels, IBM recommends a deeper connection to customers. “A friend in need is a friend for the long term. And before considering strategies such as developing lower-cost products with fewer features, it is important to understand fully what the customer truly wants.” We could not agree more.