Strategic Account Management

Introduction to Strategic Account Management (SAM) 

• The changing nature of sales force activity
• Definition of strategic account management 
• Differences between 'sales' and 'strategic account management'
• Competencies of strategic account managers  
• The strategic account management process 

• Account Analysis: qualifying and profiling accounts
  • Account analysis insights
  • Account analysis methods:
    • The single-factor models
    • The portfolio models
  • Important criteria for determining account profitability:
    • Computing the cost per call
    • Break-even sales volume
  • Profiling the top 10 characteristics of your SA   
  • The strategic account identification and selection software: SAMS
    • Guidelines for using SAMS
    • Interpreting the SAMS report
• Strategic account relational development model
  • Business partnership defined
  • The partnership skill set
  • The strategic account relational development model:
    • Pre-relationship stage
    • Early relationship stage
    • Mid-relationship stage
    • Partnership relationship stage
    • Synergetic relationship stage
  • Reasons for divesting partnerships
• The strategic account planning process
  • Two layers of planning
  • Prioritizing efforts
  • Important business analysis:
    • Customer analysis
    • Past business analysis
    • Competition analysis
  • Identifying opportunities
    • SWOT analysis
  • Developing account strategy
    • TOWS analysis 
  • Monitoring account performance   
    • Aligning the account plan with KPIs and metrics
    • Using a balanced scorecard to monitor overall account performance
• Account research and service management
  • Types of data needed to research accounts
  • Crafting questionnaires to identify account needs and expectations
  • The 'customer expectations benchmark' research
  • Reasons for integrating customer service in SAM
  • Harnessing actionable service leadership
  • The value of customer loyalty and Life Time Value (LTV)
  • A road map for building customer loyalty and retention