Disrupting to Transform: How Wajax collaborated with SAMA to evolve a
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VELOCIT Y ®
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O-I
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SAMA BOARD OF DIRECTORS
Dr. Michael Ahearne Professor of Marketing and C.T. Bauer Chair, Bauer College of Business, EMEA University of Houston
Steve Andersen President and Founder PMI
Dino Bertani Vice President of Alliance Management Zealand Pharma
Noel Capon
R.C. Kopf Professor of International Marketing Columbia Business School
Jim Ford
Operating Partner
True North Venture Partners Chairman of the SAMA Board
Eric Gantier
President, Global Engineering, Manufacturing & Energy DHL Customer Solutions and Innovation (CSI)
*Dominique Côté CEO and Founder Cosawi
Denise Juliano
Group Vice President, Life Sciences Premier Inc.
Renae Leary Chief Commercial Officer –Americas Ansell
Christine Marsh Senior Vice President Boehringer Ingelheim
Shawn Parker
Executive Director, Strategic Account Management & Corporate Group Sales Hilton
Namita Powers Principal ZS Associates
Dr. Hajo Rapp, Ph.D. SVP and Global Head of Cybersecurity Sales TÜV SÜD AG
*Ron Davis Retired - Executive Vice President, Head of Customer Management Zurich Insurance Group
*Distinguished Board Advisors (lifetime contributors; non-voting members)
Mary V. Ruiz CEO & Co-Founder MHAYA.ai
Jennifer Stanley Partner McKinsey & Company
Sara Theis
Key Account Manager, Composites Nonwovens Owens Corning
Max Walker
Principal The Summit Group
Brad Weintraub
Senior Vice President, Global Strategic Accounts Program AVI SPL
SPECIAL THANKS TO SAMA’S PROVIDERS
*Rosemary Heneghan
Retired - Director, International Sales & Operations, Worldwide IBM
Publisher: Gordon Galzerano
Editor-in-Chief: Nic Halverson
Editor: Harvey Dunham
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Advertising: Ashley Davis
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SAMA 2025 EVENTS
EDITOR’S CORNER
Nic Halverson Editor-in-Chief Strategic Account Management Association (SAMA)
The relationship between theory and execution in the world of strategic account management (SAM) often reminds me of the two influential years I lived central Missouri, the “ShowMe State.” I ran with a colorful crew that truly spanned the socioeconomic gamut, from tenured college professors and civil rights lawyers to ragtag musicians and salty dirt car racers. Highbrow or lowbrow, these folks all possessed a quintessential Missouri trait: pragmatic skepticism that demanded proof.
Legend has it that Missouri got its nickname from U.S. Congressman Willard Duncan Vandiver, who said in an 1899 speech, “Frothy eloquence neither convinces nor satisfies me. I am from Missouri. You have got to show me.”
Although my Missouri stint was short, I like to think that I absorbed enough of that “show-me” swagger to adopt its authority and apply it to my own better judgment. In that tradition, this issue of Velocity is ingrained with a “show-me” spirit that demonstrates excellence in SAM and proves its value, starting with Zealand Pharma’s Dino Bertani, who goes “Beyond the Numbers” and behind the scenes of a 2025 SAMA Annual Conference session to consult life-science leaders on why “today’s CFOs want to see hard evidence that people development pays back.”
In “A Blueprint for Excellence,” senior leaders from TÜV SÜD, 2025 SAMA Excellence Award winner for Outstanding Mature Program of the Year, show why their “strategic and key accounts have achieved a compound annual growth rate significantly above organic company growth.” No frothy eloquence here. Just cold, hard proof that SAM drives growth.
Next, in “Disrupting to Transform,” André Dubé, Senior Vice President of Sales and Operations at Wajax, details how his company collaborated with SAMA to evolve their legacy business model and achieve breakthrough success. In this
fascinating use case of what good looks like, Dubé makes an airtight case for building a SAM program and provides excellent examples of co-creation.
On the flip side, Bill Dwoinen, Chief Revenue Officer at Mural, outlines “The Hidden Costs of Disconnected Teams” and the consequences of go-to-market (GTM) teams falling out of sync. Drawing on Mural’s “GTM Alignment Gap” research, Dwoinen breaks down the true impact of this rift and explores actionable strategies to bridge it.
Any organization struggling with discord and division would be wise to imitate UL Solutions, 2025 SAMA Excellence Award winner for Outstanding Young Program of the Year. In their article “From Vision to Impact,” you’ll see how aligned they are in building a world-class SAM program where “metrics weren’t just numbers; they served as proof that the program was effective, confirming the value of the investment in its people, processes, and technology.”
It's fall, which means football season. Lots of X’s and O’s being drawn up for a game plan on the final push. Same goes for the SAM community, as we head into Q4. Thankfully, SAM veteran Shakeel Bharmal, Senior Vice President and Head of Leadership Coaching at The Summit Group, is on our sideline, and he’s equipped with “The SAM Leader’s Playbook: Competencies that drive strategic account success.” He even reveals a new competency framework for SAM leaders to “remove barriers, guide effective behaviors, and drive outcomes.”
Whether it’s the evidence-driven mindset of the “Show-Me State,” gridiron strategies, or playbooks for SAM leaders, all require the fundamental target of going deep(er). To close out this issue, that’s the exact route Keshini Masani (Principal & Mindset Coach) and Janti Masani (CEO & Founder) of CXO IMPACT have designed for the line of scrimmage. Their article “Learning How to Listen Louder” drops back in the pocket to outfit you with a “deeper understanding of customer needs and wants” by presenting insights on how active listening “can turn a businessperson who is a good listener into a great listener.”
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RECENTERING SAM AS A STRATEGIC PRIORITY
Namita Powers, Principal at ZS Associates, recently shined a light on some hard truths about key account management (KAM) in the pharmaceutical industry. Citing new ZS research, she pointed out that “despite years of investment and progress, most KAM programs are underperforming — not because the model is flawed, but because expectations are misaligned.”
Powers added: “Nearly 70% of KAM programs are at risk of being deprioritized or sidelined. Executive leaders often view KAM through a sales lens, expecting short-term returns from a long-term model. KAM leaders are spending more time proving impact internally than generating impact externally. The metrics that matter — those that reflect mutual value — are often not tracked at all.”
Despite that rather gloomy prognosis, this statement really stood out: It’s not because the model is flawed, but because expectations are misaligned . Amen! Carve it in stone.
For organizations that are in sync and have “well-aligned, designed, and executed KAM strategies,” the forecast is a bit brighter. Powers noted that these KAM programs experience “50%+ faster growth in KAM-covered accounts, 2x increase in the number of clinical trials for a new medical/commercial program, [and] 3x growth rate after key partnership projects, [plus] clear preference signals from customers and stronger launch performance.”
This just goes to show that when expectations are aligned — when the silos are broken down and there’s harmony between departments — good things happen. Fortunately, these positive outcomes (and more) are well documented in “Transformative Healthcare Partnerships: Key account management in action,” a new batch of ZS research that includes four distinct case studies — including both new and established KAM programs — that demonstrate the positive returns on investing in KAM.
Powers coauthored the research with Alex Simon, Principal at ZS, and Amelia Summerell, Manager at ZS. Together, they extracted four key takeaways that should be made into neon
signs and hung on the wall of every organization building a KAM program:
Programmatic investment . Effective KAM requires more than a capable individual. It demands a coordinated, enterprise-wide program. Start by evaluating the full landscape of your key account initiatives, then commit to a roadmap that ensures consistent long-term development.
Strategic intent. Anchor KAM efforts in broader brand and business priorities to avoid drift or disconnect. Build deliberate bridges between commercial and medical teams to create unified, forward-leaning customer engagement.
HQ infrastructure. Invest in the backbone that supports scalable KAM — from B2B marketing engines to cross-functional solution delivery. Legal and compliance shouldn’t be an afterthought. Embed them early in the center of excellence and include them in KAM conferences to deepen alignment.
Executive engagement. Your executive team can be your biggest KAM accelerator — or obstacle. Equip leaders with clarity on which metrics matter and when to expect results so they champion the
QUICK TAKES
journey instead of questioning the destination.
One case study highlighted a small pharmaceutical company, focused on rare diseases, that launched a KAM program to address the complex product and patient journey. Their goal was to build strategic partnerships that “improve patient access, optimize care pathways, and drive sustainable growth.” To enhance internal coordination and establish a more customer-centric approach, the company created a customer engagement process and implemented account-planning tools. They also “established KAM performance metrics based on leading and lagging indicators and VOC feedback” which was “visualized through key performance indicator scorecards.”
And the results? They speak for themselves:
• 50% faster growth achieved by target KAM compared to large non-KAM over two years
• 60% growth for a new rare disease product in KAM, compared to 30% in non-KAM 1.5 years post launch
• 26% quarterly growth in high-engagement accounts compared to 19% in other accounts during 2023
• 50% selected the client as preferred manufacturer, ahead of the next competitor at 30%
Value is proven through outcomes — period. While this applies to almost all areas of life, it’s especially true these days for organizations that are building or have established SAM/KAM programs. With the marketplace in flux and geopolitical headwinds threatening to keep it that way for the foreseeable future, SAM/KAM programs are under constant scrutiny. But if the outcomes validate the investment, and buy-in is a universal mindset, lift-off is achievable.
“We believe KAM is an organizationwide business strategy, not just a role,” the ZS authors wrote. “Demonstrating and communicating the impact of KAM is essential for sustained investment and focus from executive leaders.” n
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MIND THE GAP
As the graphs on the next page show, 33% of decision-makers say co-creating a go-to-market (GTM) strategy with other teams — sales, marketing, and R&D — would improve alignment. However, only 17% of non-decision-makers agree. This nearly 2:1 disparity, from Mural’s recent study, The GTM Alignment Gap: Why Teams Fall Out of Sync and What to Do
About It , is a revealing split and a warning signal. If senior leadership see joint planning as a solution and frontliners don’t think it helps — or worse, they don’t feel invited — the disconnect isn’t just at the strategic level. It might be cultural.
This highlights a hidden discord, not about alignment itself, but how it’s built. As the study states, “these disconnects aren't just minor friction points; they can lead to significant financial losses, stalled growth, and a fragmented, frustrating customer experience.”
Fortunately, the article “The Hidden Costs of Disconnected Teams” (on page 33) dives deeper into Mural’s study to unpack the consequences of the GTM alignment gap and, more importantly, shares practical strategies on how to close the gap.
What would help you better align with your go-to-market teams?
CO-CREATING OUR GO-TO-MARKET STRATEGY & MOTIONS TOGETHER WITH OTHER TEAMS.
UNDERSTANDING KEY MOMENTS TO COLLABORATE WITH MY GO-TO-MARKET TEAMS. CREATING A PROCESS TO COLLABORATE CROSSFUNCTIONALLY.
There is nothing artificial about intelligence generated directly from your most important human relationships.
PEOPLE
Elevate the skills of the team & more effectively connect to your customer
PROCESS INSIGHTS
Predictable, repeatable & measurable customercentric SAM engagement methods & practices
Voice of the Customer feedback with actionable insights
“Building a good customer experience does not happen by accident. It happens by design.”
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Dedicated Experts to support your account engagement efforts
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BEYOND THE NUMBERS
How three global life-science companies are hiring, developing, and retaining world-class SAM talent
By Dino Bertani Vice President of Alliance Management Zealand Pharma
When delegates gathered to attend the fully packed Session #215 — Hiring, Developing, and Retaining SAM Talent — at the 2025 SAMA Annual Conference in Orlando, Florida, two questions loomed large:
1. Are we investing wisely in strategic account management (SAM) capability?
2. How do we keep the people who actually deliver that capability?
To unpack those questions, I invited four colleagues who, between them, oversee the learning agendas of tens of thousands of customer-facing employees:
• Mandie Kaminski — Director of Account Management Learning Excellence at Johnson & Johnson Innovative Medicines
• Varetta Manlove — A ssociate Director of Market Access & Customer Engagement Training at Eisai Inc.
• Malaea Seleski — Director of Marketplace & Account Management Training at Boehringer Ingelheim, USA
• Hemant Shetty — Global Lead of SAM Capability at Boehringer Ingelheim, Germany
For over 75 minutes the panel delivered a master class on the three pillars of SAM talent strategy: proving the return on training, defining the modern SAM skill set, and building career paths that convince high performers to stay. What follows is a consolidated narrative of that discussion, enriched with live-poll data and audience Q&A.
Proving the ROI of SAM training — beyond pure dollars
All four panelists acknowledged that today’s CFOs want to see hard evidence that people development pays back. Yet, as Malaea Seleski reminded us, “Legal literally told me: ‘Don’t talk about money.’ We had to find other lenses first.”
Those “other lenses” formed a three-layer ROI chain that resonated strongly with the audience:
1. Behavior changes in the SAM — A re account managers using new tools, new language, and new planning disciplines? How do KAMs display newly learned skills?
2. Behavior changes in the customer — Has access widened? Are more senior stakeholders engaging? Has the customer’s buying process accelerated? How do customers respond to KAMs and the company?
3. Commercial lift — Only after the first two layers are visible does it make sense to look at market share, revenue, or margin.
Hemant Shetty, speaking from a global perch, offered a practical illustration.
“If collaboration is rising, we know training is sticking,” she noted.
The modern SAM skill set: Hard skills, soft accelerators
A live poll of session attendees revealed a striking gap: 46% cited strategic thinking a s the hardest competency to find, followed by financial acumen at 27%. Relationship skills scored lower, perhaps because most SAM programs long ago mastered the mechanics of call preparation and rapport building.
“In one country we surveyed customers before and six months after a capability sprint,” he said. “We asked: ‘How has our brand relevance changed because of our new communication approach?’ That single indicator became a credible bridge to the sales numbers finance cares about.”
46% cited strategic thinking as the hardest competency to find, followed by financial acumen at 27%.
Shetty added: “We included specific behaviors in the KAM coaching module and compared the scores against baseline. Change in customer behavior was assessed through surveys, feedback, and market research results.”
At Johnson & Johnson, Mandie Kaminski institutionalized the link between learning and corporate imperatives. Each North American franchise is asked — before any course experience is developed and executed — to declare and align training to the key strategic business imperatives that will accelerate portfolio growth, launch excellence, or drive competitive differentiation.
“The conversation immediately shifts from training as an expense to training being leveraged and seen as an integral catalyst of corporate growth and strategy,” she said.
Varetta Manlove offered a reminder that ROI is important. Her team at Eisai started conducting training evaluations to obtain insights and receive metrics that help to understand where to pivot in the training to see the effects on ROI.
Kaminski argued against treating “hard” and “soft” skills as separate tracks: “Empathy and active listening are force multipliers for financial modeling or market analytics. We design every curriculum to advance both lanes in parallel.”
Manlove distilled three “nonnegotiables” for today’s SAM:
1. Crystal-clear communication, inside and outside the enterprise.
2. Relationship breadth and depth — knowing how to map an ecosystem, not just a contact list.
3. Creative problem-solving, because “once you’ve seen one account, you’ve seen exactly one account.”
Boehringer Ingelheim has formalized the portfolio of skills into a global model of eight competencies that include distinctions such as business strategist and trusted partner, for example. Every country picks two competencies to emphasize each year, while individuals may add a personal stretch goal.
“You can’t improve eight things at once,” Shetty cautioned. “But you can make real progress on two in a year.”
Financial acumen has become an acute priority. All three companies pair short, scenario-based e-modules with “mini-MBA” labs in which SAMs must defend a customer business case in front of finance or market access leaders. The payoff, Seleski noted, is faster internal decision-making.
“Our account managers have learned to separate attractive opportunities from distractions before they reach contracting,” she said. “Everyone’s cycle time improves.”
Keeping
your unicorns: Retention as a design problem
The conversation then pivoted to talent retention — an area where even sophisticated programs admit vulnerability. Seleski’s term for a fully rounded SAM is “the unicorn,” and unicorns, once trained, are highly poachable.
Boehringer Ingelheim addressed the issue head-on by launching the New Account Leadership Development Program (NALDP) — a one-year, nomination-based journey that pairs each emerging SAM with a senior mentor. Coursework covers influence without authority, pyramid thinking, and the “ambiguity comfort” that strategic roles demand. The results speak for themselves: over 40% of graduates secure broader leadership roles within two years.
Promotion is a retention strategy in its own right. Audience member Ryan Martin, Associate Director of Employee Experience, Learning & Development, Curriculum Design & Delivery at Novo Nordisk, noted that when SAM alumni move into franchise or finance roles, organizational respect for the discipline rises.
“It’s contagious,” he said. “The moment a former SAM is running marketing, cross-functional alignment improves overnight.”
Certification can also lock in loyalty. Boehringer Ingelheim now positions SAMA’s CSAM credential as the global standard. Because the journey to certification spans 18-24 months, participants are unlikely to exit mid-flight — and the badge itself signals employability across the industry.
Finally, culture matters. Many senior leaders were raised in a “reach-and-frequency” world of daily sales calls and immediate revenue feedback. Seleski spends considerable time “educating upwards,” showing executives that SAM value often accrues over quarters, not weeks.
“If leaders expect a hockey stick in month one, we’ll lose patience — and people,” she warned.
What the audience said
In a closing poll, half the room ranked measuring and demonstrating ROI a s their number one pain point, trumping
even hiring or retention. The implication is clear: without a compelling value story, funding for development shrinks, hiring stalls, and career prospects fade — setting up a vicious talent cycle.
Five moves to consider before next year’s budget cycle
1. Publish a three-layer scorecard. Track behavior, customer response, and commercial lift — then socialize the dashboard with finance.
2. Run a skill-gap pulse survey. Use the conference poll categories to let SAMs rank their own needs; design FY26 learning sprints accordingly.
3. Launch a mentored talent pool. Ten high-potential SAMs, twelve months, explicit promotion targets: minimal cost, outsized engagement.
4. Translate global competencies locally. A sk each SAM and line manager to pick two focus skills and revisit progress at mid-year.
5. Make financial acumen a license to operate. Require a micro-credential before SAMs submit proposals above a certain deal size.
Conclusion
Strategic account managers inhabit the critical seam between enterprise and customer. Train them poorly and they become an expensive cadre of super-reps. Train and coach them well and they turn into architects of growth, margin, and long-term relevance.
The SAMA session panel agreed on one fundamental truth: excellence in SAM talent is less about programs than about systems — systems that link learning to strategy, that balance hard analytics with human insight, and that show ambitious professionals a future brighter inside the firm than outside.
In short, if you want to win the SAM talent war, look beyond the numbers — then measure the things that really count. n
Dino Bertani is Vice President of Alliance Management at Zealand Pharma. Additionally, Dino serves on SAMA’s Executive Committee and is a member of SAMA’s Board of Directors. Connect with him on LinkedIn at linkedin.com/in/dinobertani. For further resources on SAM capability building, visit strategicaccounts.org
A BLUEPRINT FOR EXCELLENCE
How strategic account management thrives at TÜV SÜD
By Hajo Rapp, Ph.D. SVP and Global Head of Cybersecurity Sales TÜV SÜD and Ricarda Franke Senior Manager of Sales Excellence & KAM
TÜV SÜD
TÜV SÜD company background and customers
TÜV SÜD is a globally recognized provider of testing, inspection, and certification (TIC) services, with a legacy rooted in safety, quality, and sustainability. TÜV SÜD has been constantly growing over the last years and achieved revenues reaching € 3.4 billion with approximately 30,000 employees globally in 2024. Headquartered in Germany, TÜV SÜD has expanded its footprint across more than 1,000 locations worldwide, serving clients in a wide range of industries including automotive, manufacturing, energy, healthcare, and infrastructure.
In all our customer interactions, our mission is to inspire trust by delivering impartial and reliable services in a market which is characterized by its complexity and the need for deep technical expertise. Our customers range from multinational corporations to small and medium-sized enterprises, all of whom ask for our services for protecting people, environment, and infrastructure by enhancing quality, managing risks, and ensuring compliance with regulatory requirements. Our core services include laboratory testing, on-site inspections, and training. In this context, strategic account management (SAM) plays a pivotal role in fostering long-term partnerships and delivering tailored solutions that address the unique needs of each client.
SAM program setup and organizational structure
We launched our SAM program in 2012 with the aim of strengthening relationships with key accounts and driving sustainable growth. Initially focused on 11 strategic accounts in core industries, the program has since expanded to include approximately 70 strategic accounts and an additional 250 key accounts, collectively representing more than 18% of the company’s total revenue.
Our program is structured around a dual-layered approach: strategic account management (SAM) and key account management (KAM). Strategic account managers and key account managers typically operate on a part-time basis, managing multiple accounts and aligning with the regions where the accounts are headquartered. The program is governed by a centralized SAM Excellence Support Team (Program Office) within the global sales department, which provides training, tools, and governance to ensure consistency and effectiveness across the organization. It also coaches the program heads of the second-layer account management programs. Further, it ensures
SAMcoaching andprogram development basedon aglobalsupport structure
VP Germany
Coaching SAMand RAM
Managing ownaccount(s)
VP Americas
Coaching SAMand RAM
• Managingownaccount(s)
VP Europe
Coaching SA Mand RAM
•
VP North Asia
Coaching SAMand RAM
• Managingownaccount(s)
VP ASMEA
• Coaching SAMand RAM
Managingownaccount(s)
SAM Excellence Support Team (Program O ice)
Account Selection, Recognition & KPIs, SAM Methods & Tools, Trainings, Industry Segment Coordination, Stakeholder Mgmt. & Communication
top management support and buy-in via a common agenda — on the C-level, in divisional management and regional management, as well as middle management in the HQ, and across all units. Additionally, representatives from top management serve as executive sponsors for each of the strategic account managers.
Evolution of the SAM program
Since its inception, our SAM program has undergone significant evolution. In 2017, TÜV SÜD introduced Account Management 2.0, a comprehensive framework designed to enhance global coordination and customer engagement. This included the creation of the One TÜV SÜD Strategic Account System, which standardized roles and responsibilities across regions and introduced a globally consistent support structure. We extended the program with a second layer of account management a few years ago, which now also allows a tailored approach to engaging smaller key clients by focusing on unlocking additional value through closer collaboration and strategic alignment.
Via our SAM Excellence Program Office, we fostered the formation of customer industry communities, which provide a platform for experience-sharing, knowledge exchange, and positioning efforts. By moderating these communities
actively with support from the program office, TÜV SÜD strengthens collaboration across account levels and ensures a close view on industry developments and trends.
TÜV SÜD customer industry communities in cooperation with account management
The program office has been driving forward various key initiatives. They include the development of tailored training programs, a structured incentive system, and customer-centric reporting tools. These tools provided greater transparency and enabled account managers to identify white spots and growth opportunities. The program office also embraced digital transformation by integrating CRM systems, AI-driven tools like MS 365 Copilot, and advanced sales intelligence platforms.
Success factors and business results
Our SAM program has delivered impressive business results. Over the past five years, strategic and key accounts have achieved a compound annual growth rate significantly above organic company growth. Revenue from accounts outside Germany has more than doubled, reflecting the program’s success in driving internationalization.
Managing ow nacco unt(s )
Graphic: Global setup of TÜV SÜD’s SAM Excellence Support Team
Strategic andkey accounts aredistributed across the TÜVSÜD coremarketsand regions
The key performance indicators (KPIs) we use to measure success include revenue growth, share of wallet, customer retention, cross-unit collaboration, and strategic positioning. These KPIs are tracked at both the program and account levels, with regular reviews and adjustments to ensure alignment with evolving business needs. Current challenges, future needs, and trends are regularly analyzed
(e.g., via surveys) and incorporated into the development of TÜV SÜD’s overall business strategy for the next year, as well as the SAM strategy and KPI setting.
Learnings & best practices
TÜV SÜD’s SAM program and constant development rely on driving activities across three major pillars, shown below.
Aprogramarchitecturebased on three pillars
Alignedprocessesand responsibilities alongthe yearly cadenc einclude:
Regular account team meetings
Alignedm ethods,trainings,tools include:
Account development methodologies, e.g., Account Plan
Account Manager training modules and self-learning elements
AI-driven tools and sales intelligenceplatforms
Graphic: Global setup of TÜV SÜD’s SAM Excellence Support Team
Graphic: Three
Rather than focusing solely on the largest accounts, TÜV SÜD identifies accounts with the highest growth potential and aligns internal resources accordingly for those customers showing a coordinated buying behavior.
TÜV SÜD’s experience: Some insights for your organization
First of all, ensuring top management support and involvement has been critical for the success of our SAM program. Handling stakeholder management with sensitivity is equally important, as it is a cross-unit activity. Those in leadership positions, who have a broad perspective, play a vital role in driving the program’s success. Their support and involvement can help overcome silos and ensure that the program receives the necessary resources and attention. Therefore, we actively and regularly involve the management of different divisions, regions, and functions by giving them specific roles, e.g., serving as executive sponsor for selected accounts and other leading roles (e.g., board for customer industries).
A strength of our divisions and regions is their focus on the defined responsibility. In our experience companies that master the art of balancing internal specialization with cross-functional collaboration gain a competitive edge. By effectively managing silos, you can enhance customer experience, drive efficiency, and unlock new revenue streams. The challenge is not about eradicating silos but about making them work for, rather than against, KAM. This is why we at TÜV SÜD developed a KAM model that actively embraces silo integration and encourages structured knowledge-sharing across departments by aligning roles, structures, incentives, the annual cadence, and more.
Talking about KAM systematics — it starts with strategic account selection. Rather than focusing solely on
the largest accounts, TÜV SÜD identifies accounts with the highest growth potential and aligns internal resources accordingly for those customers showing a coordinated buying behavior. “Complex, but coordinated” is the place where SAM adds value.
Other critical success factors are the selection of the account managers fitting to market environment, portfolio, and customer culture, and their continuous development. We select SAMs based on internal agreement and invest in high-quality training, coaching, and incentive systems to ensure that the account managers are equipped to handle complex customer needs. Our internal alignment is fostered through cross-functional collaboration, executive sponsorship, and regular communication.
To avoid stagnation, TÜV SÜD continuously measures progress and adapts our strategies. This includes evolving KPIs, introducing new technologies, and nurturing a culture of innovation. Finally, feedback from strategic accounts is collected through regular interactions, executive sponsorship, and participation in account strategy development.
In summary, TÜV SÜD’s success is built on a foundation of clear goals aligned across the whole company, steadily driven collaboration and program development, structured processes, and a deep commitment to customer value. This commitment to success helped TÜV SÜD earn the 2025 SAMA Excellence Award for Outstanding Mature Program of the Year, which recognized the strength and sophistication of our approach to strategic account management. n
Hajo Rapp designed the global strategic account management program and led the international sales excellence activities at TÜV SÜD AG in Munich. He now serves as SVP and Global Head of Cybersecurity Sales. He is also a member of the SAMA Board of Directors and is recognized as a game changer in McKinsey’s go-to-market strategy in Germany. Connect with Hajo on LinkedIn at linkedin.com/in/hajorapp. Ricarda Franke started her career at an IT consulting company and continued at Siemens and TÜV SÜD. She gained extensive experience in various sales-related functions, both at corporate group level and in direct sales positions. In her current role at TÜV SÜD, she serves as both a facilitator and coach for the SAM organization while also functioning as a strategic account manager herself. Connect with her on LinkedIn at linkedin.com/in/ricarda-franke
DISRUPTING TO TRANSFORM
How Wajax collaborated with SAMA to evolve a legacy business model
By SAMA
In an era where competitive advantages are fleeting and customer expectations continue to escalate, organizations can no longer afford to remain static. For Wajax — one of Canada’s oldest and most diversified industrial companies — standing still would have meant surrendering to the inertia that often hampers legacy companies. However, Wajax charted a path to reinvention from the inside out with a bold vision, committed executive leadership, and the full range of support from their SAMA corporate membership.
SAMA President and CEO Gordon Galzerano recently spoke with André Dubé, Senior Vice President of Sales and Operations at Wajax, to explore the company’s remarkable journey. Their conversation — captured on this episode of The SAMA Podcast — uncovered hard-won lessons, tactical execution, and the leadership mindset required to transform a 150-year-old company into a strategically aligned, customer-centric enterprise.
The following article dives deeper into that conversation to unpack not only what Wajax did, but how and why they did it.
Legacy company meets a modern mandate
“We are actually nine years older than Canada’s constitution,” Dubé said, emphasizing Wajax’s deeprooted presence in Canadian industry. But longevity, he explained, is not an asset unless it evolves.
By 2016, Wajax had grown into a siloed organization with three distinct divisions — each with its own systems, messaging, and
operational playbook. Consequently, this resulted in a fragmented customer experience that undermined the company’s ability to deliver consistent value.
Dubé recalled a pivotal moment with a customer that truly laid bare the issue. During a joint meeting, the customer fanned out a series of Wajax business cards across the table — each one bearing a different Wajax logo and representing a separate division or department.
“This is what it means to deal with Wajax,” the customer said. “You’re complicated.”
That moment was the wake-up call that catalyzed change. As Dubé put it, “If you want to launch a strategic account program, you cannot be a difficult partner to deal with.”
While the company was launching a company-wide reorg called “One Wajax,” a sweeping transformation aimed at eliminating silos, streamlining the business, and unifying its customer-facing approach, it also launched a strategic account management (SAM) program which became a key initiative of that evolution.
Business imperative for SAM: Simplify, differentiate, adapt
Three key drivers propelled Wajax toward a strategic account management model:
1. Simplification: Customers — even internal teams, too — found Wajax too complex to engage with. Therefore, the need to present a unified front to customers and partners became essential.
2. Differentiation: Despite representing world-class industrial products and services, Wajax was often seen as commodity distributor. A SAM model offered a way to move beyond that perception and position the company as a strategic partner that added value.
3. Adaptability: Technology disruptions, supply chain complexities, and rising customer demands were reshaping the market. “We had to adapt ourselves to the new normal,” Dubé said, pointing to the rise of digital solutions and the advent of new customers.
These pressures created a sense of urgency and an opportunity to reimagine how Wajax created value, not just by selling products, but by solving complex customer problems with strategic partnerships.
Executive sponsorship: More than a checkbox
According to Dubé, executive sponsorship wasn’t just important, it was “foundational.” Wajax’s CEO didn’t merely approve the concept of a SAM program; he became its corporate sponsor by directly engaging with customers, participating in strategic reviews, and holding leadership accountable for results. That type of buy-in shifted the SAM initiative from a side project to a top priority.
“When people see the CEO is part of strategic reviews and supporting account plans, it completely changes the energy in the room,” Dubé explained.
To ensure alignment, the executive team was exposed early to customer and partner feedback, which was often unfiltered. This transparency gave the initiative credibility, urgency, and shared ownership, from the top down.
“When that kind of disruption starts at the top, it builds flexibility and resiliency into the business model, irrespective of the geopolitical and economic headwinds,” said Galzerano.
Breaking the silos: Structural alignment and shared accountability
One of the most significant challenges Wajax faced was internal silos within the organization. Sales, operations,
engineering, supply chain, and finance divisions often worked independently of each other, which limited the company’s ability to deliver end-to-end solutions.
To counter this, Dubé and his team focused on structural alignment. Systems, incentives, and reporting lines were redesigned to support the SAM strategy. But more importantly, Wajax embedded shared accountability across all functions.
“You can’t have your strategic account team working in isolation,” Dubé said. “They have to collaborate with engineering, supply chain, finance, and service teams.”
A shift of this magnitude required more than just pep talks — it required real tools. So Wajax implemented CRM systems, collaboration platforms, and joint planning sessions to support cross-functional execution.
“We had a responsibility to deliver a platform that created a foundation for collaboration and alignment,” Dubé said.
Talent transformation: Redefining the SAM profile
One of Wajax’s early missteps was assuming that highperforming salespeople would naturally excel in roles as strategic account managers. That assumption did not hold true.
“Selling parts or projects is a very different discipline from managing strategic accounts,” Dubé said. “In SAM, you’re selling a value proposition. You’re selling a long-term mindset and a reason to believe that your company can be a trusted strategic advisor.”
To get it right, Wajax started by defining the ideal SAM profile. Traits included long-term thinking, cross-functional collaboration, comfort with ambiguity, and deep customer centricity. Once the profile came into focus, the company identified internal and external candidates who fit that mold.
SAMA played a critical role during this stage of the transformation. Through SAMA’s Certified Strategic Account Manager (CSAM) program and access to a broad community of global members, Wajax was able to benchmark best practices, avoid common pitfalls, and accelerate the learning curve.
“We reached out to SAMA and we asked for their expertise on what defines not just a good, but a great strategic account manager,” Dubé said. “That talent management piece was so critical for us.”
Wajax invested in those identified as high-potential individuals by sending them through SAMA’s CSAM program.
“It was awesome,” Dubé said. “They came back with different ideas and different perspectives. Some of them grew in the organization and took on more senior roles within Wajax. That’s a testament that it’s a world-class program that helped them elevate themselves.”
Co-creation in action: Reopening a mine site
One of the most powerful examples of SAM frameworks in action came when a major customer planned to reopen a long-dormant mining site. Typically, distributors like Wajax are brought in late in the game — to deliver parts or services after decisions are already made.
But in this case, Wajax engaged early. Through its SAM team, the company helped the customer plan the site reopening, navigate labor shortages, modernize applications, and design maintenance protocols.
“We didn’t just sell products,” Dubé explained. “We helped co-design the solution — operations, logistics, maintenance, and training.”
The results spoke for themselves: The mining site reopened in 12 months, which was right on their target timeline while staying within budget. They employed over 1,000 people, and the customer named Wajax a strategic partner of the year. These results also demonstrated something deeper: the power of internal co-creation.
“This project pulled together multiple product lines, services, and functions inside Wajax,” Dubé said. “It taught us how to co-create internally and become that one full-force turnkey solution for the customer.”
Expanding the co-creation model
The mining site engagement is just one example of how Wajax has leveraged co-creation to spark mutual value. Since then, the company has applied similar principles across its portfolio by helping customers design preventative maintenance systems, optimize inventory for remote sites, and integrate advanced telematics to reduce equipment downtime.
Each initiative starts with a question: What business outcome is the customer trying to achieve? From there, strategic account managers work cross-functionally within Wajax to mobilize capabilities, from engineering and supply
chain to digital tools and training programs.
“Customer centricity is not just about delivering a P&L statement,” Dubé said. “The customer experience is a complete universe of many different things that need to happen well, and they need to connect together to actually represent a world-class customer experience.”
As the SAM disciplined matured, Wajax introduced a standardized co-creation framework. This included joint opportunity mapping workshops, regular ideation sprints, and executive alignment checkpoints. These practices ensured that solutions were not only innovative but also feasible and scalable.
Evolving SAM to meet disruption
Wajax’s SAM journey didn’t end with the initial transformation. If anything, the turbulence of recent years — the pandemic, global supply chain delays, inflation, and digital disruption — has underscored the need for continuous evolution.
“We’re always thinking about disruptors from a competitive landscape,” Dubé said. “But we forget that there are external circumstances that can really reshape or disrupt your business. And if you don’t have the agility within your SAM program to adapt and adapt fast, you might be left behind.”
approach to account segmentation allowed Wajax to respond quickly to emerging opportunities and risks.
“During the worst of COVID, our strategic account segment was the most resilient segment,” he noted. “And postCOVID, it was the fastest growing segment. So, I’ll speak for Wajax — SAM is a key growth driver, and it is a very important segment in our business.”
Execution discipline: Planning, cadence, and rituals
Due to this priority, strategic account planning at Wajax became a rhythm embedded in the company’s operating model.
“The customer experience is a complete universe of many different things that need to happen well, and they need to connect together to actually represent a world-class customer experience.”
To that end, Wajax is now investing in more flexible data platforms, real-time collaboration tools, and agile planning cycles to keep pace with change.
The company also started to segment its strategic accounts more dynamically by using criteria such as customer potential, alignment to strategic priorities, and market trends to update which customers are managed strategically and how. Additionally, Wajax also expanded the role of SAMs to include more influence in product development, collaboration in the partner ecosystem, and customer innovation labs. Dubé said these co-creation initiatives and a more agile
That rhythm included annual account reviews, internal crossfunctional reviews, and customer-facing business reviews — all on a predetermined cadence. The only exceptions were urgent customer needs or external black swan events, such as the COVID19 pandemic, which temporarily shifted everything to virtual.
“Execution is everything,” Dubé said. “We implemented all these processes internally to make sure that we had a very structured and disciplined process to make sure that people were talking, people were collaborating, and that we were on top of our initiatives.”
Proving value: Documented cost savings
One of Wajax’s most innovative practices is its Documented Cost Savings (DCS) program — a proprietary system that quantifies the value delivered to customers in real dollars. DCS tracks everything from reduced downtime and improved reliability to energy savings and logistics optimization.
“We share that data with the customers, and we get phenomenal feedback,” Dubé said. “It gives them visibility on what we’re doing and why we’re doing it. It gives them visibility on the true value of Wajax beyond just being a distribution company.”
DCS also earned Wajax supplier-of-the-year awards from customers and reinforced its credibility as a strategic partner. But perhaps its greatest value is internal. “It creates that positive morale — that team confidence — that we’re actually delivering on our value proposition,” Dubé said.
While Wajax tracks all the usual KPIs — revenue growth, profitability, account penetration — the metrics that matter most are retention and documented value.
“Retention is close to my heart,” Dubé said. “When you have close to 100% of retention in your strategic accounts, that’s a true statement of your program’s ability to create value and translate it into action.”
Paying it forward through the SAMA community
Throughout their ongoing SAM journey, one thing remains clear: Wajax’s engagement with the SAMA community — through the CSAM program, peer networking and dialogues, and SAMA conferences — put them on the fast track to transformation.
“SAMA took us beyond the Wajax universe,” Dubé said. “The beauty of the SAMA community is it’s a bunch of different companies and they’re coming from all sorts of different industries. It forces you to think beyond just your industry, how you do business, and how you operate and go to market.”
Today, Dubé embraces Wajax’s responsibility to pay that support forward. “We were fortunate to have companies that took the time with us to listen to our journey and our challenges, and share their insights, ideas, and best practices,” he said. “Sharing our story is our way to give back to the community.”
By regularly connecting with peers in the SAMA network, Dubé mentors teams that are in the early stages of their SAM journeys and offers transparent perspectives on what worked and what didn’t. This ongoing involvement helps the larger SAMA community and reinforces Wajax’s commitment to learning and adaptability. Dubé said that every time he connects with a peer, he comes away with something new to consider.
“The SAM journey doesn’t end — it evolves,” he noted.
Lessons in scaling: What maturity really looks like
“The last five years were eye-openers and taught us that we need to be more agile, flexible, and resilient,” Dubé said. “The pandemic supply chain disruption, inflation, labor shortages, geopolitical tensions — those aren’t one-time events. They’re the new normal.”
Today, Wajax is focused on scaling its SAM discipline adapting faster, operating leaner, and preparing for whatever comes next. Prior to their SAM awakening, that wasn’t always the case.
“In our business, we were often seen as a commodity — a simple distribution channel of commoditized products, even if we represented world-class products and services,” Dubé said. “All this created a sense of urgency that we needed to transform ourselves. The market was evolving fast. Our customers were becoming much more sophisticated, disruptors were entering our business, and technology was reshaping how we operate. We had to adapt to the new reality.”
Don’t wait for the perfect moment
For Dubé, Wajax’s SAM journey has been more than a business challenge — it’s been a personal evolution. Still, Dubé didn’t always feel like he had the answers, but he saw that as a good thing.
“SAMA really pushed me outside of my comfort zone, to be honest,” he said. “I had many more questions than
Since winning the 2020 SAMA Excellence Award for Outstanding Young Program of the Year, Wajax continues to develop. What started as a transformation initiative has become a core business strategy.
answers for a long time. However, using SAMA’s expertise — the network, the community, the conferences, the sessions, the certification programs — really helped answer a lot of these questions. Sometimes, you don’t need an answer, you just need guidance. SAMA helped shape me into a stronger, more strategic and customer-centric leader.”
As for what advice he would give to companies starting their SAM journey — especially those worried about disrupting legacy cultures — Dubé is quick to answer.
“Don’t wait for the perfect moment,” he advised. “The moment you conclude that a SAM program is the right thing for the organization, just create it. You won’t have perfect alignment on day one and you probably won’t have it on day 100. That’s okay. What matters is that you believe, you’re committed, and you’re resilient in pushing it top-down through the organization. You have to challenge the status quo and place yourself and your teams outside their comfort zone. Bottom line, allow yourself to be disrupted. And you want to do that before a competitor disrupts you.”
Dubé added: “You don’t have to do it alone. We leaned
on SAMA for help. We relied on their expertise and their insights. We’ve tapped into the CSAM program, the people we met at the SAMA Annual Conference, and member companies that have world-class strategic account programs. All of this is available, to accompany you throughout your journey.”
Reflecting on Wajax’s success, Galzerano emphasized the depth and impact a SAM program can have on an organization willing to take the leap with conviction.
“Strategic account management isn’t a tweak,” he said. “It truly is a transformation — one that requires the courage to disrupt legacy business models, one that requires structural alignment, talent investment, and relentless focus on cocreating new ways of developing value with customers and partners.” n
André Dubé is the Senior Vice President of Sales and Operations at Wajax, one of Canada’s oldest and most diversified industrial companies. André has been with Wajax for over two decades, having started in 1999 as a Strategic Sourcing Specialist. Connect with him on LinkedIn at linkedin.com/in/andré-dubé-03a9a58
TRAINING FADES. BEHAVIOR STICKS.
At Whetstone, we don’t deliver training that fades away after the workshop. We deliver a system that helps professionals find their grip and keep climbing—day after day, account after account.
The Real Work, Real Change SystemIP
• Embedding real work assignments and micro-habits that create lasting discipline.
• Aligning leaders, managers, and account teams.
• Elevating customers as the heroes of their journey.
This is where effort turns into progress and progress into real change.
The Real Work, Real Change SystemIP
Most training disappears within weeks. Knowledge fades. Habits slip. People lose their grip.
The Real Work, Real Change System™ was built to change that. It’s not a workshop. It’s a system that gives professionals the footholds they need to keep climbing by turning insight into behavior and behavior into measurable impact.
Real change shows up in the field:
• A manager coaching a small but critical next step.
• A leader aligning strategy with action.
• An account manager applying daily habits that build discipline and momentum.
Together, these actions create alignment across the entire organization. Executives set the vision. Managers reinforce it. Sales professionals bring it to life with customers. That alignment is what drives stronger partnerships, bigger wins, and measurable results tied to both customer and corporate objectives.
And always, the customer is at the center. By making them the hero of their own story, account managers shift from transactional sellers to trusted guides. That shift creates deeper trust, larger opportunities, and long-term growth.
Real change doesn’t come from theory. It comes from steady progress through everyday actions that hold, build, and compound over time.
THE HIDDEN COSTS OF DISCONNECTED TEAMS
How GTM misalignment harms revenue and customer experience
By Bill Dwoinen Chief Revenue Officer Mural
When go-to-market (GTM) teams — marketing, sales, and product — aren’t in sync, it’s more than just an internal headache; it’s a drain on your business’s performance.
Mural’s new GTM Alignment Gap Research Study reveals that these disconnects aren’t just minor friction points; they can lead to significant financial losses, stalled growth, and a fragmented, frustrating customer experience.
In this article, we’ll break down the true impact of this “GTM Alignment Gap” and, more importantly, explore actionable strategies to bridge it.
How confident do you think your go-to-market teams know go-to-market execution best practices?
Understanding the GTM Alignment Gap
How often do you experience misalignment between your go-to-market teams?
Despite a growing emphasis on cross-functional collaboration and the widely acknowledged benefits of a unified approach, Mural’s research paints a different picture: while 85% of respondents are confident in their GTM best practices, that same percentage also experiences misalignment on a weekly or monthly basis. This “85/85 GTM Alignment Gap” highlights a juxtaposition between the perception and reality of how synced go-to-market teams really are.
This means that organizations are operating with varying, often detrimental, degrees of disconnect. The result? A cascade of
inefficiencies, including confusion among teams, duplicated efforts that waste resources, and a litany of missed opportunities that directly impact the bottom line.
What is GTM alignment?
At its core, GTM alignment is when marketing, sales, and product functions seamlessly operate as a cohesive unit. This means they share common, clearly defined goals, communicate openly and consistently, and operate from a unified, overarching strategy. It’s about building a collective intelligence where each department understands and supports the objectives and processes of the others.
When teams aren’t on the same page, the consequences extend far beyond awkward internal meetings or a few mismatched messages — they directly hit your bottom line, erode your market position, and significantly diminish your customer’s experience.
The study found that 89% of respondents reported breakdowns in their go-to-market collaboration have direct revenue-related impacts. This isn’t just theoretical; it translates into tangible losses, including reduced revenue figures, opportunities that never materialize, and a painfully slow go-to-market execution that allows competitors to seize market share.
Consider the scenario: Marketing might generate leads that sales finds entirely unqualified, leading to wasted time and frustration. Conversely, sales might be pursuing deals that don’t align with the product roadmap and create unmet customer expectations.
When teams aren’t on the same page, the consequences extend far beyond awkward internal meetings or a few mismatched messages — they directly hit your bottom line, erode your market position, and significantly diminish your customer’s experience.
In an increasingly crowded and competitive marketplace, no company can afford this type of internal friction.
The financial toll of misalignment
The costs associated with GTM misalignment quickly compound, creating a significant drag on financial performance and growth potential.
Missed revenue and stunted growth
When teams lack shared data, consistent messaging, or a unified approach to market segments, deals are frequently lost, customers become confused by conflicting information, and the entire sales cycle suffers, which directly impacts your organization’s financial health and growth trajectory. The cumulative effect of these seemingly small inefficiencies adds up quickly.
Hidden operational inefficiencies
How would you characterize the impact or consequences when go-to-market collaboration breaks down?
Beyond the direct revenue hit, misalignment also leads to operational inefficiencies — a silent drain on resources. Teams often find themselves duplicating efforts, perhaps conducting similar market research or building parallel customer databases. They might adopt conflicting processes for lead qualification or customer onboarding, leading to internal friction and external confusion. Countless hours are spent in redundant meetings, email chains, and Slack messages, attempting to clarify basic information or resolve internal disputes that stem from a lack of shared understanding.
These operational friction points don’t just waste time; they drain valuable human and financial resources that could otherwise be strategically invested in impactful marketing campaigns, customer engagement initiatives, or product innovation that drives future growth. This constant internal firefighting diverts focus from strategic objectives.
The fallout for customer experience
Disconnected internal teams don’t just hurt your business’s financial performance; they directly, and often severely, impact your customers, which creates a disjointed and frustrating experience.
Inconsistent messaging and frustration
When marketing, sales, and product send mixed signals, buyers are quick to notice and often become disillusioned. Imagine a customer seeing an advertisement promising a certain feature, only for the sales rep to downplay it, and then finding it’s not even available in the basic product.
What do you think causes misalignment among your go-to-market teams?
Mural’s research highlights that customers frequently receive conflicting information across various touchpoints, from initial awareness to post-purchase support. This inconsistency leads to significant customer frustration, erodes trust in your brand, and ultimately slows down the sales cycle as buyers hesitate, seeking clarity or, worse, turning to competitors who offer a more consistent experience.
Building brand credibility takes years, but inconsistent messaging can dismantle it quickly.
Impact on customer retention
A disjointed or confusing pre-sale experience often foreshadows a poor post-sale relationship, making customer retention a challenge. Misalignment can lead to a bumpy onboarding process where customers struggle to understand how to use their new product or service.
It can result in confusion about features, or, critically, unmet expectations that were inadvertently set by different teams. When customers don’t feel supported or their initial perceptions aren’t matched by reality, they are far more likely to churn, prompting them to look elsewhere for solutions.
This not only increases the cost of customer acquisition (as you constantly need to replace lost customers) but also
damages your brand’s reputation through negative wordof-mouth.
Risks beyond revenue
The consequences of misalignment extend well beyond immediate financial metrics and customer satisfaction, which impacts the foundation of your organization. Internal friction isn’t sustainable, as our study indicates that chronic misalignment significantly increases stress and job dissatisfaction among employees.
This internal conflict elevates the risk of burnout across essential team members and leads to higher turnover rates — meaning you lose valuable institutional knowledge and incur costs in recruiting and training replacements.
Furthermore, a lack of alignment hinders an organization’s ability to innovate. When teams are constantly preoccupied with resolving internal disconnects, clarifying basic information, or overcoming departmental silos, their bandwidth for creative problem-solving, strategic thinking, and proactive responses to shifting market needs is severely impacted.
This internal focus starves innovation, making it difficult
Lack of a clear go-to-market strategy & goals
Large & frequent organizational changes
Complexity of internal & external coordination needed
Absence of a clear & e icetive go-to-market process to follow
Unclear deadlines & protect priorities to meet
to develop new products, enter new markets, or adapt swiftly to competitive pressures.
What high-performing teams do differently
Not all organizations are plagued by these struggles. Mural’s research spotlights key practices that highly aligned, high-performing teams consistently get right, setting them apart from their counterparts:
• They prioritize regular cross-functional meetings, not just for updates, but as dedicated sessions to foster mutual understanding, anticipate challenges, and identify blockers early, before they escalate.
• They establish and rigorously track shared key performance indicators (KPIs) across all GTM functions. This ensures that everyone is working towards the same objectives and success is measured collectively, which prevents blame games and promotes a unified purpose.
• They commit to centralized tools and data repositories. This fundamental practice ensures that everyone accesses the same accurate, up-to-date information, which significantly reduces misunderstandings, conflicting reports, and wasted time chasing disparate data sources.
• Critically, these teams engage in collaborative planning sessions well in advance. They align on priorities, messaging, and execution strategies before launching major campaigns or products, which ensure a cohesive and impactful market entry.
Bridging the GTM gap: Your next steps
Ready to foster better alignment within your organization and unlock its full potential? Consider these actionable, strategic steps:
• Invest in collaborative platforms and technologies to unify communications and workflows. These aren’t just tools; they’re the digital infrastructure that enables shared workspaces, integrated communication channels, and centralized document management — all of which break down digital silos.
• Align KPIs and success metrics across all GTM functions. This means co-creating metrics that reflect shared objectives, ensuring that marketing’s success directly contributes to sales’ targets, and that product development is validated by market adoption.
• Encourage regular joint planning and debrief sessions to foster transparency and shared understanding. These shouldn’t be optional; they should be embedded into your operational rhythm, allowing teams to proactively align strategies, review performance, and learn from both successes and challenges together.
• Leverage AI and visual collaboration tools to centralize data, ideas, and strategic plans. These tools can simplify complex information, make insights more accessible, and facilitate dynamic decision-making, ensuring everyone operates from a single, shared source of truth, reducing ambiguity and fostering true collaboration.
Bringing it all together
The GTM Alignment Gap is not an abstract concept; it carries a tangible, significant cost that impacts your organization’s revenue, diminishes customer satisfaction, and erodes team morale.
By proactively recognizing these risks and taking decisive, actionable steps toward achieving genuine cross-functional alignment, your organization can unlock stronger, more sustainable growth, cultivate a healthier internal culture, and, most importantly, create happier, more loyal customers who become advocates for your brand. n
Bill Dwoinen is Chief Revenue Officer at Mural. Connect with him on LinkedIn at linkedin.com/in/ bill-dwoinen.
BALANCE THAT DRIVES BUSINESS
At Hyatt, we believe the best results happen when people feel cared for. The Wellbeing Collective offers curated experiences—designed to inspire growth, creativity and connection—for meetings, incentives, retreats and beyond.
FROM VISION TO IMPACT
How UL Solutions built a world-class account management program in under five years
By Frankie Cusimano Senior Program Manager, Commercial Operations UL Solutions
Introduction: A bold vision for strategic growth
In today’s hyperconnected, rapidly changing global economy, building deep, strategic customer relationships is no longer a competitive advantage; it is essential. This realization led UL Solutions — a global leader in safety science and product testing, inspection, and certification — to undergo a bold transformation. In 2022, the company launched its Account Management program, a comprehensive initiative designed to reimagine how it engages with its customers.
What started as a focused effort to adapt to market changes and customer needs has become a standard for excellence in account management. The Account Management program has produced measurable business results and earned the 2025 SAMA Excellence Award for Outstanding Young Program of the Year, which recognized its innovation, momentum, and impact.
This article tells the story of that transformation: the challenges that prompted it, the leadership that drove it, the tools and frameworks that enabled it, and the lessons learned along the way.
The challenge: A changing market, a strategic imperative
In 2022, UL Solutions faced a critical juncture. The company was implementing a strategic restructuring under its Alpha strategy, emphasizing its core strengths while seeking growth through adjacent opportunities. However, the external environment was changing just as rapidly.
Customers across UL Solutions’ 35 served industries were grappling with megatrends like:
• Sustainability and energy transition.
• Digitalization and artificial intelligence (AI) adoption.
• Rapidly evolving regulatory landscapes.
These forces were reshaping customer priorities, product roadmaps, and business models. UL Solutions recognized that, to stay relevant and lead, it needed a new approach to customer engagement — one that would:
• Deepen strategic relationships with customers.
• Enable mutual value creation through co-discovery and collaboration.
• Provide a scalable, data-driven foundation for growth. The answer was the Account Management program.
Strategic accounts: Small in number, big in impact
The Account Management program targeted a select group of customers. These accounts include worldwide innovators and well-known companies that work on advanced technologies and business models. This makes them highly influential across multiple countries and representative of leading companies in their regions.
These customers weren’t just important; they were influential. Their actions shaped entire industries, their needs drove innovation forward, and their expectations called for a new level of partnership.
UL Solutions viewed these accounts not just as revenue sources but as strategic partners. The Account Management program aimed to strengthen these relationships, coordinate internal resources, and establish a common growth path.
Building the program: Leadership, frameworks, and culture
From the outset, the Account Management program was championed at the highest levels. Driven by a senior executive and strongly supported by the CEO, it gained further support from the president of the company’s core business in addition to regional and operational leaders.
This commitment went beyond symbolic gestures. With the newly aligned focus from the top down, each of UL Solutions’ top 50 executives volunteered to serve as executive sponsors for these accounts, meeting regularly with account teams, attending customer meetings, and providing strategic guidance.
The program was built on the SAMA framework, incorporating:
• Nine key enablers, including customer co-creation and value quantification.
• A seven-step account management process from discovery to execution.
• Five account manager competencies, such as strategic thinking and collaboration.
This structure, which is now commonly referred to internally as “9-7-5,” provided the foundation, but to bring it to life, UL Solutions needed a digital backbone.
The Valkre partnership: Digitalizing account management
One of the initial challenges was the absence of a centralized, actionable system for handling account plans. Information was scattered across regions and business units, and account plans were static documents rather than dynamic strategies. Leadership lacked insight into customer priorities and progress.
UL Solutions partnered with Valkre to implement a digital account planning platform to solve this challenge. This tool became the operational core of the Account Management program, enabling:
• A single source of truth for all strategic account activity.
• Real-time collaboration across functions and geographies.
• Integration w ith Salesforce, Microsoft Power BI, and other enterprise tools.
• Role-specific onboarding for account managers, crossfunctional teams, and executive sponsors.
The result was a flexible, transparent, and scalable system that enabled teams to focus on what mattered most: delivering long-term value to customers.
“Implementing Valkre account planning technology has transformed how the account team operates and cooperates cross-functionally,” said Elena Veneziani, Director of Sales Enablement at UL Solutions. “It’s not just about efficiency; it’s about empowering our teams to sell smarter and build stronger long-term customer relationships.”
Embedding the program: From process to culture
The Account Management program was not just a new process but a new way of working. It changed how UL Solutions viewed customer relationships, internal collaboration, and strategic growth.
Key cultural enablers included:
• Executive sponsor engagement – Senior leaders were deeply involved in account planning and customer engagement, providing strategic insight and internal alignment.
• Cross-functional collaboration – Teams across functions and geographies were brought into the account planning process, breaking down silos and fostering shared ownership.
• Customer co-discovery – Customers defined mutual objectives and co-created initiatives, deepening trust and alignment.
• Celebration of success – Wins were shared across the organization through quarterly updates, boosting morale and reinforcing the program’s value.
These efforts established a common language and customer-centric mindset that spread throughout the organization.
Measuring success: KPIs and business impact
UL Solutions established strong key performance indicators (KPIs) to monitor the program’s performance. These included:
Business Growth – Continued momentum driven by key account contributions.
Customer Alignment – Progress in aligning more closely with evolving customer expectations.
Customer Experience – Positive indicators of satisfaction and loyalty across strategic relationships.
Program Effectiveness – Ongoing improvements observed following strategic framework implementation.
Team Engagement – Strong participation and involvement from global account teams.
These metrics weren’t just numbers; they served as proof that the program was effective, confirming the value of the investment in its people, processes, and technology.
Lessons learned: Insights for the SAMA community
The journey wasn’t without its challenges, but through experience, UL Solutions uncovered several key lessons that may benefit other organizations:
• Leadership is nonnegotiable – Passionate, visible leadership is essential for driving change and overcoming resistance.
• Customer involvement is key – Engaging customers in the SAM process builds trust and ensures relevance.
• Digitalization enables scale – A digital platform like Valkre makes the SAM process scalable, sustainable, and measurable.
• Talent is critical – Investing in account manager training and aligning talent with the SAM model is vital.
• Executive sponsorship moves the needle – Senior leaders can unlock internal alignment and deepen customer relationships.
• Celebrate success – Recognizing wins builds momentum and reinforces the program’s value.
Looking ahead: A platform for long-term growth
The Account Management program has revolutionized how UL Solutions interacts with its customers, but the company isn’t stopping there.
With a scalable infrastructure, a unified culture, and a proven track record, the program is now growing to include more accounts, regions, and business units. It is also evolving into a strategic sensing function, helping UL Solutions anticipate market trends and direct its future investments in areas like AI, sustainability, and embedded software.
As the company expands, the Account Management program will continue to be a core part of its strategy, fostering innovation, strengthening relationships, and providing value to customers and shareholders.
Conclusion: A blueprint for account management excellence
In just over two years, UL Solutions has developed an award-winning and transformative strategic account management program. By blending the rigor of the SAMA framework with the power of digital tools and the passion of its team, the company has established a model for amplifying impact in a complex global environment. n
Frankie Cusimano is Senior Program Manager of Commercial Operations at UL Solutions. Connect with him on LinkedIn at linkedin.com/in/frankie-cusimano-2955b232
• Understand your SAMs’ current-state strengths and weaknesses
• D iscover how your account managers compare to each other and/or to competitors
• Find SAMA resources and training tied to specific skills in need of improvement
• Facilitate meaningful coaching
THE SAM LEADER’S PLAYBOOK: COMPETENCIES THAT DRIVE STRATEGIC ACCOUNT SUCCESS
By Shakeel Bharmal Senior Vice President and Head of Leadership Coaching
The Summit Group
Strategic account management (SAM) is a powerful driver of enterprise growth. Still, its impact hinges not only on the performance of individual account managers but also on the leadership surrounding them. Whether one’s title is vice president, general manager, or head of key accounts, SAM leaders are the crucial enablers of customer-centric strategy, cross-functional collaboration, and value co-creation.
While much has been written about the competencies required of SAMs, far less attention has been paid to the unique capabilities needed by those who lead them. To empower SAM teams to thrive in complex, matrixed organizations, leaders must go beyond operational oversight and become strategic orchestrators of both internal alignment and customer value.
Five competency areas for SAM leaders
Building on the foundation of SAMA’s SAM Competency Model, a new competency framework has been developed to articulate the behaviors and capabilities required of SAM leaders. These five domains reflect what it takes to remove
To empower SAM teams to thrive in complex, matrixed organizations, leaders must go beyond operational oversight and become strategic orchestrators of both internal alignment and customer value.
barriers, guide effective behaviors, and drive outcomes in today’s complex B2B environments:
1. Understanding organizational priorities
º Help SAMs align with both customer and internal company strategies
º Demonstrate fluency in industry and customer value drivers
2. Strategic account & opportunity planning
º Guide SAMs in developing forward-looking, customercentric strategies
º Apply financial and business acumen to inform investment and resource allocation decisions
3. Joint solution development & co-creation
º Model active listening, structured communication, and boardroom-level influence
º P romote innovation through internal collaboration and external co-creation
4. Multi-functional account team leadership
º Build cohesive teams across functions and geographies
º E nsure cultural sensitivity, role clarity, and trust in customer-facing teams
5. Overall relationship & outcome management
º Take ownership of enterprise-level customer relationships
º Champion cross-functional accountability for business results
These competencies reflect the shift from “supporting” SAMs to leading enterprise strategy on their behalf.
Case #1: Alex Thompson’s turnaround
Illustrative case. Names and details have been changed.
Alex Thompson, a regional SAM VP with years of experience in key accounts, recently completed a SAM leader competency self-assessment. While confident in his execution, the reflection uncovered two critical blind spots. First, he lacked a strong understanding of the evolving priorities of his team’s most strategic customers. Second, his SAMs struggled to navigate their own company’s shifting internal strategies.
Alex recognized that to lead effectively, he needed to bridge those gaps — not just for himself, but for his team as well. Using the assessment and related development tools, he implemented three deliberate actions:
• Attended quarterly joint strategy sessions with key
customers and internal product leads.
• Established monthly internal briefings where his SAMs could hear from functional leaders.
• Launched a peer coaching circle to improve strategic storytelling across the team.
These actions not only built strategic alignment but also elevated the confidence of his SAMs in engaging both internally and externally.
A simple tool for self-awareness
At the heart of this development journey is a SAM leader competency assessment, designed for senior leaders to reflect on their behaviors. Using a 3-point scale — 1 (Needs Improvement), 2 (Developing), and 3 (Strength to Build On) — leaders assess themselves across core domains.
For instance, under Overall Relationship & Outcome Management , leaders consider:
• I take responsibility for the overall enterprise relationship with our customers.
• I meet or exceed business objectives and demonstrate ownership of outcomes for customer initiatives.
This structured reflection helps uncover blind spots and prioritize leadership growth. The tool is available for download and use by SAM program leaders and executives.
From insight to action
Self-awareness is powerful, but it is insufficient when used alone. For each competency, leaders are encouraged to select and act on specific, observable behaviors that demonstrate their effectiveness. A supporting tool outlines development actions across all five domains. For example:
• Organizational priorities: Launch internal-external strategy alignment forums.
• Co-creation & communication: Facilitate workshops where SAMs and internal subject matter experts (SMEs) co-develop customer value propositions.
• Cross-functional collaboration: Map internal stakeholders and spotlight ROI from customer-centric initiatives.
• Outcome ownership: D efine shared success metrics across sales, operations, and delivery.
• Team empowerment: Mentor SAMs on navigating senior-level customer conversations.
To help leaders prioritize, a si mple action-planning framework i s provided. Leaders categorize actions into
The performance of your SAM program depends on the clarity, consistency, and courage of its leadership. Your leadership can be the differentiator.
quick wins, strategic priorities, and development goals — balancing ambition with practicality.
Case #2: Priya Desai and the silos that stalled her team
Illustrative case. Names and details have been changed.
Priya Desai, general manager for a regional market, faced resistance from internal functions when her sales and marketing team advocated for customer-aligned innovations. The silos were not personal — they were structural and cultural in nature. Her assessment results were precise: she needed to become a more effective cross-functional influencer.
Her response was intentional, as she:
• Created an internal stakeholder map to identify champions and skeptics.
• Introduced a “voice of the SAM” briefing series for crossfunctional teams.
• Facilitated quarterly co-creation workshops between SAMs and delivery leads.
These efforts not only improved collaboration but also helped her SAMs feel supported and heard, translating to improved outcomes for customers.
Leadership as the differentiator
What distinguishes effective SAM leaders is not just what they know, but how intentionally they lead. The competencies described above are not theoretical — they are habits of leadership. Demonstrated consistently, they shape the culture needed for SAM teams to excel.
This is not about adding more tasks to a leader’s to-do list. It is about reframing the role: from supporter to enabler, from problem-solver to strategist, from bystander to owner of customer success.
Building your playbook
The tools referenced in this article — including the assessment, development actions, and action-planning framework — are available here. Whether used individually or in facilitated workshops, they offer a structured path to developing your own SAM leader playbook:
• Step 1: Complete the competency self-assessment.
• Step 2: Identify high-impact development actions.
• Step 3: Use the prioritization tool to create a focused plan.
• Step 4: Commit to visible leadership behaviors that empower your SAMs.
You are not just leading account managers. You are leading enterprise value creation.
Call to action
To explore how to use these tools in your organization, access the downloadable resources or reach out for a facilitated workshop or leadership session. Share this article with peers in sales leadership, customer success, and strategy.
The performance of your SAM program depends on the clarity, consistency, and courage of its leadership.
Your leadership can be the differentiator. n
Shakeel Bharmal is Senior Vice President at The Summit Group, where he is the head of the leadership coaching and strategic alignment practice. Contact him at sb@summitvalue. com or connect with him on LinkedIn at linkedin.com/in/ shakeelbharmal/. Bharmal is an experienced business leader, management consultant facilitator, and leadership coach. He has been a regular contributor to the SAMA community since 2010.
LEARNING HOW TO LISTEN LOUDER
By Keshini Masani Principal & Mindset Coach CXO IMPACT and Janti Masani CEO & Founder CXO IMPACT
Communication plays a crucial role in all aspects of our lives, especially in business engagement. From daily discussions with colleagues and customers to feedback and coaching, communication is the foundation of creating positive outcomes. Effective communication is not only important but an essential skill for business success. With the increase of AI there is a need now more than ever before to build on our humanistic skills to stay relevant. AI produces a shift in the human experience but does not have the ability to comprehend and convey emotions effectively. Therefore, the opportunity to build relevance and stand out in an authentic way is critical for the future of business.
Effective communication can help to align goals, prevent misunderstandings, and build trustful relationships. Business is all about working with people. Therefore, leveraging the opportunity to engage with individuals on a humanistic level is game changing!
When we think about expanding our communication skills, we often focus on developing our verbal communication. However, to create effective communication to stand out and show up differently, we must consider both what we say and how we listen.
Our goal in business is to have a deeper understanding of customer needs and wants. A key part of that goal is our ability to listen and truly understand the meaning and intent behind the exchange. We call this skill active listening. This article will highlight the importance of active listening in business engagement, and it will present insights into how achieving effective active listening can turn a businessperson who is a good listener into a great listener.
The art of listening louder
In business today, every encounter is crucial to gaining new opportunities or creating solutions to complexities. Therefore, building trust is essential to creating positive encounters. Individuals start to build trust when they feel heard and understood; this is why active listening is a critical element in making a human connection when we engage with customers and team members.
Active listening in business is more than just passively listening; it is a process that requires full engagement, comprehension, and empathy to respond in a thoughtful and meaningful way. Active listening is the practice of observing both verbal and non-verbal messages and providing appropriate feedback in response to the information we receive. Often, we focus primarily on what is being said and not enough on the non-verbal cues.
Our non-verbal communication makes up over 55% of our overall communication, and it is how we form our initial judgments towards others.
However, it is the non-verbal communication that is important to understand the bigger picture and meaning behind the words. This approach is key for building strong relationships, creating effective communication within teams and customers, and achieving high-level business goals.
Is absorbing what we hear enough?
We are often told that to achieve active listening, it is simply enough to:
• Put away all distractions when we are engaging in a conversation.
• Make good eye contact so the other person feels heard.
• Paraphrase what was said to show validation.
While this may be a good place to start our journey towards listening louder, it can still result in the other person not feeling heard or understood. We often think that simply absorbing the information is enough, but to truly listen louder, we want to be a listener who encourages the speaker to expand on their thoughts and ideas and to share their insights and emotions.
The truth is, if we want to be a businessperson who is not only a good listener, but a great listener, we must do more!
To do more, we must focus on two key mindset drivers. The first mindset driver is building our own self-awareness. This includes building awareness around how we are feeling and how others perceive us. The second mindset driver is
empathetic listening. This suggests understanding the speaker’s thoughts, feelings, and emotions.
Self-awareness
Building our own self-awareness during active listening is the most critical part of the process; however, it is often forgotten or overlooked. There are two key components to self-awareness. The first is internal self-awareness. This means our ability to recognize and understand our own mindset, thoughts, and emotions. The second is external self-awareness. This means being aware of how other people perceive our verbal and non-verbal communication. Both are equally important in business engagement.
When we engage, it is critical to be aware of the impact our own behavior has on the speaker. Our non-verbal communication makes up over 55% of our overall communication, and it is how we form our initial judgments towards others. It is normal to judge individuals when we first meet them or when we engage with them; however, it is key to recognize that these judgments are usually formed subconsciously and are significantly based on our non-verbal communication. Therefore, to build trust through active listening, it is key that we are being mindful of how we show up both verbally and non-verbally. Making a conscious effort to display positive non-verbal cues when we are listening will have a significant positive impact on the speaker.
To achieve effective active listening, it is imperative to be mindful of our own emotions. Emotions can be very powerful, and making sure we are in the best possible emotional state to engage with no judgment is crucial for active listening. Strong emotions that arise from disagreements or tough negotiations can often cloud our judgment to listen effectively, and they can also create significant barriers that block our ability to comprehend. To avoid highly emotional situations where both parties feel misunderstood, it is critical to practice emotional regulation. This requires us to take a step back and manage our emotions so that we can listen with the intent to understand rather than to respond in a defensive manner.
Empathetic listening
Empathetic listening is about seeking to understand the speaker’s perspective to show that their thoughts and feelings are recognized and validated. Empathy is a key component in emotional intelligence; it is the ability to sense the other person’s emotions in what is said and unsaid. This allows us to respond in a way that is mindful.
We often assume that by understanding the point of view of another person, we are essentially agreeing with their perspective. However, understanding them is not the same as agreeing with them. This is critical to understand in building our skill to empathize during business engagement.
To help enhance our sensitivity around social understanding, imagine that you have “feelers.” One “feeler” is connected to you, so that you can first build awareness around your own mindset going into a conversation. Then allow your “feelers” to extend to the other person. This will allow you to build sensitivity in seeking understanding around their thoughts and emotions. This is important to practice, as the more we use our “feelers,” the more sensitive we become to our social surroundings.
In business, empathy is a powerful tool for two key reasons. Empathy is the basis of forming trust in both team and customer relationships. This is because trust is only formed when we feel heard and understood. The second is that it can help us to understand key challenges and solutions when we engage with customers. Having the ability to seek understanding of why customers have made certain decisions or why they have responded or reacted in a certain way can help us to respond in the best possible way, to create the best possible solutions. If we take time to understand our customers, we can relate to them by providing win-win outcomes.
Co-author Janti Masani shared this personal story from his time as a SAM:
“During my time working as a strategic account manager, I met with a key customer of mine in the private healthcare segment providing global laboratory services. They had been hesitant about renewing a major contract. During our conversation, I practiced what I know now is empathetic listening, which I must admit was challenging for me at the time, as I was part of a business culture where empathy was seen as a ‘soft’ approach and was never spoken about, especially to gain results. I focused fully on the customer and was aware of how I was showing up to them. I reflected upon their concerns rather than jumping in with solutions. As
they slowly began to open up, it became clear their hesitation wasn’t about total contract investment, but about market risks outside of their control, and they needed our company to provide a solution for pricing flexibility in the future that would be mutually beneficial to both parties. That moment was critical for me. When I truly heard them out without interrupting or defending, my customer began to trust me, and I began to understand what mattered most to them. I took their concerns back internally and ensured we proposed a more tailored solution. That shift, driven by listening louder rather than selling, was the turning point that helped us close the deal and ultimately deepen the relationship. It was a pivotal moment for me as a SAM, as I began to change how I wanted to show up and stand out in front of customers.”
Conclusion
Business is all about how we communicate and how we build human connections to create positive interactions. When there is a lack of communication, mistakes increase, relationships disassemble, and great sales opportunities are missed. To be high performers who create positive encounters, we need to think about not only what we are saying but also how we are listening.
Active listening is an extremely important skill to develop a humanistic approach to engagement; however, it is something that is unfortunately undertaught and not well understood. We may think we are good listeners, but in reality, we still find ourselves listening to respond, jumping to solutions, and forming judgments. Our ability to listen is a biological function; however, our ability to listen to understand is a skill that must be acquired and developed. To go from a good listener to a great listener, we must do more to stand out and show up differently. Building our skills of self-awareness and empathy is the game-changing factor in business today that will help us to achieve a high level of active listening where we go beyond merely listening to absorb.
This skill takes time and practice to master, but it is never too late to start your journey to listen louder. You will be surprised with the positive impact it will have on your journey to achieving personal excellence to stand out and show up differently. n
Keshini Masani is Principal and Mindset Coach at CXO IMPACT. She can be reached at km@cxoimpact.co.uk. Janti Masani is CEO & Founder at CXO IMPACT. He can be reached at jm@cxoimpact. co.uk
CALL FOR VELOCITY SUBMISSIONS
Why Submit an Article?
Velocity is the official publication of SAMA. It provides a forum for the exchange of information relating to the practice of strategic account management and is the vehicle that enables SAMA members to be the best community of practice. Thousands of account professionals, SAM managers, and C-level executives at the world ’s largest and most forward-thinking companies read Velocity to learn about best practices and next practices from professionals who are facing the same challenges they are.
By having an article published in Velocity, you ’ ll be recognized as having expertise on the topic, and you ’ ll elevate your visibility within the community and your own organization. Your organization will benefit by having its name brought to the attention of the wider community as a thought leader.
But you ’re not a writer, you say? Not a problem. Your professional knowledge is more important than your writing skills. The SAMA editorial staff can help with grammar, organization, and style. If you can write a business letter, you can author an article.
If your firm has a public relations, marketing, or communications department, they may be able to help you document your knowledge and experience. Do make sure, though, that you provide them with in-depth information and that you review their documentation of your knowledge and experience for accuracy and to ensure it meets the article requirements below.
Case Studies
Case studies are particularly welcomed, answering the questions and following the format of:
• what was the issue;
• what were the steps taken to address the issue;
• what resulted for the SAM, the SAM ’s organization, and that of the SAM ’s clients?
Article Requirements
Articles must be directly applicable to strategic account management (not just sales). It helps to keep in mind that SAMA’s audience consists of those who work in complex, highly matrixed organizations and focus on building strong and mutually beneficial relationships with a company ’s most important customers and partners. Articles must avoid directly promoting a product or service.
Velocity articles range between 2500 and 3500 words, covering three to five pages. These ranges are approximate; somewhat over or under these word counts is fine if justified by the content.
Articles from consultants and academics are welcome, but bringing aboard a practitioner co-author will get you to the top of the pile. If that ’s not possible, please consider adding concrete, real-life examples from your work with clients.
Graphics that aid in understanding an article are also welcomed. In addition, please consider contributing original research in graphic form to Velocity ’s Data Watch column.
If you ’ ll be working with graphic designers or printers, have them contact halverson@ strategicaccounts.org for the more technical requirements for graphics.
Who We Want To Hear From
✓ SAMs and sales executives, managers, and account managers at all levels
✓ Procurement, strategic sourcing, and supplier relationship management executives
✓ Independent consultants and academics working with strategic account organizations. Articles co-authored by a consultant and a practitioner, or an academic and a practitioner, lend credibility to theory.
Key Subject Areas
While authors may choose a topic most relevant to their own experience, some of
the topics most relevant at this time are:
• Organizing and running the SAM program central office
• Going deep: uncovering strategic information from and about the customer
• Leveraging technology, data, and/or analytics to change the way you drive significant revenue with your customer, working internally and/or collaborating externally
• Implementing innovation
• Deploying disruption
Quantifying and validating customer value in a case that resulted in a valuebased price solution or that prevented losing a deal and/or the customer
Elements of a Successful Submission
An article doesn’ t need to contain ALL of the following, but the more boxes it checks off, the higher priority it will be given.
✓ Practitioner author or co-author
✓ If written by a consultant or academic, must incorporate practitioner point of view
✓ Real, concrete business examples that exemplify the concepts discussed in the article
✓ Hard data
✓ Innovative concepts/ “ Next practices ”
✓ Human element
How To Submit
If you already have a white paper, case study, or article ready to go, send it to Velocity Editor-in-Chief Nic Halverson at halverson@strategicaccounts.org. You will be notified that your article has been received and is under review. If you just have an idea for an article, send a brief description and any supporting materials to halverson@strategicaccounts.org.