SAM Effectiveness Consulting
No product is immune to imitation and improvement. The pace of commoditization is in fact bound to increase in the future. Customer value may truly be the last frontier of differentiation. Strategic Account Management (SAM) is the discipline absolutely focused on the premise of differentiation beyond the product, through customer insight, relationship development, and pragmatic partnership.
Frank’s consulting helps your company design, implement or strengthen your SAM initiative. His services incorporate the right balance of support in each of four key areas.
I. SAM Strategy Refinement
Frank’s SAM strategy consulting lays the foundation for success, whether at the point of launch, strategic renewal, or SAM expansion.
Your mission and vision are rigorously evaluated and potentially redefined, based on organizational competitive strategy as well as the evolutionary stage of the SAM function. These core expressions are formulated without bluster or fluff. Mission and vision are rendered clear, differentiated, and motivational.
You will create a SAM performance model and SAM organizational competencies that draw on best practices in account management and organizational effectiveness modeling. Short-term and long-term opportunities and goals are clarified, allowing human and financial resources to be properly marshalled. Frank helps you craft an overarching SAM Strategic Plan that addresses not only external targets but also the inevitable internal challenges that may thwart progress. This core document is equally pragmatic and ambitious.
II. Customer Value Process Development
Delivery of exceptional and inimitable value beyond the product to high-impact accounts – that is the central pursuit of SAM. Frank’s consulting helps the new or evolving department develop reliable processes to operationalize its customer value proposition and build integrated partnerships with the customer. The processes that Frank can help you ground or optimize include: generating profound customer insight, leading account initiatives, creating deep C-suite relationships, building mission-critical solutions, and effectively demonstrating value to customers.
There are often foundations to build. The organization defines and advances a core set of offerings that can facilitate partnership and offer a bulwark against the competition. There is also systematized flow: the company develops the capacity to innovate new forms of value for the customer, based on the customer insights they collect and the unpredictable partnership opportunities that emerge.
Impact and measurement go hand in hand. Frank also helps you create a customized SAM KPI Framework that will support objective, measureable and impressive progress in your department.
III. Smart Hiring for SAM
Without the right people, SAM is a mirage. Hiring Strategic Account Managers is not business as usual. The role requires a rare mixture of experience, skills, and mindset. Top talent must be carefully recruited, assessed, and – when selected – armed for the ambitious game of SAM.
Frank’s Smart Hiring for SAM processes begin with a customized competency model defining account knowledge, skills, behaviors, and attitudes. This model is then extended into a full job description mapping out mission, competencies, functions, and necessary experience.
From these foundations Frank works with your HR leaders to institute effective recruitment for this often misunderstood function, by communicating the role compellingly both internally and outside the organization. He can help you develop a rigorous interview process, applying behavioral interviewing best practices and drawing on the wisdom of a range of stakeholders. He can help you design and implement assessment centers and experiential activities that bring to the fore both hidden gaps and untapped potential in candidates. Finally, he can help you integrate the diversity of inputs to make a hiring judgment with the highest likelihood of success.
IV. SAM Talent Development
Successful SAM initiatives do not take a merely reactive or ad hoc approach to building individuals, teams, and the leadership pipeline. They succeed by creating a comprehensive, results-focused development platform.
As with his Smart Hiring services, Frank’s talent development program is anchored in a substantive and highly pragmatic competency model defining knowledge, skills, behaviors, and attitudes. This competency model may address both strategic account managers and leaders of the account management function. Each competency is defined through three to five distinct performance levels.
The training programs that Frank designs exemplify blended learning. Elements include intensive workshops, online resources, coaching, stretch assignments, community of practice, and self-directed learning – all in the right measure. These elements are drawn together into a reliable and sustainable process for accelerated growth. Frank can help you design a comprehensive training program that directs your Strategic Account Managers’ growth from initial onboarding, through accelerated learning, to initiative leadership roles.
Frank’s work in SAM talent development is not just about training. He can help you optimize the full range of strategic HR functions related to SAM. For example, he can help you design and implement a SAM Knowledge Management System or SAM Mentorship Program. These are processes that greatly boost team collaboration, impact, and innovation.
V. SAM Branding and Change Leadership
SAM initiatives present a set of acute communication and change management challenges. SAM seems “new”, and possibly a business fad. SAM resembles sales. SAM is inherently somewhat abstract. SAM involves highly refined “soft” skills. SAM is a long-term commitment. And of course, SAM may threaten existing managerial and sales functions. These challenges collectively lead to pockets of stubborn opposition to SAM. The SAM-ready organization faces those challenges head on.
Frank will help your SAM leadership team shift their mindset so they embrace internal marketing and change management realities, and develop process to turn the tide. He applies a proprietary assessment tool – The Granek AM Organizational Alignment Assessment – to bring to light gaps in understanding and buy-in among internal stakeholders.
He works with initiative leaders to raise the value of ongoing SAM contributions and turn key opportunities into unmistakeable wins. He ensures organizational recognition and buy-in are not left to chance by helping leaders elevate ad hoc communications into an integrated and compelling communication campaign. He works with your account manager team to raise their game in ongoing spoken and written communications about their work. They develop a customized SAM Communication Playbook that all stakeholders can rely on to communicate persuasively – and consistently – about SAM identity, process, and results.
