most important customers -- then where do you want them to be spending their time: dealing with operational/transac- tional-type exercises and firefighting? Or actually working to grow your customers? Tools enable the SAM to focus on the latter.


SAMA has research that


organization, from the customer, from your own suppliers – even from your competitors. You need tools in order to manage all of this.


our key accounts to create a place for those interactions with selected clients.


HD: And don’t forget that the new


shows that people who do really good account plan- ning are most effective with their customers, and a lot of these tools hit really hard on account planning. And SAMA also has research showing that SAMs only spend something like 20 percent of their time actually being strategic with their cus- tomers. Enabling tools can help boost that number much, much higher – which is where you obviously want to be.


HD: As a long-time salesperson and


SAM, I can attest that internal selling and administration is the bane of most salespeople’s existence.


here, which is


I also want to touch on one other angle this


idea of being able


to create and manage a community of stakeholders – which is critical when you are thinking about building an ecosys- tem around your customer. This ecosys- tem can include people from your own


1 0 VE L O C I T Y ®


When you’re working across time zones, geographies, entities – you


don’t want to be spending your time worrying about “version control.”


The basic tools of the SAM, the ones


they use the most are email, PowerPoint, Excel and Word. And the problem with all those tools is that they’re static and difficult to connect with different groups of people. It’s all manual. And when you’re working across time zones, geog- raphies, entities – you don’t want to be spending your time worrying about “ver- sion control.” After a while, confusion reigns.


DF: Undoubtedly, one of the key dif-


ferentiators of the SAM or KAM is they have a broader reach they need to under- stand. It’s way more important (than for a salesperson) that everything is up-to- date and dynamic. At IBM, we custom- built a digital platform specifically for


SAMs [Ed: not to mention key play- ers at your customers] may be digital natives. They know that the old-school tools like PowerPoint and Excel aren’t effective. They’re


experts at


managing communities, and they expect tools that can help them do that. If you want to be relevant to them, you can’t do


that with crappy old technology. There’s a better way to do things.


NZ: What is it about the SAM role that


requires enablement technology specifi- cally tailored to it, rather than just using some of the more widely available sales- enablement tools?


DF: In my experience, the typical sales-


enablement tool is really focused on how you do a deal. It’s about qualifying deals, submitting proposals...all the steps need- ed to put together a single deal. SAM- enablement tools focus much more on creating lasting, sustainable relationships with your strategic customers. They’re much more qualitative, less internally focused. n


VOL. 21 ISSUE 3 2019


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