be that the customer has a challenge that does involve buying a product or service. But, regardless of the solu- tions, we need our SAMs to always be focused on understanding the flow of what the customer challenge is, what ideas we have, and what initiatives are


underway to help. For us, the playbook within the soft-


ware is helping us to focus and manage our SAM resources on the continuous process of identifying and solving chal- lenges. With this consistent playbook


across our team, we can now see when consistent challenges are cropping up across our customer base. We can start to share across the team how we solved those challenges. All of this is to help us position the SAMs as a growth engine for SUEZ.


CHALLENGE 3: QUANTIFYING CUSTOMER VALUE


SONOCO


in Valkre and document the quantified customer outcomes. Over the course of a year for one of our large accounts, this might include 50 projects across a half-dozen locations.


In our past we would do this work


Tom Kurt Strategic Account Manager


Aaron Erbe Strategic Account Manager


Valkre has become our productivity


tracker. With our customers, we estab- lish productivity improvement targets on an annual basis. These targets are established at various levels, including plants, regions and corporate. On an agile basis, projects are initiated and executed to achieve the productivity targets. We manage and track all of this


VOL. 21 ISSUE 3 2019


and then, when time for negotiation would come around, it was difficult to get any credit for all of the work. Valkre has changed that for us. We can now very cleanly and visibly track the thread from productivity improvement target, through projects, to quantified customer outcome at the plant, region and corpo- rate level. The reporting and documenta- tion has become a very positive part of our ongoing customer communication.


So, for an individual customer we get great value in the following ways:


• Documenting with numbers has yielded significant progress in grow- ing and defending customer position.


• Having consistent quantified docu- mentation of completed projects over


time within Valkre technology helps with people transitions, internally and with the customer. This is espe- cially true when a new procurement officer arrives on the scene, as we are far better positioned to keep going rather than starting over.


• Oftentimes, when seeking the value of an improvement, we learn facts about the customer they didn’t know about themselves. Our effort to quantify customer opportunities elevates conversations above “price” and towards collaboration.


In addition to these points, the vis-


ibility within Valkre Tech also creates a leverage effect within the customer and across market segments. We are now bet- ter able to leverage a completed project.


• We can share successful projects or lessons learned to help reduce resource demands to achieve incre- mental success.


• Valkre holds together a process that allows us to learn from each other


VE L O C I T Y ® 3 1


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