The Secrets of Successful Strategic Account Management: How Industrial Sales Organizations Can Boost Revenue Growth and Profitability, Prevent Revenue Loss, and Convert Customers to Valued Partners

By Richard Santucci and David Hughes

Richard Santucci and David Hughes leverage their combined fifty plus years of experience in industrial sales in this guide that reveals how to take care of your most important customers.

The Secrets of Successful Strategic Account Management begins by highlighting why companies must establish a strategic account program. The authors then lay out an easy-to-follow process to build such a program.
The guide presents in layman’s terms a successful and proven process to enhance sales at twice a company’s average growth rate through strategic account management techniques. Learn how to:

• identify strategic accounts;
• select effective strategic account managers;
• build out a team focused on bolstering business;
• avoid common mistakes that cut into profits.
Join the authors on a journey focused on boosting revenue growth and profitability, preventing losses,
and converting customers into valued partners through strategic account management.

“Santucci and Hughes have done a great job of laying out a playbook for developing a robust strategic
account program, with some great tools and templates that will help the reader develop their own program.”
—Naren Gursahaney, Non-Executive Chair of the Board-Terminix

“The Secrets of Successful Strategic Account Management is the perfect blend of theory and
implementation to guide your company in building strategic account management capabilities. Santucci
and Hughes deliver insight and practical tips drawing upon their years of sales leadership. A superb
handbook for corporate executives.”
—Christopher Stevens-CEO, Unibloc-Pump, LLC

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Apr 25, 2022
• ISBN: 9781663234780

Richard Santucci

o Richard Santucci, co-founder of S&H Strategic Sales Consulting LLC, was formerly a global key account director for units at Emerson Automation Solutions and Pentair PLC. He also was vice president of Latin America for a unit of Tyco Flow Control, where he doubled the business in three years while leading general management, sales, strategic planning, and marketing functions. He also held numerous roles at Teledyne Analytical Instruments. He holds a Bachelor of Science degree in chemistry from California State University, Los Angeles. o David Hughes, co-founder of S&H Strategic Sales Consulting LLC was formerly the Director of Global Strategic Accounts for Emerson Electric’s Final Control Business Segment. His involvement in strategic account management began when he was asked to initiate and develop the strategic account program, along with Richard Santucci, for Tyco Valves and Control’s Oil and Gas business in 2010. Prior to that that, David led Tyco Valves and Controls’ US sales and distribution business; a business he grew 60% in three years. He also managed sales for Valquip Corporation, a specialty distributor of industrial valves and heat tracing equipment. David served on the board of the Valve Manufacturers Association and was the board chairman during the 2018/2019 board year. He graduated from the University of Michigan with a bachelor’s degree in business administration.

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Copyright © 2022 Richard Santucci and David Hughes.

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ISBN: 978-1-6632-3479-7 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-6632-3478-0 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2022900524

iUniverse rev. date: 04/19/2022

Contents

Preface

Introduction: The Burning Platform for Strategic Account Management

Chapter 1 Strategic Account Management Definition and Benefits

Chapter 2 Selecting Strategic Accounts

Chapter 3 Selecting Effective Strategic Account Managers

Chapter 4 The Strategic Account Management Team

Chapter 5 The Strategic Account Sales Growth Planning Process

Chapter 6 The Relationship Management Plan

Chapter 7 Strategic Account Plan Review and Analysis

Chapter 8 Evolution of the Strategic Account Relationship

Chapter 9 Program Communications

Chapter 10 Lessons Learned

Conclusion

Appendix

Definition of Acronyms

Selection Matrix

Global Account Selection Committee

Strategic Account Manager Operating Rhythm

Sample Job Description: Global Strategic Account Manager

Sample Job Description: Global Strategic Account Program Manager

Critical Site List

Customer Strategies and Enabling Solutions

Sample SWOT Analysis Chart (for Strategic Account and for Company)

Competitive Matrix Tool

Product Portfolio Status

Offering Potential Matrix

Overall Business Growth Chart

Relationship Assessment and Management Plan

Relationship Status Scale

Executive Sponsor Selection and Pairing Tool

Sample Value Delivery Program

Sample Newsletter

Sample Global Strategic Account Manager Monthly Report

Preface

Authors Richard Santucci and David Hughes accumulated over fifty years of experience in the industrial business-to-business (B2B) sales function with specific emphasis in sales management, distribution, and sales channeling strategies; marketing; strategic planning; sales resource onboarding and training; customer segmentation tactics; and in the last decade, strategic account management programing.

Their careers provide insights not found in academic treatises that are valuable to those involved in sales. Their trajectory in sales is rich in successes but also a few failures that collectively provide lessons learned through trial and error, illustrating what works and what does not. Realizing their experiences could bring value to current and future sales leaders, they decided to form S&H Strategic Sales Consulting, LLC.

The sales discipline is a crucial, yet significantly broad company organizational function. As such, it cannot be covered in a holistic manner. So, they decided to first write about their knowledge in strategic account management programming. They hope this work guides sales leaders through the organizational process and more importantly, brings tangible value to your bottom line.

Introduction:

The Burning Platform for

Strategic Account Management

It is true, especially as it relates to industrial companies, that a large percentage of a company’s business is transacted by a small percentage of its customers. Anecdotally, it is often said that 80 percent of an industrial company’s business is provided by 20 percent of its current customers. Many of those customers should be considered strategic accounts and provided with enhanced attention and resources.

The following fictitious, but very possible, scenario illustrates the importance of understanding who your strategic accounts are and making sure that you assign the necessary resources to keep them as your most important customers.

Imagine that you are a manufacturer of high-end widgets. Your company is called Dynamic Corporation. Acme Corporation is one of the 20 percent of Dynamic’s customers providing 80 percent of its business. In fact, Acme is responsible for almost 8 percent of Dynamic’s annual sales.

John Smith, a sales representative with Dynamic Corporation, has called on the Acme location in Hometown, Montana, for ten years. John knows all the key people at the Hometown location and has a great relationship with all of them. The employees at Hometown love John. They are incredibly happy with his service and the performance of the widgets his company manufactures. One beautiful summer day, John visits the Hometown location, making his normal monthly visit, only to be told that they will no longer be buying widgets from Dynamic Corporation. When he asks why, he is told that the decision was made by the corporate headquarters in New York City.

John, of course, is upset about this turn of events and does some further due diligence. First, he asks his VP of sales, Larry Wilson, who it is that is assigned to call on Acme’s corporate headquarters in New York. To his surprise, he is told that since the corporate headquarters does not actually place any orders for widgets, no one is assigned to call on that location. John then calls the procurement leader at Acme to understand why the decision was made to purchase from someone else. He finds out that Globex Corporation has been calling on Acme’s headquarters for quite some time and made them a proposal to provide all the widgets for all their global locations for an attractive price. Further, he finds that several of Acme’s locations in China were experiencing delivery issues with Dynamic’s widgets coming from their factory in Asia. After evaluating Globex’s widgets technically and feeling comfortable with their supply chain capability and financial capacity, they decided to switch all their business to Globex Corporation.

Just like that, with one decision 8 percent of Dynamic’s business is gone! This could have been prevented had Dynamic employed a strategic account management program that would have focused a significant effort on making sure that the value proposition of Dynamic’s widgets was made clear to the employees at Acme’s headquarters and would have monitored threats that could possibly put the business at risk. Ensuring that major customers like Acme Corporation do not make unilateral decisions like this one is one of the main reasons for having a strategic account program.

This book explains why a customer like the Acme Corporation should have been included in a strategic account management program and how that program could have avoided the significant loss of their business. We begin by defining strategic account management and its major benefits. Then once a decision is made to embark on a strategic account program, there are a number of processes that need to be followed to ensure the program’s success. We go on to explain in detail those critical processes, beginning with account selection and ending with creating a communication plan. We will take you through the chapters utilizing the following flowchart where we highlight each topic