We are excited to be a sponsoring partner at the Strategic Account Management Association’s (SAMA) Annual Conference in Orlando, Florida on May 20-22, 2019. We are just a few days away and we can’t wait to be there.  For those of you who don’t know about the Strategic Account Management Association, it is a global knowledge sharing and networking organization devoted to developing, promoting, and advancing strategic customer-supplier value, collaboration, and learning.

Hundreds of key account managers and sales leaders of all levels attend the conference to build their network and expand their businesses. It enables the attendees to connect on the future and the challenges of their industry.  

The #1 challenge conference attendees encounter remains the same. Aligning the internal organization around co-developing and delivering value to a small number of critical customers continues to vex even the most progressive, customer-centric organizations. That is why SAMA’s 2019 conference revolves around this perpetual challenge and is called “The state of precision: aligning with your strategic customers for extraordinary results.

This time around SAMA, we have several influential industry leaders as keynote speakers at the event. Let’s look into who these speakers are and what they will be speaking on.

KAI KLATT

Head of Sales Tools & Technology – Sales Center of Excellence at Diebold Nixdorf

‍Kai is a specialist in digitizing sales processes and bringing radical innovation to sales performance. He ensures a consistent, value-added, and best practices-driven approach from improvement potential identification to implementation management and continuous improvement to drive adoption and to support sales performance improvements.

Diebold Nixdorf has triggered a new approach to SAM as well as highlighted the business impact that this technology-led change has brought to SAM’s results within the company. An esteemed customer of DemandFarm, Diebold’s story will inspire your enterprise to take a similar route to make your account planning & execution ridiculously easy. Kai Klatt will be speaking on “How to leverage technology for strategic account management.”

JOHN PINEDA

Director at Boston Consulting Group John is an expert in pricing model transformation, monetization of digital platforms, and pricing value to improve core business profitability. He has worked with clients across a wide range of industries including technology, data/business services, life sciences, industrial goods, and financial institutions.

He has supported clients in implementing large-scale pricing programs, applying pricing quick hits tactics, and developing new subscription-as-a-service revenue models. He will speak on “Digital Readiness: Changing the way we price and sell innovative digital value.”

JONATHAN HUGHES

Partner at Vantage Partners Jonathan Hughes is a partner at Vantage Partners, and an expert in strategic sourcing, supply chain management, negotiation, strategic alliances, and organizational transformation. He has worked with leading companies and state-owned enterprises across a range of industries in North and South America, Europe, Asia, Australia, and Africa.

He has a particular focus on developing and implementing new strategies that leverage enhanced collaboration – across internal organizational boundaries, and with external business partners. Jonathan’s experience includes deep transformational work at both an enterprise and functional level, with a focus on sourcing, supply chain management, and alliance management organizations. He will be speaking on “Alignment with procurement.”

During this session, Jonathan will share insights from a multi-year benchmarking study of hundreds of procurement organizations, along with case-studies from more than 20 years working with procurement.

Key topics will include:

• What makes procurement tick: understanding their goals, metrics, and incentives
• Why and how to profile procurement within each of your accounts
• How to speak the language of procurement
• Procurement hot buttons and how to avoid pushing them
• Aligning SAM with supplier relationship management programs at customers

See You There

Do not miss these star speakers as they will transform how you think about SAM and its processes. They will share energetic stories while offering practical takeaways for achieving your strategic goals. These individuals have expertise in implementing the necessary changes to bring better coordination, collaboration, and revenue to their respective organizations. Looking forward to seeing you all at the SAMA Annual Conference 2019.