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Just to start with, what does a real global key account mean today?

Global key accounts are typically multinational customers who usually have an expectation of being supplied and serviced worldwide in a consistent and coordinated way. Multinational companies have increasingly begun to buy in a centralised or co-ordinated way instead of ‘multi-local buying’ and in doing so have become global customers. They seek suppliers who can treat them as a single entity and can provide consistent and seamless service across countries. Global key accounts are those customers that require a dedicated account organisation to support them.  They generally represent large customers who provide a significant proportion of the vendor company’s revenues.  They are ‘key’ because any major downturn in the revenues that they generate for the vendor would result in often serious consequences for the vendor such as reductions in operational spend, impact on product roadmaps and even down.

With increasing consolidation in the telecom industry today, customers are more ‘Glo-cal ’than ever as the local markets / operating companies need their local service providers to be leaders in the market and effectively competing against other providers. Vodafone Group is a perfect example of this structure(It has operations in 26 countries, 48 countries reach through partner markets, 73 countries with IP VPN and 118 countries with 4G roaming coverage.  Source- Annual report FY17-18). Whilst localised solutions are important to drive competitive advantage of the products/services, they must also be in line with the Global or Group Guidelines or best practices.

This ‘Glo-cal’ approach means that the buyer-seller interface is often represented as a ‘network’ of people/ organisation/ divisions, from different functional areas, at different levels in the hierarchy and fulfilling different roles. Often customers do not want a single point of contact from a supplier but a multi-functional team, aligned to their organisation. This means that suppliers often look to their customer’s organisation in order to design the best key customer account rather than creating sales teams geared towards products or geographies.

This two-way interaction process aims to bring mutual benefit to both customer and vendor and can lead to what most organisations define as ‘Partnering for growth’.  A partnership approach, also defined by customer procurement teams as ‘Strategic Vendor Management’, should be based on transparency, trust and an open dialogue creating value.
 


Managing global accounts has a lot of challenges. How do you deal with the ambiguity linked to customer organisations, divisions, locations?

You can make decisions on the basis of the information you have and even if that isn’t the whole picture, you can cope with uncertainty/risk and you can adapt to change.

In order to achieve this, there are few factors we focus on in our customer engagement plan:
‘Personal contact’ is of prime importance for managing the ambiguity and understanding the roles i.e. decision makers, influencers, as well as the transfer of ‘soft data’ and objective facts. Thus, building personal relationships with the key stakeholders is mandatory to deal with ambiguity.
‘Social contact’ is worth maintaining even if our contacts change their locations, jobs in the customer organisation.    
‘Account Team’– focussed on global and local interactions with the customer organisation, as well as a very well co-ordinated mapping of different divisions and locations with effective team communication, helps decision-making based on collective ‘team’ judgement.
‘Periodic governance’ with key customer stakeholders across different divisions/ locations, plays a major role in ‘anticipating’ customer behaviour and adapting to change.
•Last but not  least; ‘crisis management’ is key to keeping ambiguity and consequential impact under control when a major problem/crisis occurs.  Personal contacts and clear escalation paths/processes are the best ways to manage any serious issues that may arise.

We are able to implement this type of customer management methodology in Nokia, thus, is better placed to create mutually beneficial growth opportunities with our customer/s.

In your presentation, you will touch upon insight-driven ‘challenger selling’ model. Could you please briefly explain how this model works?

The World of Sales is changing and there has been a dramatic change in customer buying behaviour over the last few years. Thus, the role of ‘insights’ i.e. deep understanding of our customer’s business is becoming crucial.  When you are so familiar with your customer’s strategic objectives and the difficulties they face in executing them, then the provision of genuine business insight helps create a dialogue where the value is higher.  
Challenger selling essentially means having such intimacy with your customer’s business that you are in a credible position to both table new ideas and challenge an existing way of thinking.

A Challenger is basically defined by the ability to do three things- Teach, Tailor and Take Control.
•Teach: ‘teach’ for differentiation, based on the unique perspective on customer’s business and ability to engage in the two- way dialogue on different perspectives.
•Tailor: ‘tailor’ the right messages various stakeholders within the customer’s organisation, based on the insights of economic and value drivers
•Take control: ‘take control’ of closing the Sale, rather than getting stuck in ‘no- decision’ land and acting as the customer’s partner in the Sales process.      

When combining the above, these skills help us to create a powerful proxy for natural assertiveness, with our customer/s.  

Translating this simple theory, into an approach that can be practised across the organisation in a structured way, is called a Challenger Selling Model. It’s one thing to challenge customers with new ideas and another thing altogether to ensure you get paid for it.  To ensure this, there are four rules:
1. Lead with unique strengths
2. Challenge customers assumptions
3. Catalyse actions
4. Scale across customers

The sales process in a global setup is much less about getting better at what you already know and much more about creating an ability to tackle what you don’t know.
So, our customers reward us, if we are bringing insights to the table in a structured manner- regardless of where you sell or to whom you sell. Thus, it is increasingly considered to be the best way to out-plan and out-perform competition and unlock growth.

Why is cultural adaptation critical for building long-term business relationships?

Culture is often explained as the ’rules of a game’.  A metaphor in which ‘game’ equates to business life. For people and organisations, these unspoken ‘rules’ mean what they stand for.

The problem is not simply in knowing how the rules are adapted to life, but how they are adapted in different life situations by people in business or organisations.

People buy from People and for long-term relationships development of trust is also a critical factor which occurs through consistently positive interpersonal interaction.  Interpersonal interaction is most effective when the parties have a better understanding and a higher level of acceptance of each other’s culture.

Therefore, while building trust, understanding and adapting to customer’s business culture, is an excellent way to address relationship challenges. For example, foreign firms operating in Russia have to rely extensively on trust in building their business relationships with local partners.  

The key here is to understand and align your customer’s cultural markers, for the overall engagement process.  Most organisations have cultural markers such as:
Speed
Simplicity
Trust
Efficiency

Vodafone uses this to define ‘the Vodafone Way’.  Understanding how culture affects and drives individuals’ behaviour is important as it creates empathetic bridges between both people and organisations.  

Essentially, at the high level, it can be described as ‘we PARTNER with Nokia because we mutually understand each other’.  This kind of statement is an indication of cultural cohesion showing that the organisation has to some degree adapted to each other’s cultures.


What would you like to achieve by attending the Strategic Account Management Conference?

I would like to discover the best practices from other industries as well as the approaches, tools used by the other multinationals, to continuously adapt to the global account environment.  In particular, networking with the participants and the invited speakers can lead to an exchange of interesting ideas that I can bring back to my work.  Thus, a good mix of theory and practice, from practitioners is what I looking forward to!    

   

Ahead of the Strategic Account Management Conference , we spoke with Vikas Sawant, Global Account Director at Nokia Networks about the insight-driven ‘challenger selling’ model.

To view the Conference Agenda, click HERE!

About the Conference:

This marcus evans event is a unique opportunity to discover how to become a strategic partner and co-create with your customer in order to maximise mutual value. The event will enable you to overcome organisational challenges and get company-wide support of your strategic account management programme.

The Strategic Account Management Conference will take place from the 12th to 14th of September 2018 in Barcelona Spain. 

To view the Conference Agenda, click HERE!

Copyright © 2018 Marcus Evans. All rights reserved.

About the speaker:

Vikas Sawant has 16 years of professional experience in International Business & Global Account Management in the telecom infrastructure industry.  He has worked in Asia, Middle east & Europe managing key/ global accounts like Telekom Malaysia, Etisalat & Vodafone Group in his tenure.   While working on those accounts, he has worked on very large multi-million deals, with varied complexity from multi-year telecoms rollout to deals involving financing.   He has also been responsible for Nokia’s indirect business or partnerships in enterprise domain, in Europe & Middle East Africa region.  This has allowed him to get a broad understanding of the decision making process in global accounts, adaption of cultural environment & most importantly managing complex customer organizations/ relationships.

Currently, based in Vienna and enjoys working with teams spanning across multiple geographic regions, as a part of his Global role.  

Successfully Managing Global Accounts for Unlocking Growth

An interview with Vikas Sawant, Global Account Director at Nokia Networks

Vikas Sawant, Global Account Director’ at Nokia Networks

Speakers Include: 
  • Canon
  • Dell Technologies
  • DuPont
  • EDHEC and IPAG
  • Essity
  • Heineken
  • Huawei Technologies
  • Kerry
  • Medtronic
  • Merck Group
  • Neste
  • Nokia
  • Tetra Pak Iberia
  • Unilever Food
Previous Attendees Include:
  • Allianz 
  • Arcelor Mittal
  • Coca Cola
  • Danfoss 
  • Deloitte Consulting 
  • Electrolux 
  • GDF Suez 
  • Goodyear Dunlop Tires 
  • Kraft Foods 
  • Maersk Line 
  • Novartis 
  • Orange 
  • PepsiCo
  • Philips Electronics 
  • Raiffeisen Bank 
  • Syngenta 
  • Tessenderlo 
  • Tetra Pak 
  • Vestas Towers 
  • Volvo

For more information, please contact: Yiota Andreou

YiotaA@marcusevanscy.com

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