Valkre’s software is built on SAMA’s proven 7-Step methodology to help teams visualize, create, and measure value for strategic or key accounts. Designed to make complex strategic planning, such as mapping customer relationships and tracking goals, easier, Valkre enables companies to identify their highest-priority customers so that their KAM program can scale and succeed faster.
More B2B enterprise sales organizations are starting to explore Key Account Management (KAM). Also known as “strategic account management,” KAM is a way of segmenting and strategically building relationships with a company’s most important and high-value clients. Sales executives in recent years have started to discover just how valuable it can be when they segment and serve their top 100 accounts in a way that better supports those accounts’ unique needs – and unlocks their growth potential.
One of the most important organizations for promoting and supporting the value of Key Account Management is the Strategic Account Management Association (SAMA), a Valkre partner. For decades, SAMA has solidified Key Account Management as the way forward for enterprise growth and mutual value creation through its time-tested 7-step SAM Process for strategic account management that can help enterprises clarify, organize, and implement their journey to co-creating mutual value with Key Account Management.
SAMA’s process for Key Account Management isn’t just about making more sales. It’s about transforming the way an enterprise sales organization works with its highest-value customers to help drive bigger opportunities in a spirit of partnership. Valkre’s SAMA-aligned software is designed specifically for managing high-value, complex client relationships – in a way that works in lockstep with SAMA’s recommended process for Key Account Management.
Let’s take a closer look at how SAMA’s 7-step SAM process works, how Valkre can support your organization’s SAMA-aligned KAM journey, and what it all means for your organization’s business results.
What is the SAMA 7-Step Strategic Account Management (SAM) Process?
If your company wants to get smarter and more focused in Key Account Management, using the SAMA 7-step methodology can be one of the most effective ways to start. The Strategic Account Management Association’s 7 Step Process is known as the gold standard for training, implementing, and driving results from strategic account management and key account management.
Here’s a broad overview of each step in the journey:
- Step 1: Customer Co-Discovery and Value “Fit”
This step involves assessing the client’s organizational strategy, drivers, and goals, doing an industry and competitive analysis, and assessing the maturity of the buying process. At this stage, strategic account managers should work with influencers and decision makers to prioritize opportunities and evaluate insights around overall “fit.”
- Step 2: The Strategic Account Business Value Plan
At this step, the key account management team formalizes the strategic customer value through the business plan. Key goals are to ensure internal alignment with customer value propositions by using strategic plan, process, and governance systems. Valkre’s software is built to make this simpler and easier. Key Account Management teams can then execute on the value, deliver, and measure results through a customer scorecard, and continually update the plan while expanding mutual value.
- Step 3: Co-Create Value
This is where the strategic account management team needs to validate the “fit” with customer needs, provoke innovative solutions, and map out a blueprint of value propositions and how to monetize them. At this stage, the KAM team will get a clearer, better-defined customer engagement strategy.
- Step 4: Mobilize and Align the Multifunctional Team
Here is where the process builds more momentum for strategic accounts and key account managers. Using a centralized software that integrates with all data sources, KAM teams now need to engage and align their internal cross-functional resources and map external stakeholders to successfully deliver the plan.
- Step 5: Capture Value Through Negotiating and Closing
At this point, strategic account managers need to finalize the value opportunity with their customer. This can be part of a larger conversation around a master agreement. At Step 5, it’s crucial to understand customer negotiation goals and understand the role of the competition. Creating contracts and terms that guarantee mutual value and long-term financial success for both organizations is key.
- Step 6: Execute Value and Deliver to Customer Commitments and Orders
This is the stage of the journey where SAM teams ensure delivery, maintain quality metrics, and document and check the impact on customer metrics. Deliver the value you identified, and use software like Valkre to visualize and quantify that value.
- Step 7: Realize/Expand Value Through Overall Relationship and Outcome Management
Key account management and the SAM Process open up bigger opportunities to drive ROI and mutually favorable outcomes for enterprises and their most valuable clients. This final step of the SAM Process is about realizing those opportunities. Your enterprise team can use a customer metrics scorecard to track metrics such as expanded share of wallet. Assess how you have strengthened the customer relationship by serving as a trusted advisor, not just a transaction-oriented sales team.
What results and outcomes can the SAMA 7-step process deliver?
According to the organization’s published research:
- Strategically managed accounts grow 2x faster than conventional account management
- Companies with mature strategic account management programs achieve 10% higher margins
- 95% of companies have repaired or saved a major account relationship with SAM practices
The seven steps from SAMA are the framework, the key elements of successful strategic account management organizations. If your organization is already talking about the importance of Key Account Management, these steps might already look familiar to your team. Getting more focused and deliberate about KAM, and incorporating dedicated software, can help your KAM team get farther, faster. This is where Valkre can serve as a good partner – with KAM software, training, certification, and beyond.
Is Valkre’s Key Account Management Software Right for SAMA’s 7-Step Process?
Short answer: yes. We’ve built Valkre to support the industry-leading best practices outlined by the Strategic Account Management Association. From setting relationship benchmarks to capturing customer value, Valkre has tools that enable each step of effective key account management.
You will be able to define your processes and identify the stakeholder goals and outcomes that will grow your most important customers. Valkre is intended to accelerate the adoption of new approaches for a more efficient, effective KAM program.
If your company has executive buy-in and has seized the initiative to pursue Key Account Management, and is ready to invest in training and resources like SAMA’s 7-step SAM Process, you need the right framework and enablement. Your existing sales technology stack has valuable information, but it’s trapped in silos. Many customer relationship management (CRM) systems and other sales planning tools are ill-equipped for SAMA’s 7-step approach and can delay adoption and mastery of this methodology.
Valkre is not just another sales planning tool. Valkre is SAMA-aligned software that is built to make SAMA’s best practices executable inside the day-to-day account planning process.
SAMA and its CSAM Program give organizations the 7-step SAM Process as the best-practice foundation for running a strong KAM program or SAM program. Valkre turns that methodology into a working, executable system. The Valkre platform is designed around the SAMA 7-step process and helps teams apply those steps directly inside their account plans, stakeholder maps, customer goals, growth opportunities, mutual value plans, action plans, and leadership reporting.
And Valkre is flexible in how it can work with different enterprises. Valkre doesn’t force every company into a generic template. We help customers take the SAMA framework and blend it with their own language, business priorities, segmentation model, customer structure, and internal processes. So the result is not “KAM in theory” or “SAMA framework” as something that your company has to struggle to fit into. Valkre gives your entire team seamless access to SAMA best practices, but translated and adapted into the ways that your company actually works to manage your most important accounts.
SAMA provides the Gold Standard for strategic account management. Valkre helps companies operationalize it to achieve real-world results.
Valkre is More Than Software – We’re “SAMA Sherpas”
If your enterprise KAM team already knows what SAMA is, you’re already familiar with the 7-step SAM Process, and you want to do strategic account management and key account management the right way, Valkre is a perfect fit. You’ll see acceleration in your process and more opportunities for mutual value creation almost immediately.
If your company is at an earlier stage of the Key Account Management journey, Valkre can help you adopt the SAMA gold standard faster. We can serve as your “SAMA Sherpas.”
Valkre isn’t just a KAM software provider. We are KAM experts who provide ongoing program involvement, training through our partners, and ongoing support to show your team how to get the most out of the Key Account Management methodology.
How Valkre’s Support Works
Valkre is currently working with a major enterprise healthcare company that has already adopted some aspects of the Key Account Management strategy. They’ve segmented out their top 100 accounts, and they’re devoting resources to manage those accounts differently. But this healthcare company is using SAMA concepts for the first time. They’re looking to Valkre to be their “SAMA Sherpas” to meld SAMA into their business and get to the summit of the key account management mountain.
As part of our SAMA-aligned support, Valkre’s experts are helping this company evaluate:
- What pieces of the SAMA process are the best fit, and which pieces are less relevant?
- What is the ideal process to scale up the SAMA method and bring Key Account Management to all of their top 100 account teams?
- How can they adapt SAMA methods to the company’s everyday reality and workflows?
Partnering with Valkre isn’t just a matter of buying sales software or integrating sales tools. KAM teams need training around the SAMA process and someone to show their interdisciplinary teams how to do it well. This isn’t just lift and shift; it means actually embedding the SAMA standards in a relevant way, in a way that fits the company, in a way that they know to be true about their customers.
Valkre is the perfect vessel for that.
Want to see a real-world example? Read this case study about how Valkre helped a client achieve 70% portfolio growth with SAMA’s 7-Step Process as the core principles of a better KAM program.
SAMA & Valkre – Award-Winning Results in KAM
Valkre has been a SAMA partner for years. Since our Day One as a company, we’ve been on board in adopting and promoting the key concepts of SAMA’s strategic account management process.
The results of working with a proven process, in software designed to accelerate and support that process, is evident in our clients. Several SAMA-recognized award winners from the past few years are also Valkre clients.
Here are a few industry-leading companies (and Valkre clients) in recent years that have received SAMA Excellence Awards:
- 2026: Boehringer Ingelheim, AVI SPL, TreviPay
- 2025: AVI-SPL, UL Solutions
- 2024: AVI-SPL
- 2023: AVI-SPL, Boehringer Ingelheim
- 2022: Owens Corning, AVI-SPL
- 2021: Pfizer
By embracing the expertise and sales leadership concepts of SAMA and using Valkre KAM software to execute those concepts in the real world, companies can adopt Key Account Management faster and more effectively – helping to go deeper into their biggest client relationships, co-create value with their most important client accounts, and unleash long-lasting value creation and ROI.
See How Valkre Can Support Your SAM Process: Request a Demo
Want to see how easily Valkre can support your organization’s goals for adopting Key Account Management? We can be your “SAMA Sherpas” with KAM software that aligns with the 7-step SAM process. Our SAMA-aligned software supports every step of the journey and integrates with every other sales planning tool, BI platform, and data warehouse. Start today by booking a custom demo, tailored for your company’s needs: https://valkre.com/demo/
