Executive Summary
Key Account Management (KAM) has long been misunderstood. Too often, it is reduced to assigning a manager to a handful of large customers, hoping that proximity alone will secure growth. But at the B2B Growth Summit 2025, Carlos Martin Boix, Commercial Excellence Manager at Saint-Gobain, challenged that notion.
Saint-Gobain’s structured approach to KAM shows that true account management is not about size—it is about discipline. It is about carefully selecting the right accounts, deeply discovering their needs, mapping influence systematically, co-creating strategies, and embedding execution as a living practice.
This article builds on Carlos’s presentation, adding ARPEDIO’s perspective on how to move from KAM as an ambition to KAM as an operational reality.
Key Account Management: More Than a Title
Carlos began with a provocation: Key Account Management is not a role; it is a capability.
Treating KAM as little more than “our biggest customers with dedicated managers” misses the point. Without structure, even the best account managers are left to improvise. The danger is twofold: over-investing in accounts with limited strategic potential, and under-investing in those with long-term importance.
This raises a question every leader should confront: Are our so-called “strategic accounts” managed by process—or by personality?
Selection: The Courage to Choose Less
One of the hardest truths Carlos shared is that not every large customer is a strategic account. The temptation to classify all high-revenue clients as “key” is strong. After all, who wants to explain to a customer—or internally—that a big client does not qualify?
Yet this temptation is dangerous. When too many accounts are labeled “strategic,” resources are spread thin, focus is diluted, and genuine strategic partnership is replaced by tactical firefighting.
True discipline lies in prioritization. Some accounts may generate volume but little long-term alignment. Others may be small today but represent critical innovation partners for the future. The courage lies not just in choosing, but in de-selecting.
This leaves a sobering reflection: What growth are we sacrificing by refusing to focus?
Discovery: Beyond Guesswork
Selection is only the beginning. Real KAM requires structured discovery—building a 360-degree understanding of each account. Saint-Gobain combines market data, desk research, and—most importantly—direct customer dialogue to map needs and ambitions.
The alternative is guesswork. Too many account plans are based on intuition, stitched together from what individual sellers believe to be true. This creates blind spots, overconfidence, and missed opportunities.
The discipline of discovery ensures that account plans are based on evidence, not anecdotes. It answers not just what customers buy, but why they buy, and where they are headed next.
The reflection is clear: Are our account strategies grounded in validated insight—or in the memories of whoever last met the customer?
Stakeholder Mapping: Seeing the Invisible
Perhaps the most overlooked discipline in KAM is stakeholder mapping. Carlos underlined a painful reality: deals are not lost because the product is weak, but because a hidden influencer said no.
In every large account, power is distributed across functions, hierarchies, and informal networks. Procurement may sign the contract, but safety managers, innovation teams, or ESG officers may hold decisive influence. Without systematic mapping, organizations risk engaging only with the most visible contacts—and missing the ones who matter most.
Stakeholder mapping turns this complexity into clarity. By visualizing hierarchies, assessing relationship strength, and identifying champions and blockers, account teams can anticipate rather than react.
This prompts a critical question: Do we truly know who decides in our key accounts—or just who answers our calls?
Planning & Co-Creation: From Paper to Partnership
Many companies produce account plans. Few produce account plans that live. Carlos emphasized that KAM planning at Saint-Gobain is not an annual ritual, but an iterative process of alignment. Plans include customer analysis, shared objectives, stakeholder strategies, and measurable KPIs.
But the critical difference is co-creation. Too often, account plans are drafted in isolation, presented to customers as a finished product. The stronger approach is to build plans with customers, treating them as joint roadmaps rather than supplier documents.
This raises a humbling question: Are our account plans really about the customer—or are they still about us?
Execution & Follow-Up: The Discipline of Continuity
Even the best plans mean little without follow-up. Carlos warned against the common fate of account plans: carefully produced, proudly presented—and then left to gather dust.
At Saint-Gobain, execution is treated as a continuous discipline. Dashboards, KPIs, and review cycles ensure that plans are not static, but adaptive. Progress is tracked, gaps are addressed, and strategies evolve as customer realities change.
The reflection is sharp: Is our account plan a compass guiding daily activity—or a museum piece stored in a folder?
The Five Core Steps of KAM Discipline
Carlos’s presentation at the B2B Growth Summit 2025 highlighted that effective Key Account Management is not about size, but about structure and discipline. His framework can be summarized in five core steps:
- Selection: Choose key accounts deliberately based on potential, alignment, and strategic fit—not just revenue size.
- Discovery: Gather deep customer insight through research, data, and direct dialogue with stakeholders.
- Stakeholder Mapping: Visualize influence networks, identify champions and blockers, and assess relationship strength.
- Planning & Alignment: Build joint account plans with customers, aligning on shared objectives and clear KPIs.
- Execution & Follow-Up: Treat plans as living documents with dashboards, reviews, and continuous co-creation.
The takeaway: KAM is not a role—it is a repeatable process.
ARPEDIO’s Perspective: Embedding Discipline Into Daily Work
Carlos’s presentation showed that effective KAM is not built on heroics but on discipline. Yet discipline is fragile if it depends on memory, spreadsheets, or scattered documents. Plans risk being forgotten, insights remain siloed, and stakeholder maps become outdated the moment the org chart shifts.
This is where ARPEDIO comes in. Our Salesforce-native platform ensures that the disciplines Carlos described—careful account selection, structured discovery, stakeholder mapping, co-creation, and continuous follow-up—are not abstract ideals, but living practices.
Instead of debating which accounts “feel” strategic, ARPEDIO provides a structured foundation for prioritization directly in Salesforce. Instead of leaving customer understanding to intuition, it consolidates insights and connects them to opportunity planning. Influence networks no longer live in PowerPoint slides—they are mapped, visualized, and updated where teams actually work. White space potential is no longer a guess, but a dynamic analysis showing where growth is most likely. And execution is no longer a question of discipline alone, but of having forecasts, pipelines, and engagement strategies embedded into the daily rhythm of account teams.
In short, ARPEDIO transforms KAM from a process that risks being episodic into one that is continuous, transparent, and scalable. It gives organizations the digital backbone to sustain the very discipline Carlos challenged us to embrace.
Conclusion: From Ad-Hoc to Discipline
Carlos’s message is both simple and profound: Key Account Management is not about managing relationships; it is about managing discipline.
For B2B leaders, this raises urgent questions:
- Are we brave enough to de-select accounts, or are we trying to be strategic everywhere at once?
- Are we grounding account plans in validated insights, or are we still guessing
- Are we mapping stakeholder power, or letting hidden voices derail our deals?
- Are our plans living guides for co-creation—or static documents we revisit once a year?
At ARPEDIO, we believe the future belongs to organizations that treat KAM as a discipline, not a designation. By combining structured processes with technology that embeds them into everyday work, companies can move from improvisation to orchestration—from hope to growth.
