Impact without authority: The individual lynchpin capability for creating value with strategic customers

Strategic account management as a firm’s strategy and approach to jointly create value with its most important customers depends profoundly on the strategic account managers at the supplier-customer interface. They have the mandate to explore and realize new value creation opportunities, often without the power to formally command the resources required to do so. Whether strategic account managers succeed is largely based on their ability to operate deftly in a boundary spanning role and inter-firm context in which they have little to none authority. Based on structured interviews with thirty strategic account managers from different international firms, this paper explores ‘impact without authority’ as a key individual capability for creating value with strategic customers. We conceptualize impact without authority as a complex bundle of distinct knowledge, skills, and routines and then discuss managerial implications for appointing and developing strategic account managers.