How To Become A Senior Strategic Account Manager: What It Is and Career Path

What is a senior strategic account manager and how to become one

Updated January 8, 2025

3 min read

Quoted expert

Jerri Lynn Kyle

Senior strategic account manager, just as the name implies, involves managing a portfolio of accounts. To excel as a senior strategic account manager, you must be willing and ready to cultivate relationships with people. This way, you will be able to communicate excellently well. You will often need to work with team members to identify and solve clients' problems and also to maximize opportunities to grow the accounts. Apart from this, you will be expected to monitor sales performance metrics and also to prepare monthly, quarterly, and annual report forecasts.

Acting as a liaison between the customers and internal teams is the work of this position. Leverage, sales goals, good negotiation skills, excellent communication skills, account management, are essential skills for this position. The average yearly salary of a senior strategic account manager is $117,235. Most employers ask for a bachelor's degree in sales or business administration or other related fields as the educational qualification for this position.

What general advice would you give to a senior strategic account manager?

Jerri Lynn Kyle

Senior Instructor, Internship Coordinator, Missouri State University

1.Don't be discouraged! Jobs are out there but you might not get your dream job starting out. It's a journey, so try to make the most of every stop.
2.Start building your professional credibility, both with how you perform your job, and how you interact with your coworkers.
3.Finally, be confident, but at the same time be teachable and coachable. Your degree doesn't make you an expert. Sometimes you realize you don't even know what you don't know, and that's okay. You aren't going to know everything and that's why you need to be coachable.

ScoreSenior Strategic Account ManagerUS Average

Salary

8.2

Avg. Salary $123,136

Avg. Salary $59,228

Stability level

6.4

Growth rate 5%

Growth rate 0.3%

Diversity

2.7

Race

American Indian and Alaska Native 0.24%

Asian 4.07%

Black or African American 3.24%

Hispanic or Latino 9.82%

Unknown 4.41%

White 78.23%

Gender

female 34.27%

male 65.73%

Age - 46

Race

American Indian and Alaska Native 3.00%

Asian 7.00%

Black or African American 14.00%

Hispanic or Latino 19.00%

White 57.00%

Gender

female 47.00%

male 53.00%

Age - 46

Stress level

6.4

Stress level is manageable

7.1 - high

Complexity level

8.7

Complexity level is advanced

7 - challenging

Work life balance

4.4

Work life balance is poor

6.4 - fair

Key steps to become a senior strategic account manager

Explore senior strategic account manager education requirements

Most common senior strategic account manager degrees

Bachelor's

77.5 %

Master's

12.8 %

Associate

6.2 %

Start to develop specific senior strategic account manager skills

Skills	Percentages
Leverage	16.81%
Cloud	12.19%
Lead Generation	11.56%
Account Management	9.34%
Business Development	5.06%

Complete relevant senior strategic account manager training and internships

Accountants spend an average of 6-12 months on post-employment, on-the-job training. New senior strategic account managers learn the skills and techniques required for their job and employer during this time. The chart below shows how long it takes to gain competency as a senior strategic account manager based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data and data from real senior strategic account manager resumes.

Research senior strategic account manager duties and responsibilities

Manage and update the business pipeline and provide an accurate sales forecast using Salesforce CRM software.
Develop and manage new accounts for search marketing (SEO), social media marketing, web design and video production.
Evaluate and monitor EDI application development within the healthcare and pharmaceutical industries.
Specialize in identifying vulnerabilities of client s online strategy and implement Feedvisor s technology as a solution with substantial ROI.

Get senior strategic account manager experience

Generally, it takes 6-8 years to become a senior strategic account manager. The most common roles before becoming a senior strategic account manager include account executive, account manager team lead and strategic accounts manager.

Prepare your senior strategic account manager resume

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