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The Rise of the National Accounts Manager

by Mike McLaughlin

Is the role of the National Accounts Manager becoming more important?

At our National Accounts Roundtable, the answer was a definitive "yes". Attendees universally agreed that the NAM role is increasingly strategic and vital. Two reasons why:

• NAMs must have the business, product, competitive, and distributor-specific knowledge to drive success with large distribution partners.
• NAMs must play a key role in successfully coordinating firms' sales, marketing, investment management, and operations resources with the relationship management, distribution, due diligence, and platform resources on the distributor side.

These responsibilities reflect those of a quarterback in football. Not only do NAMs need to coordinate resources, but they also educate the firm about all aspects of their distribution partners, and set strategy for how the firm can best meet those partners' needs.

The Roundtable conversation very-much reinforced several of the key recommendations in our latest report. Our discussions with distributors and subsequent analysis led us to conclude that firms need to upgrade and invest in NAM talent and focus NAM activities.

Why? First and foremost, as noted above, NAMs have become increasingly critical in helping firms devise and execute their strategies with key distribution partners. Two other factors also play a role:

• Smaller NAM Staffs: only 30% of firms have plans to hire NAMs, and the average team has only 7 managers to cover all distribution relationships.
• Increasing Distributor Demands: In-line with Steven's post, distributors are requiring more/better service from their product partners and leveraging their positions in the value-chain to get it.

The Roundtable discussions revealed that several clients have focused their NAMs on 2-3 key relationships each, giving them the responsibility of matching capabilities against distributor needs. In addition, firms are increasingly looking to the distributors themselves to source National Accounts talent. Almost without exception, our clients feel these strategies are helping their businesses.

From kasina's perspective, the bottom line is this: just as quarterback is the most important position on the field in football, so too is the NAM role continuing to emerge as crucial to ensuring future distribution success.