Super NAM! The 5 essential attributes you need to be an excellent Account Manager

What are the key attributes you need to be a Super NAM? I’m sure that your company has a job-description document, which describes the key competencies required for your role.  However, have you paused to consider exactly what skills and attributes you need to excel as an Account Manager? Below are my thoughts on the 5 essential attributes needed to be a fantastic Account Manager.

1. Strong relationship-builder

Building strong relationships both externally with your Buyer(s) and internally with key stakeholders is a critical skill for an Account Manager.  Whilst there does have to be a degree of commercial tension in the relationship with your Buyer, it is true that the more amicable your relationship is, the better results you are likely to achieve.

In Robert Cialdini’s book “Influence” one of his 7 ways to be more influential is through “Liking”.  The more you are liked by someone, the more you’ll be able to persuade them.  This is why building rapport is so important.  Something as simple as a shared interest with your Buyer or making them consistently feel like they are truly heard, can go a long way to yielding your best results with your customer.

This is also true of those who are part of your internal virtual team.  The more you are liked by Brand Managers, Customer Marketing Manager, Category Managers and Demand Planners, the more likely they are to help you to find exclusive products or activations, invest time to give you the best insights, or ringfence your stock when supply in constrained.

One of the key concepts I have learned from my Positive Intelligence™ coaching, is that decisions are often first made using the right region of the brain, where feelings like empathy, curiosity and gut-instinct are generated, before being validated with logic by the left region of the brain.  When you can access the positive emotions of that region of the brain in a customer meeting you can quickly build rapport with your Buyer.

Of course, your attempts to build rapport must be authentic.  The brain can automatically sense when another person is being disingenuous, which then causes defensive reactions.  However, assuming you have built a friendly relationship with your Buyer don’t be too surprised when you get random calls from them showering you with great opportunities for off-shelf display or additional promotional slots.  Don’t underestimate the positive impact that an affable relationship can have on your business results!

2. Resilience

Regardless of the relationship you have built with your customer, there will always be ups and downs.  This is usually driven by the ever-changing winds of business strategy and objectives. 

One-minute things might be going swimmingly with your customer.  The next minute, you could find yourself with a reduction in range and decreased presence in store and on-screen, all because the customer has decided to move their strategy in another direction.

It is normal to feel disappointment, perhaps embarrassment and a drop in energy when circumstances like this occur.  The definition of resilience in these situations is to accept these occurrences for what they are and seek to bounce back as quickly as possible.  Positive Intelligence™ calls this “The Sage Perspective”, whereby you challenge yourself to positively reframe and find the gifts and opportunities from any setback. 

Perhaps there will be ways to refine your proposal for the next range review? Perhaps this might open the door for a top-to-top meeting that you struggled to set up previously?  The key is to find these gifts and act on them with vigour and enthusiasm as quickly as possible, rather than wallow in disappointment.

3. Eye for detail

Forecasting is one of the most important tasks for an Account Manager.  Having an accurate forecast is essential for internal and external business planning.  Forecasting is often one of those tasks that Account Managers leave until the last minute, scrabbling around to input volumes just before the deadline.  Make sure that you are devoting the necessary amount of hours and tackling your forecast well ahead of the monthly deadline, so that you have plenty of time to evaluate the numbers and make tweaks where necessary.

Furthermore, investing the time to review past trends to annualise your base forecasts and predict NPD performance is the cornerstone of good Account Management.  Spend time up front to set up the performance-tracking tools you need and then find a way to automate weekly EPOS data updates so that you can devote your time to analysing the numbers and identifying trends.

A friendly relationship with your Buyer will count for nothing if you can’t secure the necessary stock for promotions or inform them as to how they are performing versus their JBP and Terms targets.  Therefore, having a good eye for detail and passion for numbers is invaluable.

4. Self-starter

At the start of each year, we are set objectives and targets and focus on achieving those specific goals.  If you’re anything like me, you will always have those targets written on a post-it note stuck to your laptop so that you never forget them!

However, the best Account Managers are independent self-starters who look beyond those targets.  What else can you do above-and-beyond your business targets which will make a significant difference and step-change your account’s performance?

The best example from my career was when I worked at a Health & Beauty company managing their largest Grocery account.  We had solid business on Skincare and Suncare, but a flat business on Haircare and zero engagement with the Buyer in that category.  Even though it wasn’t included in my targets I made it a personal mission to re-engage that Haircare Buyer and expand the range in store.  It took 6-months of leaving weekly voicemails, but eventually I got a meeting with her and was fortunate enough to gain new listings in that account.

Doing something over-and-above your plan often doesn’t require you to reinvent the wheel.  It could be as simple as implementing a new process of joint forecasting to improve your customer’s availability or even finding an existing SKU from another market to offer as an exclusive.  Once you have identified the opportunity, make sure that you are tenacious and laser-focused on bringing it to life for your customer.

5. Effective communicator

Being a strong communicator links all of the other attributes together.  An inability to effectively communicate your performance, your plans and your needsmwill severely limit the scope of what you can achieve.

In this sense, being an effective communicator is very closely tied to influencing and relationship-building.  One of the best and worst things about being an Account Manager is that there is almost nothing that you can achieve alone.  Whilst the downside is that it can slow down many processes, the massive upside is the variety of the work and the connections you make along the way. 

So what does being an “effective communicator” entail? In my opinion, this is the ability to relay relevant information with impact and bring stakeholders along the journey with regards to how you want to grow your account.  It requires an awareness and ability to flex your communication style, depending on who you are talking to.  For instance, I used to bombard Brand Managers with too much data, which would dilute my messages and diminish my impact.

Having a deep understanding of and empathy for your audience can help you land your messages with maximum impact.

How building Mental Fitness can help

Each of these key attributes can be enhanced by building your Mental Fitness.  Having stronger mental muscles can stop you from being controlled by negative thoughts and help you to gain the clarity of thought and focus required to prioritize your most important tasks and also access your curiosity and creativity to unlock those game-changing opportunities.

As is true of any lasting habit change, this takes at least 6-weeks of intense work.  If you are interested in this game-changing program then take the Positive Intelligence Saboteur Assessment https://www.positiveintelligence.com/saboteurs/ and then book a free 30-minute coaching call with me at https://www.expcoaching.co.uk/ to find out more!