Key Responsibilities and Required Skills for Regional Director of National Accounts
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🎯 Role Definition
The Regional Director of National Accounts is a senior sales and client leadership role responsible for owning and growing enterprise-level customer relationships across a defined geographic region. This person leads cross-functional teams to deliver revenue, retention and margin targets for strategic national accounts, develops and executes account plans, negotiates high-value contracts, and serves as the executive-level relationship owner to C-suite stakeholders. The role requires a strategic salesperson and operational leader who can translate corporate strategy into measurable account-level outcomes, influence product and marketing priorities, and scale best practices across a regional team.
📈 Career Progression
Typical Career Path
Entry Point From:
- Senior Director / Senior Manager, National Accounts or Strategic Accounts
- Regional Sales Director, Enterprise Accounts
- Head of Key Accounts / Major Accounts Manager
Advancement To:
- Vice President, National Accounts
- Senior VP / Head of Sales — Region or Segment
- Chief Commercial Officer (CCO) or Head of Global Accounts
Lateral Moves:
- Director of Strategic Partnerships or Alliances
- Director of Channel Sales or Distribution
- Director of Customer Success for Enterprise Accounts
Core Responsibilities
Primary Functions
- Develop and execute a comprehensive regional national accounts strategy that aligns with corporate revenue, margin and market-share targets; own quarterly and annual targets and demonstrate consistent year-over-year growth for strategic enterprise customers.
- Lead the creation and execution of detailed, multi-year strategic account plans for top-tier national accounts, including goals for revenue expansion, cross-sell/up-sell opportunities, product adoption, renewal timing, and executive engagement milestones.
- Own full-cycle contract negotiations with enterprise customers, including pricing strategy, commercial terms, SLAs and renewal negotiations, ensuring alignment with legal, finance and pricing governance to protect margin.
- Serve as the primary executive sponsor for strategic national accounts, building and sustaining C-level and economic buyer relationships to drive long-term retention and advocacy across multi-site deployments.
- Manage the regional national accounts P&L, forecasting pipelines, revenue recognition timing and margin levers; provide accurate monthly and quarterly forecasts to corporate leadership and recommend corrective actions when needed.
- Build, lead and coach a high-performing team of national account managers, account directors and sales operations resources; set clear quotas, KPIs and career development plans and drive continuous performance improvement.
- Drive disciplined pipeline management and opportunity progression through CRM (e.g., Salesforce) best practices, ensuring consistent forecasting accuracy, timely opportunity updates and healthy funnel coverage across the region.
- Lead cross-functional deal teams (product, marketing, legal, finance, delivery) to accelerate complex enterprise sales cycles and ensure successful post-close implementation and customer onboarding.
- Design and implement account governance models (executive business reviews, QBRs, governance cadences) with customers to monitor value delivery, identify expansion opportunities and mitigate churn risk.
- Develop and execute territory and coverage models that maximize penetration across multi-location national accounts while balancing new logo acquisition and existing account expansion.
- Own responses to RFPs / RFIs for strategic national accounts, coordinating subject matter experts and tailoring solutions to meet customer technical and commercial requirements.
- Analyze competitive landscape and account-level win/loss data to drive differentiated positioning, pricing adjustments and product feedback loops to product management and marketing.
- Partner with marketing and product teams to design targeted campaigns, case studies and proof-of-value programs that accelerate adoption and shorten enterprise sales cycles for national accounts.
- Implement value-based selling frameworks and ROI justification models that help customers quantify business outcomes and strengthen the commercial case for strategic investments.
- Drive cross-sell and up-sell initiatives by identifying adjacent product and service opportunities, coordinating bundled offers, and aligning internal incentives to maximize wallet share.
- Manage contract renewals and retention strategies proactively—develop escalation plans for at-risk accounts and lead retention negotiations to achieve targeted retention and lifetime value goals.
- Establish and track regional KPIs including ARR/ACV, renewal rate, churn, average deal size, sales cycle length and quota attainment; create executive-ready dashboards and regularly present results and strategic plans to senior leadership.
- Ensure compliance with corporate policies, industry regulations and contract obligations across all customer engagements, including data privacy, security and billing practices.
- Lead hiring, onboarding and talent development for the regional national accounts organization, establishing competency models and internal training to scale account management best practices.
- Partner with operations and customer success to ensure smooth implementation, adoption and support handoffs; monitor post-sale outcomes and sponsor remediation when delivery issues threaten account health.
- Advocate for customer needs internally by providing prioritized feedback to product, engineering and support teams, influencing roadmaps based on high-value customer requirements.
- Optimize pricing and discounting strategies for national accounts in collaboration with pricing and finance teams, ensuring disciplined approval workflows and margin protection.
- Plan and manage regional travel, executive-level meetings and field engagement cadence to sustain high-touch relationships with key customers and to facilitate strategic negotiations in-person.
- Act as the voice of the region in corporate planning—informing territory planning, product launch strategies and go-to-market investments based on account-level insights and regional market dynamics.
Secondary Functions
- Support ad-hoc executive briefings and internal stakeholder requests with account-level analyses, slide decks and recommendations for strategic decisions.
- Contribute to regional sales playbooks, account planning templates and repeatable processes that improve efficiency and scalability across the national accounts organization.
- Partner with sales enablement to develop training modules, sales collateral and case studies tailored to large enterprise customers and vertical-specific use cases.
- Support pilot programs and early adopter initiatives to validate new product capabilities with strategic customers and capture measurable success stories.
- Participate in trade shows, industry events and customer advisory boards to generate market intelligence and deepen regional brand presence.
Required Skills & Competencies
Hard Skills (Technical)
- Enterprise account management and strategic account planning — demonstrated ability to develop and execute multi-year plans for Fortune 500 / national accounts.
- Complex contract negotiation and commercial acumen — experienced in negotiating master services agreements, statements of work, renewal terms and pricing.
- CRM proficiency (Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics or equivalent) — pipeline management, forecasting and reporting discipline.
- Sales forecasting, territory planning and quota management — strong track record of predictable quota attainment and accurate forecasting.
- Financial literacy — P&L ownership, margin analysis, pricing strategy and ROI modelling.
- RFP / bid management — experience leading responses to large-scale procurement processes.
- Data-driven decision making — analytic skills using Excel, BI tools (Tableau, Power BI) or sales analytics platforms to drive account insights.
- Cross-functional project leadership — experience coordinating product, delivery, legal and finance to close complex deals.
- Knowledge of contract law basics, commercial terms and compliance considerations for enterprise agreements.
- Industry or vertical knowledge relevant to the employer (e.g., healthcare, retail, manufacturing, technology) and ability to translate vertical pain points into value propositions.
Soft Skills
- Executive presence and influencing — confident presenting to C-level stakeholders and leading strategic conversations.
- Strategic thinker — ability to create long-term account strategies while executing short-term tactical initiatives.
- Coach and people leader — proven capability to mentor, develop and scale a regional sales team.
- Relationship builder — expert at building multi-stakeholder relationships across large accounts and internal teams.
- Consultative selling — skilled at uncovering business problems and positioning enterprise solutions tied to measurable outcomes.
- Negotiation and persuasion — strong closer with a track record of navigating complex procurement and legal processes.
- Strong communication — excellent written and verbal skills for business reviews, proposals and executive updates.
- Problem solving and resilience — adept at resolving escalations and turning around at-risk accounts.
- Collaborative mindset — works effectively across matrixed organizations to drive shared outcomes.
- Change agent — comfortable driving process improvements and adoption of new tools or methodologies across teams.
Education & Experience
Educational Background
Minimum Education:
- Bachelor's degree in Business, Marketing, Finance, Engineering or related field.
Preferred Education:
- MBA or advanced degree in business, sales leadership, or a relevant technical discipline.
Relevant Fields of Study:
- Business Administration
- Marketing
- Finance
- Engineering
- Information Systems
Experience Requirements
Typical Experience Range: 10–15+ years of progressive experience in enterprise sales, strategic accounts or national accounts management, including at least 5 years managing large or national accounts and leading teams.
Preferred:
- Demonstrated history of managing Fortune 500 or large multi-location accounts and achieving consistent quota attainment.
- Proven experience in negotiating high-value contracts, owning regional P&L, and driving cross-functional initiatives that deliver measurable customer value.
- Experience in the company’s industry or adjacent industries, with an established network of contacts at senior levels within target accounts.