National Accounts Manager (Principal)

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National Grid is hiring a National Accounts Manager for business development with strategic accounts in Massachusetts and Upstate, New York. This will be a hybrid role with a primary office location in Waltham, MA or Albany, Syracuse, or Buffalo, NY.

Job Purpose

National Grid is committed to the success of its customers. This role is critically important to National Grid in implementing the clean energy future. The individual will be responsible for understanding the national accounts, developing a deep understanding of National Grid's suite of solutions, and regional energy considerations relating to energy trends and policy. They will develop proactive account planning and lead regular customer engagement sessions for the top national accounts. The individual will own the customer relationship and serve as the customer expert within National Grid, coordinating our internal strategy to meet the customer's needs.

Key Accountabilities

• Engage national account customers with curiosity and intent to learn, and to develop strategic partnerships.

• Develop proactive account planning for assigned customers.

• Share knowledge and develop technical understanding for economic development, energy efficiency, electric vehicles, and the future of heat solutions to determine and shape the customer experience.

• Provide technical guidance, support and coaching to establish National Grid as a leader in energy solutions.

• Build multithreaded relationships within customer account to ensure balanced feedback and account strategy development.

• Distill customer requirements and create a succinct action plan for internal National Grid stakeholders.

• Document action plans and methodically track progress to key company metrics, leveraging Salesforce.com.

• Take initiative to understand business functions within National Grid and supporting organizations, building relationships across teams.

Key Activities

• Account Plans: Develop and manage customer account plans which document shared objectives related to the customers' strategic business plans and daily operations related to energy. Manage associated action plans among internal and external stakeholders.

• Infrastructure Planning: Assist customers with electric and gas infrastructure master planning. Engage Customer Connections and Engineering teams as needed for technical and financial analysis, and problem solving.

• New Connections: Engage Customer Connections teams on specific projects and monitor interactions with the customer on their portfolio of electric connections work, gas connections work and DG interconnections.

• Strategic Partnerships: Partner with Customer Solutions sales teams to develop multi-year Strategic Energy Management Partnerships (SEMPs) with largest accounts focused on achieving clean energy objectives (i.e., Energy Efficiency, Electric Vehicle, electrification, renewable natural gas and hydrogen, greenhouse gas reduction).

• Clean Energy: Explore opportunities to increase customer implementation of clean energy projects (including EE, EV, electrification). Engage with Customer Solutions sales and program management teams on specific projects and monitor interactions with the customer.

• Executive Engagement: Engage National Grid senior leadership in direct discussions with key customers on a periodic basis to ensure the voice of the customer is heard.

Additional Responsibilities

• Travel to customer sites in Massachusetts and New York, corporate headquarters, as needed, for meetings and industry events.

• Provide support during electric and/or natural gas service quality issues or interruptions - owning the communication of resolutions to the customer executive management.

• Liaise with other groups within the Customer Organization team (e.g., Managed Account Services, Account Maintenance & Operations, etc.) and Electric/Gas Operations to address metering, billing, and/or payment disputes, performing initial triage on issues at an appropriate level of detail necessary to handoff for issue resolution.

• Support operations and customer service, including, but not limited to, on-call duties, storm restoration efforts, outage coordination and support for customer service on a 24/7 basis.

• Participate in major storm events as the information liaison for assigned region, stakeholders, and/or customers during outages and other emergencies.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in engineering, marketing, business or equivalent. Masters degree preferred.

• 10+ years of experience in managing national accounts, business development, sales, engineering, and/or community relations roles.

• Business development experience in one or more of the following industries is desirable: retail, restaurants, lodging/hospitality, grocery, and fleet electrification.

• Proven record of developing multi-year agreements with strategic customers.

• Must possess superior business skills to interact with senior management level executives of external customers and community leaders in settings to build strong partnerships with stakeholders

• Must possess excellent verbal, and written communication skills along with the ability to author reports and develop presentations for senior management as required

• Strong understanding of utility sector with expertise pertaining to trends and common customer needs

• Strong understanding of how products and services align to commercial and industrial customer's energy needs

• Experience collaborating and influencing with peers and leaders across multiple functions in the Company and external stakeholders, to achieve positive outcomes for the strategic needs of our large customers.

• Experience in crisis or external emergency management

More Information

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Salary

$126,000 - $148,000 a year

• Upstate, NY

$141,000 - $166,000 a year

• Massachusetts

Salary commensurate with location and experience

National Grid is an equal opportunity employer that values a broad diversity of talent, knowledge, experience and expertise.  We foster a culture of inclusion that drives employee engagement to deliver superior performance to the communities we serve.  National Grid is proud to be an affirmative action employer. We encourage minorities, women, individuals with disabilities and protected veterans to join the National Grid team.