American Airlines Outlines Its Re-Dedication to Corporate

American's Lucas Martin discusses:

• Current distribution strategy 

• Rebuilding the AA sales team 

• Continuous pricing and bundles 

To say American Airlines has been through some sales and distribution changes lately would be an understatement. After the carrier's prior New Distribution Capability push in 2023 and early 2024 didn't pan out quite the way it had been envisioned, the airline did a pivot about a year ago to reembrace the corporate market and refocus its corporate sales team. To find out where it is currently with its restructuring plan, BTN senior transportation editor Donna M. Airoldi this month spoke with American SVP of sales Lucas Martin, who joined the carrier in February after spending nearly a year working on American's distribution pivot strategy while at Bain & Co. Edited excerpts follow. 

BTN: What did you learn during the past year working on the American distribution change? 

Lucas Martin: The main message is that the indirect channel is very important, and there's numerous reasons why a business chooses to go through the indirect channel. What does that mean for us? It means that our focus needs to be on making sure we are present and we're competing wherever our customers want to interact with our content. That was a little bit what was different from the previous [NDC] accelerate strategy. … My main message is that we need to meet our customers where they're at, and that means we will embrace the [indirect] channel. 

BTN: How has that embrace changed in the past 12 months? 

Martin: We are renegotiating with all the counterparties, whether that be agencies or corporate. We spent a lot of time doing that. Second, a big part of this is rebuilding the team, and this is the team to support our agency partners. It means having the team to be present at industry events. It means ensuring our account ratios are where they should be with our corporate customers. It means being present internationally, which certainly is a growth area for us and where we continue to see resilience in the business. And it means having the infrastructure for sales enablement to make sure that all those frontline sales reps are as effective as they can be. 

BTN: I heard you were hiring about 175 people for the team. What will be their roles? 

Martin: The first part is being present with our agency partners. There's going to be a group led by Neil Guerin who is [over] all our global agency accounts. There's a key part of our managed corporates, Anthony Rader is the individual that's running that. There's going to be an SMB program because there is certainly the managed revenue, but then there's the unmanaged revenue. We need to be really thoughtful about the unmanaged piece as well. Jacob Teplin is our leader of the AAdvantage Business segment. I'm really excited about him. … He has a good perspective on all the evolutions of a small business and the needs at those different life cycles of the business. Then there's a group that's led by Paola Martinez, and she is really our sales enablement. This is making sure that we are looking at the right data that all the frontline salespeople have, the tools they need, both internal tools and external tools. Also making sure that we're ready to support all the industry events that we're back at. And then the international piece, like I mentioned before, being present internationally, certainly a growth area, certainly a place of resilience for us and making sure that we're addressing that as well. As I think about the 175, that is the broad structure. 

BTN: How far along are you in the hiring process, and how will it affect corporate account management relationships? 

Martin: Probably more than 20 to 25 percent have either been hired and are going through onboarding or have already accepted and they're going to start in the next 10 days or so. … I've been super impressed with the team and what they've been able to do with the resources they've been given. To say, here comes the calvary is exciting, but at the same time, I can appreciate how disruptive that might feel to an account where they're like, wait, I really love my account manager. They're so great. I have this relationship with them. Don't change my account manager. … So, the other thing that we're being super, super thoughtful about is what I'll call the account territories for each of the sales reps. We’re being... very methodical on any account transitions that would happen. Generally, if it's a good relationship, it's working well, there's a bias [of] “don't fix what isn't broken” as we're approaching this. 

BTN: How will the new team compare in size and function to what buyers may have been used to before all the changes? 

Martin: It's a different world because we're going to have new and better tools that will allow the team to be much more productive. ... We have to think about it slightly differently from a structure perspective, from a tools perspective, from an account management perspective ... and the new technology that's available. Whether that be on distribution or just honestly portals and AI, all of those different things, the world is different. So, we need to take all those into account. 

BTN: I also understand you restarted your corporate forums. How is that going? 

Martin: Basically, every six months we will have a corporate forum and then I think of it as end of Q1, end of Q3 kind of timeframes. Then in Q2 and Q4, we're doing corporate town halls to be able to connect with our travelers. And one of the things that's super important to me is having a pulse reading on our relationship with our corporate travel managers, not only for us to talk about the new and exciting things that we're doing at American to better support them and the changes that we're making, but just where the relationship stands. So we continuously and from a longitudinal basis run surveys with them to understand what's working, what's not working. Like I said, we're changing a lot on a lot of different dimensions. That feedback is really important to us. Candidly, I think one of the things that we want to get better at and is a focus of mine is just listening to the ecosystem, listening to our agency partners and listening to our corporate travel managers, our customers, and hearing their feedback on where we can do better. 

BTN: During the NDC push, there also was a change to who qualified for a managed corporate account at American. Has that changed again? 

Martin: If it's just on dollar spend, that's a bit of a crude way of doing it. We're more sophisticated than that now. There is how big the company is. There is do you book premium? Do you book main? Do you book domestic? Do you book internationally? And then also what markets are you flying? All of those things start to influence what kind of categories we start to segment our populations on. We also segment on as a broad theme, we want to be great partners to those that want to be great partners to us. That extends to our corporate travelers as well. So those that are great partners to us, then we have our way of defining exactly what that is. But yes, if they're leaning into us, we are absolutely leaning into them. And that is something that we're really committed to.  

BTN: So where does American stand now with NDC? 

Martin: It's the new technology, and there are a number of benefits that come with this. Continuous pricing being one, the idea that you can do unique bundles as another one, there's plenty out there. … There is, I think more than ever, an interest from this sense of obligation that the corporate travel managers feel to give their travelers the best content. So, there is an interest in exactly how they get it, whether they do it directly, do they do it connecting through aggregators or your historic or legacy global distribution system players.  

I think we do have a leading tech on this element and the leading ability to service these tickets, but I view our role as whatever path and whatever pace a corporate chooses to go down, we are there with our content ready to compete, and we are kind of agnostic to exactly what it is. I think there's lots of benefits, but again, the corporate travel manager might decide that for whatever reason, a different path is best for them, and that's their decision. Our reaction to that is we're just going to be there ready to serve you and ready to compete in your chosen ecosystem. 

BTN: Speaking of continuous pricing, you started down that path recently. How far along are you? 

Martin: It's not fully rolled out right now. The current scope for continuous pricing is in the domestic business space. We're currently working on international expansion, and that will be coming shortly. But we're really excited about it. … By definition, continuous pricing is better content from a pricing perspective than what you can get through the EDIFACT channel.  

BTN: What about bundles? 

Martin: Each of the corporates in general have different travel policies. So, a lot of what the account managers are doing now that they have the capacity to have more of those discovery type conversations with the corporates, it's just what really matters to them and how can we make sure that we have the right content that is really exciting for them. And yes, bundles are a part of that. Some of it is bundling some of our existing products in a slightly different way. We're certainly exploring what are the other new elements that we could add to bundles that corporates get really excited about. But it is kind of a continuous conversation that we're having with each of the corporates. … There's a lot of nuance to what many of these corporates really care about. So, it's just our way of being able to meet them where they're at and give them the content that their travelers are really looking for.