Hiring an agency account manager can feel like walking through a minefield in flip flops.You sift through CVs with varying job titles - Account Manager, Senior Account Manager, Account Director etc - but when you dig deeper, their skills and experience vary wildly.For example two people might go for the same job:
Candidate 1
An Account Director from a boutique social media agency with 7 years experience might be very strong in project delivery but have minimal marketing strategy experience and has been over-promoted because they excelled with one or two clients (sometimes referred to as the 'Peter Principle')
Candidate 2
A Senior Account Manager with 5 years experience from a large integrated agency could be very sales-driven and commercial and is advising clients on marketing strategy during quarterly business reviews
Which one is really suitable for your job vacancy?
It’s not the account manager's fault - it’s just that account management job titles are hugely misleading and very often don’t reflect the leaps required to grow from a junior level to a senior level account management role.
Broadly (and certainly not universally true as it's agency business model dependent) there are three skills 'leaps' made from junior to senior level account management:
1. From managing yourself to managing others
A promotion from AM to AD typically comes with line management responsibility (rightly or wrongly because not everyone is cut out for managing others and might operate better as an individual contributor to the business without a team to manage)
2. From client retention to client growth
A shift in aptitude moves from 'servicing' clients to 'advising' clients where the agency's forecast is a 'north star' and the mindset changes from pleasing clients to challenging clients (without causing friction).
3. From project to business focu
Client conversations shift from "let's deliver this project" to "let's talk about how we can help your business become more competitive". This requires situational awareness and taking an interest in the client's business/market/customer/.
So how do you bridge the gap for your own account management team?
By giving account managers a clear career pathway - a roadmap to develop their skills so they can confidently lead accounts, drive client retention and growth and ultimately add value to the agency.
This is what we focus on in my Account AcceleratorTM programme - a 12-week coaching and training journey designed to develop entrepreneurial account managers.
Do you or someone in your team want to make these leaps (and transform your agency in the process)?
Here's what previous participants have said about the programme.
Want a quick conversation to see if it might be the right fit? Here's a link to my calendar to schedule a 20 minute call.
With the Account Accelerator you get:
Proven account management and growth process – so account managers know how to deliver ‘gold standard’ service to clients and identify new commercial opportunities (e.g. upsells, cross-sells and referrals/recommendations)
End-to-end client growth framework (from onboarding to delivery) – so agency leaders can be less ‘hands on’ in the agency and focus on business growth (or just having more down time)
Proactive client retention strategy – so you increase the lifetime value of your ideal clients (and don’t have to keep feeding your sales pipeline)
