If you were being truthful about account executive training in your agency -- you just said, baptism by fire.  We hired them and on their first day...took them to a client meeting and it was off to the races.  The good ones thrive and survive and the ones who can't cut it, fade away.  But we're lousy at training new people. That's an ugly truth about our business.  And it's not done out of disregard or cruelty.  It's just the reality for small and medium sized advertising (marketing, PR, digital, interactive) agencies.  There's no training program in place and we're hiring them because we need their boots on the ground.  Now. In our two-day Account Executive Training Bootcamps (check our AE Bootcamp schedule here) we ask the participants to create a list of the top things a client expects of them and the top things the agency owner expects of them. Guess what -- they get it wrong. No big surprise considering we throw them into client work and usually, if they're new to the business, they begin managing project details, taking orders and creating a good relationship with the client.  So they think that's at the core of their job responsibilities.    Those things are certainly part of the job -- but would they be on your list of the top five things you want from your account executive? I get that you don't have a developed in-house training program and can't take the time to  create one, let alone implement it.  But, if you're not going to do that -- at the very least, take some of these steps. Send your new/young AE to account executive training:  Whether it's our AE Bootcamp (we've been conducting this course for [...]