One of the questions I get from agency owners all the time is "how many clients can an account executive manage?" On smaller accounts or where you don’t have multiple levels of AEs working on the same client, it’s pretty easy. There are two different ways of looking at it. The first one is an [...]
Every agency wants to be their client’s go to partner. It’s not enough to deliver top notch creative or marketing strategy. Today’s clients (as we learned in our CMO research study) want an agency who can think beyond marketing and help them with solving wicked problems. My podcast guest, Gareth Kay, and his company Chapter, [...]
As an agency owner of 20+ years – and someone who guides small- to mid-sized agencies in my role at Agency Management Institute every year – I spend time with hundreds of owners and their employees I get the worries and the risks that come with owning your own agency. I’m a firm believer in [...]
What is an account executive in marketing? What does account executive training consist of? In most agencies, an AE's first day consists of: A "fill out all the paperwork" meeting with your HR/accounting person A quick tour of the office, introducing the new account executive to the team as you walk through A lecture about [...]
We just wrapped up one of our account executive training workshops -- we call it the Advanced Account Executive Bootcamp. A great group of dedicated account executives who all want to lead their team to even greater success. Whether I'm doing the advanced training or the Bootcamp for more entry level AEs -- we spend quite [...]
This article discusses client retention strategies, and explains what clients are truly looking for from their ad agency. In our AE training (both the bootcamp and the Account Service Advanced Training) we ask the participants to make a list of what they think their clients want from their advertising agency. It's a rare AE that [...]
A couple weeks ago, I spent two days leading a workshop for account executives. In AMR's AE Bootcamps -- we talk a lot about how an AE is basically running a division of the agency and is responsible for the financial health of their division. Our goal is to help AEs realize that they have [...]
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 [...]
One of my pet peeves is the hiring practices of agencies -- we need to stop hiring "nice". Earlier this month, we kicked off a conversation about why agencies find themselves relegated to vendor status. If you remember, we identified 3 causes. The economy — workforce reductions, budget cuts and overall fear (out of your control) [...]
