Everything agency owners need to know about their account executives with Lori Highby

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It doesn’t matter what kind of agency you run, traditional digital media buying, web dev, PRR brand, whatever your focus, you still need to run a profitable business. The Build, a Better, Agency Podcast, presented by a White Label IQ will expose you to the best practices that drive growth, client and employee retention and profitability, bringing his 25 plus years of experience as both an agency owner and agency consultant. Please welcome your host, Drew McLellan.

Hey everybody. Drew McLellan here with another episode of Build a Better Agency. And today we are gonna talk about the critical role of account executives, account managers, account strategists, whatever you call them. These are the people who are the day-to-Day contacts with your clients who are responsible, whether they know it or not, for growing that book of business, for keeping that client’s business growing and expanding so that your business with them can grow and expand. They are the heartbeat of most agencies. They are mission critical. And oftentimes when you don’t have good account people, it’s where you, the owner, get pulled back into the day-to-Day, where you do not belong because you don’t have confidence in the team that you have.

And so we’ve always, at a MI have always realized how critical a role the account service role is. In fact, since A i’s inception, back in the late nineties, we have always taught an AE bootcamp. And over the years we have expanded it from an AE bootcamp to an entry level, a bootcamp, and what we call the advanced, a bootcamp for employees in the account service role who are, you know, four or five years into their career who are probably supervising other account service people who are doing the thornier, more strategic work with your clients, those folks. And for many, many years, Danielle and I have taught those workshops. And over the last couple years, we have turned to an agency owner that’s been part of one of our peer groups for over a decade, who has a great grasp on agency operations and math has built an incredible team of her own.

And we asked her to start teaching the AE Bootcamp, speak for a couple reasons. Number one, she teaches as a, at a college level, so she’s a seasoned instructor. So we knew we could count on her to teach well, two, she lives and breathes a MI best practices. So we knew that she would pass those along. And three, frankly, she’s a little younger than we are. And so we thought that she would resonate with the account service folks because she’s a little closer to their age than Danielle and I are. And all of that is proven to be true in, in, in spades. It’s been amazing. We’ve gotten rave reviews, she’s added great additions to the curriculum over the course of the years.

And people leave the workshops feeling fired up, understanding what their job is with new tools, new connections of other AEs, and with a renewed vigor for doing their job well. And so I thought it might make sense to have Lori come on the podcast and talk to us a little bit about kinda what she’s seeing as she’s working with all, she’s worked with hundreds now of account service people over the years as she’s been teaching what she’s seeing that they need, what they want, what they’re good at, what they can be better at, where we could support them better in their role, and just really have a better understanding from their perspective, what their role is, what they want it to be, and how we can help tee them up for success.

So without further ado, please help me welcome Lori Highby to the show. Lori, welcome to the podcast. Thanks for joining us.

Oh, I was super excited to be here, drew. Thanks for having me on.

You bet. So you’ve been teaching the AE bootcamps, both the AE Bootcamp and the Advanced AE Bootcamp for a few years. I’m curious if there’s anything, has anything shifted since you started teaching? Are you seeing something different in today’s AEs than you were seeing from a couple years ago?

Well, I think the big thing that I’ve observed is the use of AI and the conversation around ai. And I think some agencies are still have some reservations around implementing it, where others are like every activity is leveraging it to some degree. So it’s really interesting to have the conversation and I appreciate the shared knowledge that happens in the workshops about how they’re using ai. And I try not to put a lot of emphasis on that because obviously there’s a lot of other things that we try to tackle in the workshops. Yeah. But AI is probably the one that has a hot, hot topic right now.

Well, and and you’re right, one of the things I love about all the workshops that we teach is, yeah, we come with a full curriculum to teach, but the knowledge sharing amongst the participants is one of my favorite parts, regardless of the workshop, that people are just eager to learn from one another and equally eager to teach what they know and to share experiences. I think it’s one of the best things about the live workshops is that sort of peer to peer learning for sure.

Yeah, absolutely. And I, I do encourage that from the start. I know you do too. It’s like, you’re gonna get out of this what you put into it. So I don’t want a lecture for two days straight. Let’s make this a joint collaborative learning experience.

Right, right. You’ve now, you’ve now spent time with hundreds of AEs, so, so I feel like you have a pretty good pulse on sort of where they’re at. What, what are some of the things that are the recurring themes that they, that AEs are struggling with that they come to the workshop looking for tools, tips, answers, sometimes just shared experience like, oh, good, it’s not just me that’s having this problem. What are the, what are the, what are the pain points for them in their job?

Yeah, great question. And we definitely open up with, you know, what are your biggest challenges in every single bootcamp? So I have kind of audited what are the trends to make sure that I’m still focusing on educating and addressing those. But there’s a couple that bubble up to the top consistently. Client management is always a big one. Just, you know, how to, how to get the response back from clients, how to get them to understand the value of what it is that we’re selling them and how to say no to them. Sometimes we have to do that. Right. Right. So that’s a big one. Time management is definitely always at the top. You know, how do I get all the things done while also respond to my email and sit in the meetings and keep everyone around me happy?

So we definitely spend a lot of time about that and team management too. So how do I make sure that I, I call ’em the doers on the team are actually happy and understand the ins and outs of, of the work that needs to get done. But the overarching theme is really communication. Yeah. Both internally and the client facing external communication, I think is there, there aren’t really like set guidelines for best practices. And I find that agencies don’t necessarily define the rules of how we’re communicating internally and externally with our clients. And that’s a big conversation we, we dive into.

Well, I think, I think you’re right. I think a lot of agencies, I think like in all aspects of life, there are a lot of assumptions made. And I think one of the, one of the things that agency owners often do is they assume that their employees come in with a certain set of skills or knowledge or even tribal knowledge of like, here’s how an agency works, or here’s how an agency employee shows up. And we’re not really great at communicating to them sort of our expectations around that. So I think what happens is everybody leans on their natural communication style and sort of figures out their way to communicate, which may be bold and upfront. It may be in writing, it may be in person, it may be passive aggressive, it may be as little as possible.

And so you end up having an agency where your entire account service team, and in fairness, the rest of your team as well, this is not unique to account service people. Sure, yep. Yep. Don’t communicate in a way that is commonly understood and respected. And the challenge, I think is the, the account people are the keeper of such a volume of knowledge that they have to be good communicators internally and externally. And if no one teaches them how to do that or the right ways to do that, the best practices around that, how to do some of the hard conversations, then I think they really struggle. Especially the younger AEs who have never been put in a position of this kind of authority before.

Yeah, yeah. That’s, that’s very true. And I find one of the things that we talk about a lot is how to onboard a new, not just a new client, but a new team member too, and defining the rules of communication should really be part of that onboarding process.

Yeah. So, so where do they get messed up in communication? Is it that they don’t know when to communicate that they don’t know how to communicate that they, where, where do they stumble the most do you think?

Oh, I think, I think it’s all of the applause actually. Right? Yep. It’s, you know, I, I find a lot of times I I, someone will ask me like, well, how, how do I handle this type of situation? And I just kind of spit a line out and they’re like, wait, say that again. Let me write that down. And it’s just, so that’s the how part, like how do you craft a a beautiful message that’s gonna relay the critical information in a concise way. And I mean, now AI is a great tool to help us do that. Right. But also, you know, the when and, and you know, what tools and medium, so it’s not, you know, like emails. We all have a love hate relationship with it, but letting the, especially this, the younger greener generation, I would say they’re afraid to pick up the phone and call, but sometimes that is how you have to communicate whatever situation needs to be communicated.

Yeah, I, I, when I was teaching the workshop and just in our interactions with agency employees and frankly agency owners, the fear of actually having a real live conversation, the, the idea that you can control a conversation when it’s by email because you can craft the message and you don’t have to be able to think on your feet. You don’t have to be able to respond in real time. I understand the fear around all of that, but it’s not healthy and it’s not healthy for a good client relationship to be, not to be able to have, especially I think, a difficult or an awkward conversation. I think those are always best to do face-to-face, whether it’s in person on zoom least, you know, at least over the phone Yep.

Where you’re actually having a conversation as opposed to volleying messages back and forth.

Sure. Absolutely. Yeah. And in the, the regular AE bootcamp, I’ve kind of evolved it a bit to have more of the soft communication skills, best practices on how to craft an email, what’s important to be included in an email. Like remove emotion, just stick to the facts because Right. You know, sometimes you’ll regret having some of those emotional messages in those, in those types of communications.

Yeah, for sure. So what surprised you when you started teaching? Now you obvi obviously have your own account execs in your shop. Yep. But what surprised you when you started teaching the bootcamps? What surprised you about the account service people?

I think, and, and I guess I, there’s a little like self-reflection here, but you know, these people are, they’re your air players. That’s why you’re sending them to these workshops. But they really want to contribute. Yeah. They are eager to learn. They want time with the owners and they want to, they wanna do their absolute best work for you, but the way they’re gonna do that is for you to communicate what your expectations are. And I find that a lot of owners don’t necessarily do a good job of communicating what their very clearly, you know, defined expectations are of what a successful agency looks like, what an successful account executive looks like.

Yeah. I, I found when I taught it that one of the, because like you, we always did the, okay, let’s talk about what’s where, where, what are you hoping to learn these next couple days? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And one of them was always how to communicate better with the owner, how to have more frequent conversations with the owner. Yeah. How to have deeper conversations with the owner, how to learn more from the owner, sort of the direction they wanted the agency to go and to get more guidance. So I, I think that’s been a recurring theme for the, gosh, the 15 years or so we’ve been teaching the workshop is agency owners undervalue how much, and I think this is true for all their employees, undervalue how much their employees want time with them to talk about the work.

Yes. And to talk about the clients and to talk about the team and the progress and all of those things. And I think that’s a really important lesson and message for agency owners and leaders to hear, is that they want more of us.

Yeah. And, and they want, they wanna make you proud of the work that they’re doing. So Yeah. Give them the opportunity to do that.

Yeah. Yeah. What, what else surprises you about the account execs that walk in the room?

The agency math is, is actually kind of, I know all the owners, it’s a big challenging spot as well, right? Yep. But when, when I start talking about math, you know, we kinda like joke about it, oh, we’re gonna do math, so sorry. But I find that they’re really, really engaged and interested in truly learning how to be profitable with the clients and the work and how to grow the profitability of the agency To the degree that people have asked me for more math problems. So like, they all hem and haw when I say, okay, we’re doing math now. But then they’re like, oh, I, I wish we could do more of that to better understand this.

And, and I know it’s, it’s a little bit challenging ’cause it’s, it’s a wide spread of different types of shops, you know, and the examples can be, I’ve got one example that’s like specific for a web development project, right? Well, not everyone offers web development services, right? Right. So, but overarching concept is understood as far as what is the cost of goods sold, you know, and what is money that’s ultimately gonna convert to profits for the business? And how as an agency or an executive account executive do what is our job and responsibility to ensure the profitability of the work at the end of the day. That is,

How do I influence those numbers? Right?

Yeah. That is always a really fascinating conversation. I just see lots of eyeballs light up. And I also find that the majority of the AEs that are in the workshop didn’t necessarily realize that was part of their responsibility was to ensure right, the profit of the projects and the clients that they’re managing.

Yeah. I, this, this again is a recurrent theme from the, from the 15 years of teaching. The workshop is number one most AEs walk in the room not understanding agency math. And when you, and I say agency math, we’re talking about gross billings is a vanity number. The number that matters to agencies is adjusted gross income. Oh man. Adjusted gross income is gross billings minus cost of goods equals the money. And agency actually has to run the business of their business, which is covers overhead people, loaded people, costs and profit. Most AEs walk in the room not really understanding that they, they’re paying attention to gross billing numbers. And so, again, this is a great point for agency owners, you may or may not understand agency math.

I think a lot of reasons why account execs aren’t taught agency math is because agency owners don’t know how to teach it. They don’t really understand it, which is one of the reasons why for members, we have the whole agency math video series is so agency owners can use those videos to teach their employees how to do that. But I, I always found it fascinating that the AEs are sort of surprised that it’s their job to run profitable accounts and that they don’t have any idea to know if their accounts are profitable or enough. We have not done them any service at all by teaching them the basics of agency math and then helping them understand their book of business, how much a GI is that and what’s the profitability of that every quarter.

And, and, and I know a big part of what you teach is what decisions do we make that add or subtract profit to a job? And I, that is always sort of revolutionary to them.

Yeah, I am surprised. ’cause I do ask how many of you actually have access and see, see the numbers or, or really understand, you know, if a project is profitable or not. And not, not everyone does. And I, I’d say, you know, don’t be afraid to ask to have that information because you wanna do a better job of, of supporting the profitability of the agency. And I think it is important to have a level of transparency, you know, what is the cost associated with this and, and how do I know if if it’s profitable or not? How do I know if I’m doing a good job for you or not? It is a question that I do get asked a lot.

Well, and since we preach over and over again that the lion’s share of your net new income should come from existing clients, net E should be able to grow their book of business by at least 10% a year. How can you hold them accountable to that if they don’t even know how to calculate it, let alone know it’s their job?

Correct. Yeah.

So you know that we’re, we’re launching a new workshop in spring of 25. That’s how do you grow your existing clients that’s gonna teach them how to do that, but they have to understand the basics first. They have to understand the math. Right?

Totally. Yeah. Yeah. That’s definitely important to dive into.

And do you find that anybody is like, I’m not a salesperson, it’s not my job to grow the account. I blah, blah, blah. Do you get some of that reaction?

I’ve never really had much of that feedback on, honestly. If anything, there’s questions more along the lines of how do I do this? Right. How do I, and, and you know, we definitely talk a a lot about that diving into more, you wanna be positioned as a partner than just an order taker. And, and that’s where that partnership is gonna give you the opportunity to bring new ideas to the table because you are that trusted source as opposed to, you know, you’re just waiting for the next order to come in. Right. And lots of conversation around reinforcing that because that’s gonna make it easier to bring ideas to the table, to upsell and, and grow that book of business by 10%.

How do you think they view their job? What do you think they think their job is when they walk in the door? Not when they leave, when they walk in the door, what do they think their role in the agency is?

I think their role is probably more on like project management side of things of just making sure there’s good creative, there’s good copy and the work’s getting done on time. They’re not necessarily looking at it from the financial aspect. Yeah. More, more on the creative side of things

And on the keeping the client happy side of things

For sure. Yep. Yeah.

But not really in terms of, you know, when, when we reveal in the workshop, and I know you, you do the same thing when we revealed in the workshop, your number one job is to retain clients and grow their clients, they’re sort of surprised

That

They don’t really even think, they don’t really think about the fact that they have that much influence and they don’t really recognize how important they are in the relationship with the client, that they’re the one that can save a client and grow a client.

Yeah, no, I, I, I agree. I think there’s a lot of assumptions around my job is to make sure that the work it’s done for the client and yeah, they don’t necessarily put as much emphasis on really building a trusted relationship with the client and trying to even embed themselves deeper into the organization of their client to try to win new, new work and new opportunities. But it also has to be the same on the team side too. You have to have that trusted relationship with your coworkers and the doers so that, you know, when those fire situations come up, we gotta hurry up and get something done. You’ve the team’s there and has your back and is willing to do it. So it’s not just managing that client relationship, it’s kind of keeping everyone in your ecosystem happy.

Well, and I think that’s one of the reasons why account service is such a difficult job. You, you in essence have three bosses. You have the agency owner who has certain goals and objectives for you. You have an entire team of internal people who depend on you for information, but you also depend on to get the work done, such a very symbiotic relationship. And then of course you have the client. And so I think it’s a very difficult role to be in the middle of that sort of triangle of power and try and keep everybody happy at all. Keep everybody informed and happy and growing and feeling appreciated at all times. That’s no small task.

Yeah. No, it’s not. But there’s a lot of little things that can be done, little and simple, but they can be tedious at times that can create bigger picture success down the road. So one of the things we do talk a lot about is making sure you’re setting yourself up and your team up for success by doing those little critical things on the front end. Like, you know, clear scope documents are very, very important, and if they’re not done well, there’s gonna be issues down the road. But taking that extra 20 minutes to put in all the little details is gonna make everyone’s life easier down the road. So we, we definitely have some deeper conversations about that too.

Yeah. Yeah. I, I, I think, I think the AEs leave the workshop feeling very proud of the role that they play in the agency and really recognizing how important they are to the agency’s success, which I think is a really important gift that we leave them with as they walk out the door. That they have more power and control and opportunity to contribute to your point earlier than perhaps they thought they did. Yeah,

Yeah. I absolutely agree with that. They, they definitely have a bigger understanding of the significance of the role they’re playing in the organization.

Yeah. I wanna take a quick break and when we come back, I wanna talk a little bit about sort of the ae relationship with the owner or their, or their direct supervisor and kind of what they wish it would be versus what it is today. So let’s take a quick break and then we’ll, we’ll jump into that. Hey everybody, thanks for listening today. Before I go back to the interview, I just wanna remind you that we are always offering some really amazing workshops and you can see the whole [email protected] on the navigation head to how we help scroll down and you’ll see workshops and you can see the whole list there with descriptions of each workshop.

They are all in Denver and we’ve got them throughout the year for agency owners, account execs, agency leaders, CFOs. We have a little something for everybody no matter what it is that you’re struggling with, people, new business, money, all of those things we’ve got covered. So check ’em out and come join us. All right. Let’s get back to the show. All right. We are back with Lori Highby and we are talking about the experience she has as one of am i’s faculty, a adjunct faculty teaching both our AE bootcamp and our advanced AE bootcamp for the last several years. So before the break, I said I wanted to talk a little bit about sort of the hopes and dreams of the account people in terms of the relationships they have inside the organization.

What, what do they wish was different, what do they wish they could say or learn or do from agency leadership that perhaps they’re not getting as much today?

Yeah, there’s, there’s a couple things I know that just come to mind right away. And, and what we started talking about it a little bit was communication. So I think there, there needs to be very clear, clearly defined goals and the conversation about those goals to make it easier for the account executives to ask themselves, are the things that I’m doing today helping to achieve the bigger picture goals of the agency? Right? So as the agency owner, you need to have clarity around what is it that you’re trying to achieve so that your team can help you achieve those goals at the end of the day.

Well, and I think it’s, I think it’s agency goals that trickle down to account service goals trickle down to specific account goals with that AE and their accounts. So it’s really like how do, how is the heavy lift I’m doing today contributing to all three of those goals moving up the organization?

Yeah, absolutely. I, that, that, that’s important. And I, I find this interesting, but I’ve heard a couple of account, not, not a lot, but a couple say that they wish that their agency owner or leaders trusted them more and that there was too much micromanaging going on and that they found that that actually got in the way of them doing their work. And they’re just, you know, they’re here to, to serve you and to, to make you proud of the work they’re doing, but you tend to get in the way, you’re getting in the weeds of them actually being able to do their awesome work. So I don’t necessarily have the best solution for that, but I usually recommend just having an open and honest conversation with the ownership and leadership about, about that.

And that is gonna establish that trust because you are being honest about that.

Well, I think, I think a lot of that comes from agency owners not being really clear about expectations, not being really clear about defined measurable goals for their account people. And the assumptions made that the account people just know what their job actually is and what part of their job is gonna make the owner happy, the agency profitable. But I don’t really, I don’t believe in many agencies that’s clearly communicated, that’s clearly taught. And by the way, it’s not taught once it’s taught over and over and over again. And, and so I, so I think the owner then sees the employee doing something that is counter to what they want even though the employee doesn’t know what they want.

Correct. Or you, or you think they know what they want, but you haven’t been really clear about it. And then they, they overstep and they start micromanaging. And then what we hear from the owners, and you know, from being in a peer group, we hear the owners talking about they can’t get outta the weeds. There are certain clients that they have to handle because none of their AEs can handle them. And I, I feel like there’s such a lost opportunity to level up the account people by having better communication about expectations and measurable goals that you get together on a regular basis to talk about and to strategize how to hit those goals. And if you did that, you would have more confidence as an agency owner that your AEs are on the right track and doing the right things and you wouldn’t micromanage, which means you could actually do your job.

I mean, it, it’s a, it is a, it’s a very vicious cycle that causes a lot of hot mess.

Yep. And, and again, the overarching thing here is the communication Yeah. And clearly communicating those expectations. Yeah. And that was, yeah, stepping out of the day to day, which is funny because, you know, the owners are saying, I need to get outta the day to day. Well, you know what your account team wants you to get outta the day to day as well.

Right? Right. So,

So do it. You know, they want you to focus on that bigger picture strategy so that you have that clarity to communicate to the rest of the team what the bigger picture goal is. So step back and let your team do the doing work so that you can have that visionary time to map out the bigger picture things and bring in the new business for them to serve.

Yeah. All right. So they, they want the owners to stop micromanaging. Yep. They want clearer, more measurable goals. What, what else do they want?

They also would like recognition for their hard work. I find that it seems, you know, well the owners tend to say, this is a thing you did wrong, or this is how, you know, we’re gonna make some adjustments, but there isn’t a lot of great job, good work and the recognition for the hard work. So that’s really important for us owners to say, good job, this is great work. But to recognize it publicly or figure out what type of recognition is important to the individual members of your team,

Why do you think there’s the disconnect? Do you think it’s, I think sometimes, particularly in today’s remote or hybrid or mixed sort of bag of how we work together, I think a lot of agency owners associated working hard with being at your desk and, and heads down on a computer regardless of what you’re doing. And I think a lot of owners don’t know how to recognize that the AE is doing good work. And I don’t think a lot of account service people know how to merchandise the good work they do so the owners can recognize it.

Yeah. We talk a lot about what, and this is a big group conversation, what do you do for recognition rec accolades or recognizing the work, not just of what you’re doing, but you know, the doers on your team or other people on your team. And, you know, lots of, lots of unique ideas are out there, but it’s, it’s even just finding the littlest things to celebrate goes so much further than, Hey, we won this big mega account, that’s awesome that we won this big account, but how about that the client signed off, you know, after the first round on, on a design comp and we don’t have to go through another round of edits and whatnot. Like, let’s celebrate that, win these little wins. Or the client sent the little email saying they’re really happy with things, you know, share, share that email with everyone you know, just right.

And then acknowledge that, hey, good job, I’m, I’m glad to see that you’re keeping the client happy. You know, those little things. It doesn’t have to be mega mega awards that are handed out annually. Right. Just a, a public announcement to, to acknowledge that they are doing good work and that you see them doing that good work can go a long way.

Yeah. How, as an owner, what, what have you learned about how you run your agency after teaching the bootcamp for a few years? What have, what have you changed in your shop to sort of take account all this, all the insight you have? I mean, you’re, you’re sort of like, you know, you’re in the secret room hearing everybody talk Yeah. About, about their work and how they want to be great employees and how they, what they need and want from their owners. So what are some adjustments you’ve made inside your shop or how you handle Sure. Your relationship?

Yeah, that’s great. There’s definitely some things that I find that I’m telling people are the best way to do it. I’m like, oh wait, I’m not doing this myself. So putting things back into motion here, but I’d say one of the biggest things I did, and my team absolutely loves it, is at our quarterly meetings, I reteach the agency math to everyone. I remind them how we make money as an agency. I recommunicate what our goals are. Every Friday I send a status update like, here’s our a GI, you know, month, the date, and here’s our goal. We got some work to do, or we’re on track to hit our goal. So I’m over communicating what the goals and the expectations are from that perspective.

And that’s been very well received. And we talk a lot about in our quarterly meetings, some of those biggest challenges that I keep seeing, like the client management, the time management, and just our communication. So we have a communication expectations deck that I review every quarter that reminds everyone, this is how we use Slack, this is how we use email, this is how you prepare for a meeting, this is how you communicate post meetings. So we just map out what the communication expectations are and I remind everyone quarterly. And then I have an op I opened the door for, do you think any of these expectations are unrealistic? Let’s have a conversation about it.

Yeah. So I, I think one of the things that if I’m in my agency owner seat right now, I’m thinking I’m running 90 miles an hour. I’ve, I’ve got a to-do list that will never end. I don’t always know when my account people have done something worthy of celebrating or acknowledging or thanking them. What advice would you give agency owners to be a little more plugged in to how to recognize employees when they’ve done something that is good above and beyond something worth celebrating? Something worth acknowledging?

Well, yeah, a couple things come to mind first. Like, we have a Slack channel that anyone can throw anything in. So, and I, we really encourage everyone on the team. So it allows me to just monitor kind of high level what’s happening, but also as an agency owner, and I know this is something that you’re a big advocate of, we should be doing client love and having touch base meetings with our top clients and Yep. And taking ’em out to lunch or whatever. And, and that’s where we can have the conversation is, you know, is Susie at my team serving you well? Is there anything that she could be doing differently or is there anything we can be doing differently for you? And if you hear really good positive feedback, relay that information back to your team and let them know that you appreciate the hard work that they’re doing.

Yeah. One of the things I’ve always done is I’m not that, that this is not my gift, is recognizing when, you know, just seeing how people are doing their job well. So I’ve always advocated that other people on the team are sort of my, my spies. Like, it’s your job to tell me anything from Robin. Got a haircut, do not mention it. Like, don’t say anything. Or two, Hey, we had a really great client meeting and the clients love the creative, or the, the AE really knocked it outta the park explaining the budget changes. So I sort of have asked my employees to tattle up to me when somebody on the team has done a good thing, much like your Slack channel, so that I can take a pause and go, Hey, I heard from so and so that the meeting went really well and that you handled this really brilliantly.

Thanks for doing that. I’m, you know, I’m, I’m proud of you. I think, I think sometimes the language we use with our employees too, it’s, they want you to be proud of them. They really do want you to be grateful for them, but also proud. And it’s not that they want a gift card or a raise or a bonus every time. They just wanna be acknowledged. And I, and I think I’m really proud of how you’ve grown in this, or, boy, I really notice that you’ve gotten so much better at that and I’m so grateful that you’re good at it. Think language like that is magic to our team members.

Yeah. Just, it, it, it makes them feel good about the work that they’re doing. And if you see someone’s putting in that time and energy to, to go above and beyond it is definitely worth acknowledging and, and letting them know that you, you appreciate that they’re, they’re doing the good work that, that you expect them to be doing.

Do you find that, I know the AEs always love a getting to travel and, and be in a different place and be around other people. What do you think are some of the benefits that they take away from the account service bootcamps that agency owners could replicate in other ways? Like one of the things I always found is they love meeting other people who do what they do and being able to go, oh, 100%. How do you do that? And, and one of the things I’ve always loved is the generosity that is certainly part of the, a AMI community, but it certainly trickles down to the account people where they’ll be like, oh, well I have a, I have a way we do meeting minutes. That’s really helpful. I’ll send it to you. You know, I overhear or I used to overhear those conversations all the time.

What do you think they get out of the learning and what kinda learning do you think they want more of even beyond the bootcamp?

Yeah, I, I second everything that you just said. There’s, there’s this huge collaborative thing that happens and it’s really kind of magical to see. And at the end of every workshop, I really encourage that the folks that are sitting at their table, that they find a way to touch base, you know, whether it’s a once a month, get on a Zoom call or, or start a WhatsApp thread or something, you know, and, and I know some of the gals that work in my agency, they do have a monthly call with some of those folks that they’ve met at the bootcamps and, and they love it. There’s just a little, this is what we’re doing, or here’s a challenge I’ve got. So just being surrounded by others that are in the same shoes and in similar roles has been extremely beneficial because they don’t feel as alone, you know?

Right. They, they, they feel like, oh, you get me. And it’s not just, it’s not, we’re not just doing it this way. This is kind of the way everyone’s handling it. And there there’s a level of, I feel better about what I’m doing because I know that others are doing it as well.

Well, and I think too, they feel better about even the challenges. It’s like, oh, it’s not me or my agency. All agencies struggle with clients not being responsive or fill in the blank. So I think it’s also sort of reassuring that they’re not doing something wrong or something’s broken. It’s like, this is just part of the reality of, you know, agency life. Yep.

Yeah, definitely agree with that.

What do you, what do you hear them talk about? So I think one of the things agency owners often don’t know is if their employees are working to improve themselves. So when you talk about like, how else are you learning and growing and things like that, what are you hearing AEs are doing to kind of sharpen their own saw throughout the year?

Yeah, that’s always a really interesting conversation to dive into because there’s, I, I feel like there’s this little bit of thought that goes into their brain saying like, I expect my employer to just educate me on everything. And we have this conversation. And it’s, it’s a true heart to heart of like, this is a shared experience. Yeah. This is something that, you know, yeah, you, you have a full schedule, but you have to take some of your own personal time to learn about ai. You know, just because your agency isn’t going all in on it, this is a critical component of what’s happening. And the reality of our world is, right. You have to figure it out. You know, so there are some individuals that listen to podcasts or subscribe to newsletters.

Obviously attending the workshops are, are very beneficial. But I do put an emphasis on, well, it’s a shared responsibility. So have that conversation with your ownership or your leadership or build a proposed roadmap. This is what I’d like to learn. Can I attend this workshop and this is what I’m gonna do on my own time and this is how I think it’s gonna have an impact. And on the agency.

Yeah. I’m always fascinated, a lot of owners will say, look, we have, we’ve communicated, and it maybe we’ve only communicated it once, it’s only in the employee handbook, but we’ve communicated that we put money aside for employees for their educational opportunities and nobody raises their hand. And so I think for an AE to raise their hand and say, Hey, I wanna put together a growth plan for myself, or will you sit with me and help me put together a growth plan? I wanna keep getting better. I think owners are thrilled by that. And I think AEs would be surprised at how open ownership is to supporting that, either with some time off during the day or paying for part of it.

But you’re right, I’ve always believed that our professional development is a shared responsibility and some of it is on your own time in your own dime. And the employees that show that I think get lots of credit for that.

Totally. Absolutely. I always share that I’ve, I’ve historically hired for passion over the, the, like I got the bachelor’s degree, you know, the education, right? So if you’re passionate about a topic and you are investing your own time and resources into learning something that tells me you’re going to probably be better at it than you are. You just went through the motions to get a certificate or something right? Because you felt that was the right thing to do. And, but also communicating back to the agency owner that this is something that you’re interested, I always share a story. I have a gal on my team who’s, who’s still with me, she was down the account executive path and then she realized she does not like to be client facing.

She’s more creative at heart and wants to do the work. and she came to me and laid out a plan on how she felt there was a better role for her in the agency that was not an account executive role. And I agreed to it. And she’s been with me in this role now for, you know, three years. And I, I say the beauty of this is that she came to me. Yeah. Instead of being frustrated and deciding to just find a new job somewhere, like go do that. Bring the idea, bring the path. Say, this is what I wanna learn, this is what I’m interested in doing. I love that she came to me because she’s still on my team now, you know, and I, I didn’t lose a player.

Right. So don’t be afraid to, to bring those ideas, but as owners we need to be open and accepting. But I did share that the majority of the owners I know would love to have someone on the team bring an idea like that to the table.

Yeah. That’s that passionate. So if you could wave a magic wand and the week after every AE got back to the office after the bootcamp, what do you wish owners would do to really cement and solidify the learning that they’ve had for the last two days? Like, what would be the ideal scenario that an AE would walk back into the office and have what happen?

Oh, wow. That’s a big question. I think if, you know, the big it, it, it’s all about the profitability at the end of the day, right? And understanding how we maintain profitability and grow the clients. So I think having an open, honest conversation about the projects that are in place and evaluating, you know, is this profitable? What can I do to get things back on track? Where’s the opportunity to grow this business? And having a honest conversation about the goals within the agency would be really a strong way to reinforce everything that we dive into.

Yeah. I, I always envisioned, and actually maybe this is something we should do, maybe we should send this communication to the owners before the bootcamp and say, when your AE comes back, you should set up a two hour meeting with them and you should talk about what they learned, what they want to implement, what they were proud of, that they are already doing really well, that they saw a lot of other agencies struggle with. And you reiterating the goals, the math, the, like, it would be interesting, I’m, I’m now, I’m now talking while we’re talking on a live podcast, but it would be interesting for you and I to put together sort of a, a meeting agenda for agency owners or leaders.

If it’s an account service, you know, director or something like that, here’s a meeting post bootcamp to have with your team member Yeah. To really maximize what they learned because I think they would, I think the AEs would be so excited that they, that the boss, whoever the boss is, agency owner, account director, was receptive to hearing what they learned, what they wanna learn more of, where they wanna lean in and contribute and where they could ask questions about, I don’t know how much a GII manage, how do I find that out? Yeah. Who tells me that? How do I measure that? Yeah. I think that would be a really great way to sort of close the loop on the learning.

Yeah. And for both the account person and the leader to say, this was important enough that we made the investment and that we want to make sure that that investment is seeded in the organization. That we, it really is the opportunity for what you’ve learned to kind of grow in the agency. And by the way, whether you send anybody to a bootcamp or not, you should be having that conversation with your account service people. What are they proud of? What do they wanna learn more of? Do they understand agency math? Do they understand their book of business? How do they measure the success based on your metrics and goals and, and where do they get all that information?

Yeah, I love that idea. Yeah. I know I, at the end of every workshop, I do have ’em send an email to their manager, leader owner and cc me, which is kind of fun to see what they wanna implement in the next week, the next month and the next quarter. And sometimes I get a reply all from the owner saying like, oh, this is exciting. I can’t wait to learn more about what you learn and talk about this. So that, that’s, that’s great to see. But I, one of the things that I’m a big advocate of is the better you’re gonna get better at something if you teach it to someone else. No doubt. So doubt, not only doubt having that conversation with the owner and the leadership, but going back and teach the rest of the team, the agency math exercises that you learn so that you, it’s getting further embedded into your head is gonna be extremely helpful too.

Yeah, for sure. Alright, parting words to agency owners and their account people, what, what do they need to know about those folks and, and how can they amplify their success inside the agency, which obviously is what a every agency owner wants?

Yeah, I would say communicate what your goals are and get clarity on what success looks like for your account service individuals so that they can make you proud. They wanna hit those benchmarks and really make you proud and definitely try to go out of your way to recognize them for the hard work and efforts that they’re putting in. But just keep having open and honest communication with your team and be receptive to the ideas while you’re also stepping out of the day-to-day activities.

Right? Yeah. Get outta their way. Right. Set them up for success so you can get out of their way. Totally. Yeah. Yeah. This has been, this has been fascinating. Hopefully a lot of people are taking some notes and recognizing, you know, again, in some cases, wow, I’m doing that well and right. And in other cases like, hmm, I could probably be a little better at that. I could, I could key up success for my account people. Which ultimately if your account people aren’t successful, your agency is not gonna be successful. That is the bottom line. We cannot do it Without them. They are, they are the conduit to the client, the client relationship, the client growth, the client satisfaction, all of it. Well not, so these are people to take good care of and to groom and to grow and to try and as they grow, keep giving them new opportunities because the last thing in the world you wanna do is groom and grow them for another agency.

Yeah, that’s true. Yeah. But you know, you wanna set everyone up for success. That is, that is really the bigger picture goal or

Share. Right. Thank you for spending some time talking to us about kind of giving us the insider’s view of how account service people are feeling about their role and what they want to do more of. It’s been really insightful and I hope a lot of agency owners took some note of where they can do even better to set their folks up for success. So thanks for, thanks for being on the show with us.

Yeah, thanks for having me. Lots of fun. I love, love talking about it. Love teaching it.

Yeah. So if anybody’s wondering the next set of bootcamps, we have the advanced a bootcamp. So that’s for employees who are probably four or five years into their career. They might be supervising other account people, they’re doing more delegating, they’re probably having bigger conversations with clients the next time. If you’re listening to this in real time, which will be the tail end of 2024. The next workshop is March 13th and 14th of 2025 in Denver. And our entry level bootcamp. So that’s for gonna be for coordinators, junior AEs people with under four years of experience. People are just kind of cutting their teeth on account service, but in many cases are still playing a critical role in your agency.

That next workshop is April 10th and 11th, also in Denver. And you can find all of those on our website under the How We Help tab. You’ll see workshops and you can register right there and send your folks to Lori and let her spend two days with them, helping them get excited about their job, learning more about what their role is and how they can serve you and the agency and your clients and the team even better. So it is time well spent. We, we always have a money back guarantee. I’ve never had to give the money back. People feel like it’s time well spent and people come back fired up and with some new skills and some new attitude and some new ideas that benefit the agency. So again, Lori, thanks for, thanks for taking on the role of teaching the workshop and thanks for being with us today.

Absolutely love it. Thanks Drew.

You bet. Alright guys, this wraps up this episode. Again, whether you ever send someone to a bootcamp or not, there’s a lot of lessons in this for you in terms of your account service people, what they’re hungry for, what they need to learn more of, what they need more of from you, where they need some support, where they’re knocking it outta the park that maybe you’re not catching them, knocking outta the park. And how you can better celebrate that and lift them up so that they do even more of it. So I hope you took some good notes and that you’re gonna put some of this into practice. Wanna give a huge shout out and thank you to our friends at White? Label IQ, as you know, they are the presenting sponsor of the podcast. So they show up alongside your team to do white label design dev and PPC.

You might have no one in house and they become that department for you. Or you might have team members on your team that just need some extra hands ’cause you’re busy. They do everything from the simple to the very complicated. They have a robust team of very skilled folks who are able to translate your project, your scope of work into profitable work that makes your clients happy. They’re born, as I’ve told you before, out of an a AMI agency. So they get how to work with agencies ’cause they are one, and we’ve known ’em for 20 some years. They’re good, good human beings who are very committed to helping you be successful in front of your clients. So check them out at White Label iq.com/aami and you’ll find they’ve got a special deal there for you if you’ve never worked with them before.

And I’m coming back next week with another guest like Lori. So I hope you will come back as well. We can learn together to help our agencies get even better. Alright, I’ll talk to you then. Thanks for listening.

Come back next week for another episode, designed to help you build a stronger, more stable and sustainable agency. Check out our workshops, coaching and consulting packages, and other professional development [email protected].