The reality is that today, all of you have a choice. Your account people can be trained and groomed and held responsible for being the strategic Sherpas of your clients, guiding them in business decisions and marketing decisions, really being their thinking partner or they can be the relationship holders.
And it’s not that they can’t do a little bit of both, but you have to decide where you’ll lean in with your training, your recruitment, who you keep, and how you groom and grow your account service team.
A strategic business partner is very different from someone who just takes the order, ensures the work gets done on time, and builds a relationship with the client.
As you think about that, don’t forget to do the math. What would that mean for you on the salary side, on the payroll side? So there’s no right or wrong. And for many of you, there’s a clear path one way or the other.
And in some cases, that depends on the sophistication level of your clients; it might be dependent on the kind of work that you do for clients. It might be dependent on the people you already have on staff.
How do you want to show up in front of clients and prospects, and how do you want them to see the account service people and where they get their strategy? Worth giving some thought.
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Hey, everybody. Drew McLellan here from Agency Management Institute this week coming to you from New York City. We spent a day onsite with an agency recently, and we were talking about the role of account service people. And the reality is today that all of you have a choice. Your account people can be trained and groomed and held responsible for being the strategic Sherpas of your clients, guiding them in business decisions and marketing decisions, really being their thinking partner. Or your account service people can be the relationship holders. And it's not that they can't do a little bit of both, but you have to decide where you're going to lean in with your training, with your recruitment, with who you keep, how you groom and grow your account service team. Because somebody who's a strategic business partner is very different than someone who is just taking the order, making sure the work gets done on time and building relationship with the client. And if you're going to have your account people not be responsible for strategy and you're going to have a separate strategy department, understand the obligation of that department. Your clients, what they’re buying from us is our thinking, our insights, our ability to see them differently than they see themselves because we are that inside outsider, right?
We have enough inside information to have a good perspective, but we are not inside the bottle trying to read the label from the outside. If you're going to have that separated with account, service and strategy, then you're strategic people need to be very present. It's not a once a quarter thing. It's not a, you know, annual planning thing. They need to have a regular presence because at the end of the day, that's who your client's going to want to have a relationship with and conversations with because they need a thinking partner. They need someone to imagine with them. They need somebody to help them blow up some ideas and explore them. And if they see your account people as order takers or people who are just about keeping the relationship friendly and happy, they're not going to seek out that person to have that conversation with. So as you're thinking about the structure of your agency, and many of you are leaning towards this idea of separating account service and strategy, understand what that does to your payroll costs. Because now what you have is you have two reasonably high level people in a client relationship, right? You have your account manager or account executive or account strategist, whatever you want to call them, and you're going to have a strategy person. And so those folks have to be able to a) they have to be able to dance well together so they don't step on each other's toes, but b) they both have to have a very strong presence with your clients.
So as you're thinking about that and you're factoring that out, don't forget to do the math. On the salary side, on the payroll side of what that would mean for you. So there's no right or wrong. And for many of you, there's a clear path one way or the other. And in some cases, that's depending on the sophistication level of your clients, it might be dependent on the kind of work that you do for clients. It might be dependent on the people you already have on staff. So all of those are factors, but you have to really think through the business side of that decision and don't make the decision just based on the players that you have on your bench, because those players are going to change over time. You need to remember that this is a strategic business decision. How do you want to show up in front of clients and prospects, and how do you want them to see the account service people and where they get their strategy?
Okay? So give that some thought and I'll see you next week.