Episode #4: How to Be a Great Account Manager
In this episode, we go deep into the role of the account executive. From departmental, managerial, and individual account person goals, to specific day-to-day roles and responsibilities, and guidance on what to do when you don’t have billable work, this episode is a high-level account management training seminar. Our helpful takeaways include tips like thinking of your boss as a second client, knowing when and how to speak up, the importance of honesty, the hot potato rule, and more — all to make you an indispensable account manager.
How to Be a Great Account Manager Episode Recap
In this episode, Julia and Kelly discuss how to be a great account manager in the marketing and advertising world. They emphasize that account management is about nurturing client relationships, retaining clients’ business, and growing opportunities within those relationships. They also touch on the importance of personal development and work persona in pursuing a successful career in account management.
Julia and Kelly highlight the significance of managing up and effectively communicating with superiors to ensure smooth operations and resource allocation. They stress the importance of representing the agency well and maintaining constant communication with clients, including picking up the phone for direct conversations.
In developing strong client relationships, they recommend being a good listener, understanding clients’ problems and goals, and keeping track of the frequency of communication to ensure a healthy balance between digital and personal interactions. Being credible and knowledgeable about the client’s business, products, and services is crucial for building trust. They also advise understanding the client’s key performance indicators (KPIs) and regularly tracking them to provide value.
The hosts also caution against saying “yes” to everything and instead encourage account managers to have open and honest conversations with clients to set realistic expectations. They stress the importance of being proactive and offering creative solutions to help clients achieve their goals.
Kelly and Julia go on to discuss various tips and insights related to working in advertising agencies as an account executive. Here are the main points covered:
1. Kelly emphasizes the importance of understanding your role as an account executive and whether you are hired to execute tasks or to provide your professional opinion.
2. They discuss the value of being an accountable account executive who takes responsibility for their decisions and actions.
3. Kelly advises being indispensable by excelling in your role and becoming the go-to person for specific tasks or expertise.
4. They stress the significance of learning protocols and documenting important information to improve efficiency and have a backup when needed.
5. The importance of being honest with clients is highlighted, even in challenging situations, as clients often appreciate transparency.
6. They suggest letting the creatives take the lead in selling the creative work to clients, as they are more passionate and knowledgeable about it.
7. The “Hot Potato rule” is introduced, encouraging account executives to act swiftly and efficiently when receiving new instructions or projects from clients.
8. Building bridges and alignment between different departments in larger agencies is essential to improve collaboration and teamwork.
9. Kelly and Julia share tips for women in the industry, including learning to speak up in meetings and being intentional about communication style to avoid unnecessary tension.
10. The importance of taking a seat at the head of the table when appropriate, especially when leading meetings or being in a position of authority, is highlighted.
Overall, the conversation provides valuable insights and practical advice for account executives, especially those new to the advertising industry.
Episode transcript:
Julia
In this jam-packed episode, we talk about how to be a great account manager goals roles and responsibilities and our personal tips to make you indispensable.
Welcome to the TwoMarketingMoms podcast. We are two women with more than 50 years of marketing and advertising experience between us. And we want to talk about the struggles, the fails and the winds that we experienced while building our careers. Being a boss juggling work and a home life and arguably the hardest and yet most fulfilling job being a mom. This podcast was created for marketing and advertising professionals, especially the up-and-coming marketing stars of the future. We hope these tips tricks and advice will help you navigate work in life and get ahead.
Today, we are talking about how to be a great account manager, a skill that is necessary for everyone in the marketing and advertising world if you aren’t a creative or you aren’t a media person. So, I thought Kelly and I would start off with what is the definition of account management before we really dive in. And account management is a post sales role. So, after you’ve won an account, that focuses on nurturing client relationships and account managers have two primary objectives. They retain the clients’ business and make them happy. And they grow those opportunities within that relationship. And they accomplish these objectives by learning what their clients’ goals are and helping their clients achieve them. So, I actually think this sets up for a good conversation. I feel like finding an account manager that has a sales and a customer service point of view is very rare to find. Most account managers are really, really good at client relationships, and then there’s others that are just really good in sales. And always eager to find that new opportunity. And it’s like a unicorn to find both as they’re super similar.
Kelly
Well, I like to think of it more as account executives versus project managers. You see in the web development world much more project management, maybe they might have PM certification. And their goals are really about making sure that that particular project is finished on time and on budget. And it isn’t necessarily about growing the relationship with the client, thinking that they’re going to come back again, which is the complete difference between project management and account management.
Account management is all about building that relationship and the idea of organic growth and that there’s a long-term relationship there where you hope that’s the end goal, so that you can not only just retain the business, but look at other opportunities, and of course, hopefully use that particular client as a referral. So, it’s a way of thinking and you’re either trained one way or another. And I’ve worked with a lot of project managers on are not necessarily trained that way. And I’ve worked with a lot of agency heads who are in the project manager realm, and they don’t really understand the concept of account management. And it was even debated about.
Julia
I’m sure. I think I told you the story that I was working in an agency and the VP of Client Services came to me and asked “do you have like a manual for account managers? Yeah, like off the shelf that you could just share with me, because I have to create one? And I was like, no. And that’s interesting that you asked because you obviously don’t have one. And obviously, if you’re getting organized, it is a very useful tool. And I know you have one Kelly, that is quite impressive.
Kelly
Well, I created one and again, I cannot take credit for it. It was as a result of going through the Grey Advertising account management program back in the early 90s. And I just kept that information and updated it every couple of years and then I present it to usually the interns or new people who are entering the agency to really make sure that everyone is in alignment as to what are the roles and responsibilities within an account management department? What are your roles and responsibilities while you’re doing billable work when you don’t have billable work? And then of course, what are the tips, the tips and tricks? And so, we’re going to cover some of those things today.
Julia
Yeah, we don’t want to this to sound very intimidating. Right? If I was a newbie to the marketing and advertising world, and I was like, oh, let’s talk about how to be a great account manager, I think might be like, Whoa, can I really do this? But I think the answer is yes. I mean, there’s so many innate qualities of a good marketer of a good advertising pro that just naturally come out in in the account management role.
Kelly
Let me ask this question. How did you choose to be an account executive? How did you choose that route, instead of account planning or something else?
Julia
That’s a good question. Because that’s again, where you and I have different experiences. So, I’m also curious about how you would answer that question yourself. But, I started out in a small agency. So, within accounts, we didn’t have those hierarchy of different account roles. We were just all account people, so as an account, I probably sounded, I think I started off as an assistant account director or an AV, in other agencies, and I did the planning, coordination with media and traffic, and all of that stuff. So, I think I was just kind of thrown in. To be honest, I think your approach was probably a little more organized.
Kelly
Well, I would imagine that most people have that similar experience, I wasn’t necessarily thrown in because I went through an account management trainee program, and they just don’t exist anymore. And so, I had the opportunity to try out different roles. But I knew when I joined the account management training program, what that was going to be, ultimately, so I love the creative aspect of it. But I knew I could write and I knew I could draw, but I knew I wasn’t good enough to actually be the one to do the ads. And so, I knew going in that account management is what I wanted to do. So, I think that made it a lot easier to be able to go through the training from day one. These are the various aspects of the departments and then we’re going to throw you in and you’re going to get an account, and we’re going to train you and teach you how to do it. So, it was a much easier thing. I think working at an agency that is larger, because then you have people above and around you who are holding your hand, but I think most people probably have your experience where it’s kind of sink or swim.
Julia
Actually, makes me think about it, because I did start off as an intern in the agency that I worked for. So, like that internship, I got to work with media, I got to work with creative. I was actually like most of my duties were for new business, which was super cool. Right? And I didn’t really do much of that when I started off in the agency world as an account manager. So maybe interning, there was my answer, interning was my foray into what I wanted to do in account management.
Kelly
Which is why I think it’s so important for us as leaders to bring interns into the fold. And it’s really important for them to have a positive experience and a wide-ranging experience. So, they can say, Okay, I like that. I didn’t like that. I’ve experimented with this. And, you know, that’s part of our job to help kind of bring up the next generation of advertising professionals, and specifically, women, to bring them into leadership roles. So that’s kind of the theme that we’re trying to focus on with this with this podcast.
Julia
I actually follow some of my past interns, a handful of them on Instagram these days. And some of them have come, just have the most amazing jobs and I’m like, wow, they’re killing it. When you’re a superstar as an intern, you just lay the groundwork for I think your career honestly.
Kelly
I was going to say, do we just want to kind of broadly even though it’s boring, talk about one of the goals of account management?
Julia
Yeah, do it.
Kelly
So, what I tell people is the main goal of account management is really kind of understanding account profitability, how does an account make money and how can you strive to make billability for each individual account. And a lot of that, ways that you can do that is really look for opportunities to improve the creative product for each account and to grow the business organically because a client might say, I have XYZ and maybe you’re doing 360 account. But maybe they’re not, you’re not handling social media, well that could be a natural opportunity for you to handle as well. That’s what I mean by growing the business organically. And I think a lot of it is really how you approach an account. So, it’s really focused on being taking more of a consultative strategic approach to solving their challenges and making sure that you’re always looking ahead for them, what are the trends in the industry, here’s what your competitors are doing. You’re constantly offering things to them ahead of when they need them. You’re planning for the next year for 2021. Now, and you’re seeding those ideas, and you’re not standing back and waiting for them to, to come to you.
Julia
I you know, it reminds me of a presentation, I recently saw your team give where they gave a client, I got a little peek into that. And you gave all these ideas that the client could use that were future oriented things they weren’t doing. And that’s such a great example of doing that, of keeping ahead of the trends and making sure even if the client didn’t do one of them, they at least know that you as the agency are thinking of those things.
Kelly
Absolutely. It’s stuff that we’re working on right now for 2021. There are so many other things, media trends that have happened, we just wrote a blog about it in Capital Communicator about how people are watching more TV, but they’re really specifically watching OTT, or they might be listening to radio, but the drive times that they’re listening to is different. They’re watching more digital radio, listen to more digital radio, they’re listening, more podcasts, all those sort of things really change how we should be advertising. So, it’s really important that we, as account executives are always on top of things. It’s funny, because my husband’s in television, and I’m in advertising. And we always feel like we need to be up to date about what the latest thing is. So, whenever the hot new show is on Netflix, or who is on TV, we have to see what it is just to make sure that we’re aware so we can make sure that we’re in the loop.
Julia
My husband is in UI and UX design. So, we kind of do the same thing, but like online.
Kelly
It’s kind of boring to talk about all the account management goals.
Julia
Well give me a couple more, because I’m actually curious about this list, like so profitability, you said is number one, I feel like, that was absolutely not one of the things that I was on my first priority list to learn when I was an assistant account, executive and account coordinator.
Kelly
Learn a part of that process, and they don’t see that process. And they should be brought out early. So, they understand, you know, what’s hot, what’s happening. There’s also a process that you follow in the agency world what you know, what happens? What do you do? What’s
the first thing you do when you get a new account? What’s the first thing?
Julia
Yeah, how do you onboard?
Kelly
How do you get it going? What paperwork do you do? How do you get an estimate signed? How do you make sure there’s a job with the accounting department to build a job? All those things are not very glamorous, but they’re important. And it’s important to understand those processes, when do you have enough information to write a creative brief, when you brief, the creative, how do you present all these sort of things that we do, as account people are things that you need to learn. And beyond that..
Julia
I mean, if you don’t do that, I think it’s important for those things to be really seamless, so that the client at the beginning, knows that you have everything under control, and that all of those little things are being taken care of. And we’re still driving towards that ultimate goal. Because if you have breakdowns and communication, at that point, you are starting off on a rocky road, and it will be hard to recover.
Kelly
I like to put the timeline in the kickoff meeting and so they know what to expect. You know, here’s what the creative briefs going to look like. Here’s the information that we’re going to need for you on that here’s the production schedule here are all the things that we’re going to we’re going to update or develop for you as part of this project and here’s when they’re going to be delivered to you and here’s how long it’s going to take you to approve them and here’s you know it cetera.
Julia
Yeah, setting expectations and then you got to deliver on your baby stepping you’re absolutely baby stepping. So that’s important.
Kelly
Then a huge part of being an account executive is realizing that, yes, you may be assigned to one or two accounts. But outside of that there is dead time, right? There is time that you’re available technically, and you’re not really supposed to be surfing the internet. You know, we have plenty of things to give you. I always say to anyone who works with me, I got five things for you to do if you’re not busy. And I have an entire Slack channel dedicated to random projects I need to find answers to. So, I need a little Siri advertising, Siri in my life to be able to answer this. I have a great bunch of interns that are doing that. But supporting new business efforts is a huge part of what executives do. And I think also a fun part. And making sure that you’re supporting the brand for the company that you’re working with. Helping with blogging and social media and all that sort of stuff is a big part above and beyond just the regular management of an account.
Julia
In turn, that is part of also the, as I think we both mentioned in a previous podcast, that’s also like those things, making sure that you utilize your downtime in the right way is a way to help you get ahead, how to hone your skills, how to be better, how to be noticed, and how to move ahead quicker.
Kelly
And I think it’s also important to understand what your boss’s goals are because if you can help to support your boss’s goals, that’s, that’s really important. And your boss’s goals are usually things like promoting and operating a team philosophy and having a shared purpose, and culture and making sure that you’ve fit within that culture, that’s a big one, conducting regular department meetings, or webinars to share knowledge. Increasing their job skills is really to make sure that you have the knowledge that you need to do your job. So, I’ll go through a review and say, Okay, what areas you’re interested in, do you want to learn Google Analytics? What do you want to learn? Do you want a certification for Facebook, or HubSpot, or whatever it is, what are the things that you really want to get into this year, that will add value to you as an account executive, and let’s make sure that those are part of your goals? So, increasing internal and external training is a huge part in making sure that there’s budget to be able to do that, so that you’re developing a career path for each individual member that’s on your team.
And if you feel like your boss is developing your own career path, you know, that’s the time to kind of talk to them and say, Hey, where do you see me, I mean, it’s hard to say where anyone sees anyone five years down the path, but you can at least get some advice, your boss knows you pretty well knows where your strengths are, knows what your weaknesses are, and try to figure out a path. So personally, if there are negative comments, because that might kind of help redirect you to something else that where you may actually be better. And no one really told me that..
Julia
You know, it’s the better approach to ask your boss, what is the path you see me on? Where do you see me in six to 12 months, versus after a year being like, Well, I mean, I’ve been doing a lot and I reserved a raise. Which, a lot of small agencies aren’t organized enough to really have those little pieces organized. And then people do end up going down that path, spending a whole six months or a year and then being like, well, I’ve accomplished a lot like, where’s my new title or my whatever it is, when I think the account manager or at least a new one, if you’re new to the industry, or if you’re just new to an account, aligning with your boss’s goals and their goals for you.
Kelly
And also, if your boss isn’t touting your work up the chain, that’s a problem. So, you know, make sure that you’re not just being seen to your boss, but if your boss has a boss, or there’s multiple bosses, you want to make sure that you’re being seen about that. And if they’re not saying, hey, look at this great job that XYZ person did on XYZ project, you know, ask, Hey, I think this is really good. I think it would be awesome. If the CEO saw this, could I send this to the CEO or would you be willing to say this to the CEO?
Julia
And that is, that is the best point so far, because I think that there are some people that have bosses that take credit for everything that they do. Everything that their team does, right, and you just offered up a creative way. Getting around that. And making sure that if you do have a boss that isn’t going to do that, then you have to find ways to get that work noticed by other teams by the CEO, whoever it is.
Kelly
So, I think I’ve got lots of other management goals, I’ll just talk about a couple of them. And then we can move into the more fun stuff. I mean, I think we really need to be a sounding board to assist with personal development, which we kind of talked about, and helping people grow their paths. But a big part of what we do is as managers or leaders, I mean, you’re leading your own agency now. I am not, so I have to report to a CEO, is managing up. But I think managing up is something that everyone has to do. And it’s extremely important. So how do you manage up? Well, and when do you manage up and you don’t want to be one constantly, running to your CEO saying, the world’s on fire. So, you got to be making sure that you’re telling them things that that are important that they need to know. So significant developments as they happen, have any client issues have that come up any budget cuts, new programs, assessment of the client, the client gave you of our agency work, they hate it, or creative that we just presented? Success stories, what is the client, the atmosphere at the client, is something going on, with relationship with the agency, any potential problems or opportunities that we could have the CEO help to smooth out, which is really what their role is? Looking at workload, I’ve got the next few months or in January, I need a freelancer or I’m going to need a second art director because of XYZ. Can you support that financially?
Julia
Income forecasts
Kelly
Number one, that’s all any CEO cares about is income forecast. So that’s your job responsibility, and make sure that you get that done, explain the increases and the decreases. And then I like to make sure that I’m keeping tabs on each individual employee to whoever I’m reporting to,, this person is doing a great job, this one needs some guidance and support in these areas, this person is falling down, perhaps we need to have a chat with them, that sort of thing. So those are kind of like all of my management goals, I guess you would say, anything else for you to add?
Julia
No, I think that’s good. I think that I had experience with my mentor, bringing me in for those kind of conversations. But you just like all of those little things like the status of the account, basically tight meetings. And so, I got to observe a lot of those types of meetings. And that was a nice window into how to manage an account from a higher level. Because I obviously worked my way up from a coordinator from an entry level account coordinator. But I did it almost all at one place. So, it’s hard to, it’s hard to evolve. Sometimes if you don’t have new perspectives. That’s true, it could be a good thing when you kind of are working in different agencies, and you can fall into new roles, maybe a little bit easier than working up. I think all of those are a really great POV for how to be a good account manager, no matter where you are in your career, because it doesn’t really change. You just have more and more responsibility. You know, if you’re an account coordinator, then you become an account executive, and you’re maybe a little more client facing and then you could become I don’t know every agency has a different path but like, a senior account supervisor, you just have different responsibilities and you have different areas of focus.
Kelly
Well, that’s a good lead into, what are the account management staff goals, so not your goals or my goals, but the people underneath you what are their goals and number one is represent the agency. You are the representative of the agency. You need to know everything about all the various departments, the mediums, the latest trends, you’re in charge of all internal and external communications with regards the client, you are also quality control. When you when things go out of the agency, you need to make sure that a represents your particular agency, well, is it creative that you’re proud of internally and has been blessed by the creative director. There no typos? And does it represent the client’s brand? Even more importantly, you need to know the client’s brand well enough to say, okay, is this something that the clients going to approve? Is it representative of what they’ve communicated to me of what’s in the brief of you know, things or presentations or meeting notes I’ve had in the past? Is it a part of their brand standards, all those sort of things. And then the last things in terms of goals would be ensuring adequate resources are in place, we talked about that, and monitoring resource allocation and burn rate that may not be at everyone’s level, and not everyone may actually be monitoring those sort of things. But that’s a part a part of it. And then that leads into how to develop strong relationships with your client.
Julia
Oh, yeah, I’m ready for this one. All right, you go first. Well, my personal take is that developing relationship are the crux of having a profitable account, having a happy team, growing an account and keeping a client happy for many, many years. And I like to form relationships with my clients, that can stand the test of the things that happen on the daily basis, when a typo does happen, or when a creative concept falls flat on that relationship, they’ll always fall back on that relationship, they’ll be able to overlook those things as maybe a total failure and see them as just the pathway of doing business together. And that together, you’ll find a better solution, whatever that is. And obviously, going back to what I what I said at the beginning, like finding someone who is a self-aware relationship type of bonding person is the type of person that I gravitate to more, but not everyone is like that. There’s kind of like, and I’ve been thinking about this a lot, what is your work persona, right? Like, you do all these like tests, right? Like, I’m an INTJ, or whatever they are right?
Kelly
Wait, hold on, you are an INTJ?
Julia
I don’t think I am I forget.
Kelly
I think I am and INTJ, but I escalate between E and I.
Julia
I want to say, I done all those types of tests, right? I can’t even remember, but I have done all these like assessments, so that your team members can kind of figure out like, what your strengths are, and especially from a person that’s going to hire someone to be on their team, they want to know, what kind of person are you so that they can support you in the ways that makes sense for you, and encourage you to develop? So, if you aren’t a bonder, then it’s silly for a boss to expect you to be a bonder. Right? Like, you’re going to have a different approach. And that was a hard concept for me to get as a boss, I think, you know, over time, like, picking teammates, even when I wasn’t the hiring person, it’s hard to pick the right teammate based on that.
So, I don’t know that kind of opens up a can of worms, right. I don’t think we have to really debate it. But, I think going back to what I said, work persona, I think it’s really important for you as you embark upon your career, and even if you’re like 20 years in figuring out what those strengths are, and how you’re going to use that to accomplish all those goals. So how are you going to if you aren’t a bonder? What other strengths do you have that’s going to be able to help you maintain and build that relationship with the client? Sometimes the client isn’t the opposite way. I’ve had clients that aren’t bonders. They’re just kind of, in my opinion, cold, they don’t see themselves as that way. They just form relationships in different ways. And navigating that can be tough, but if you can figure out If you can identify those types of traits and qualities, either from an account person perspective or a client perspective, like you’ll be a lot more successful. I think it’s such an important part of account management.
Kelly
Well building on that if you know that that’s the type of client you have, you have to figure out, you perhaps don’t want an emotional account executive on..
Julia
Agreed.
Kelly
Kind of balance off, who’s the going to be able to have the stiff upper lip to be able to deal with someone who’s kind of a brick wall sometimes, you know. And that’s definitely a challenge. Some my list for how to develop strong relationships with clients starts with listening, which I think sometimes we don’t all do well, we really need to understand what their problems are, what are their goals? What are they trying to accomplish? What does success look like to them? And you know, what will they if they come back to us later and say, Hey, you did a great job, what does that look like for them? And having constant contact with them in some way, shape, or form, it’s really hard to make it all digital these days, especially right now, and we’re all virtual, but picking up the phone can be extremely important. And you can get a lot more information, like picking up the phone or having a face-to-face meeting, versus just doing over email or text because things can get extremely misinterpreted that way.
Julia
I feel like a lot of people will say that millennials do not like picking up the phone, right? They, they tend to like digital communications, and I am, one of the oldest millennials.
Kelly
So, I still I still can’t believe you’re a millennial, you’re not a millennial, that’s not possible.
Julia
Well, you know, because my mentor was a phone person, she was a taught me that. Sure, emails great. And you know, back in the day, like Basecamp is great, but one on one communication cannot be replaced by digital. And so, I became a huge phone person, almost to the point where I was like, okay, trying to figure out what ratio just kind of mentally keeping track every week like how often I’ve talked to the client via email, and have I checked in via phone, have we had any minutes in the week, where we’ve just talked about life, and gotten a little bit of non-work in so that we have a better understanding of who we are. And making sure that I kind of made kind of kept track of that quota, so to speak. I mean, it wasn’t as rigid as it sounds, but I just became that type of account person. And honestly, now that I work with people that are true millennials, and much younger than me, I do notice this that they don’t like picking up the phone. And I feel like I’ve been in a lot of meetings over the past couple weeks, or I was or months where I’ve been like, so we’re discussing a client problem. Has anyone picked up the phone and talk to the client? No, and I’m like, blown away. I’m like, wait, so you actually don’t know how the client felt? Did you know that perhaps you misinterpreted an email or the tone or the emotion in that email? Or maybe you missed the total direction that the client was giving? Because it was an email reaction? Yeah, to a project or a deliverable. But oh, man, yeah, you that’s like that would go on list of my pet peeves is people that just don’t pick up the phone schedule. I mean, heck, schedule a 10-minute zoom. Just to check in and get those things that you just don’t get other ways.
Kelly
It was really good. You know, beyond adding strategic value to your client business, establishing credibility is extremely important. And I think that’s an obvious one, but you know, making sure that you’ve got the senior and even not just a senior but they want to know that your general account people are credible and, they know what they’re doing. So, you can’t always just hire the most junior person to manage the work. They want people who are strong and credible on their team. And these are basic things that not all account people do. But the junior ones do they know their business? Have you seen the website; do you understand what they’re selling? Do you know their products? Do you know their services, do subscribe to their email newsletters, do you subscribe to Google Alerts, you follow them on social media outlets, I mean, those are basics. And if you’re not doing that, there’s a big problem. And also making sure that you’re really aware as to what their KPIs are, and that you’re regularly tracking them and updating them if you have the ability to be able to track them through research and other and other forms.
Julia
In terms of great list.
Kelly
I just have a couple more on keeping the business and this is a kind of a fun one about don’t just say yes.
Julia
Oh, yeah, I know. That one. I love that one.
Kelly
Are you hiring me to execute? Or are you hiring me for my professional opinion?
Julia
Right? Am I just your do-er?
Kelly
Yeah. And sometimes you get, just do it. And I don’t want to hear your opinion. And that’s the relationship that you’re going to have. But if they really do value your opinion, and say, okay, you know, this person does have 30 years’ experience in the business, maybe I should listen, you have to be very careful there. Because sometimes they’re just not ready to listen, and they don’t want to listen. But you also have to give an opportunity to say no, when it’s appropriate, and no, I don’t think this is going to work. However, this is the other option that I would select for you. And here’s why. So, saying yes to everything immediately can end up being a thing that ends up driving your team a little bit crazy.
Julia
Agreed. I was actually writing, like my agency culture Manifesto, recently. And something that’s kind of related that to that, like one sentence was, you know, our team is people who aren’t afraid to tell a client that they don’t know. Yes, you will find an answer. So, like, that’s also acceptable to that you’re not just the Yes, man, you’re not just the viewer. And you also aren’t the all-knowing either, that it’s okay to be the opposite of all those things. Because that’s what like a real relationship is. Absolutely, I think it builds the relationship in a much stronger way, for a future.
Kelly
So, I think responsibilities are pretty obvious on based on the things that we’ve talked about, do you want to move on to more general tips? So, these tips are really kind of targeted more at interns, Junior people who’ve just joined an advertising agency and account coordinators as an account executive, but sometimes account executives need to be reminded as well. And so, we each wrote some tips, and some are more obvious than others. So, I’ll go through a couple and I think we talked exclusively on our mistakes on another podcasts. Right? Did we do a podcast all about mistake?
Julia
Yes, what are one of the top 10 mistakes we have made.
Kelly
So, within that my tip is check and double check. And you if you have questions about that, please listen to our other podcasts and mistakes we’ve made. And please learn from ours before you make the same — double check every phone number and every URL. Everything with a name on it.
Julia
So, mine is a little more…What’s the word? It’s not like concrete. It’s be an accountable person. And account executive. An accountable account executive is someone who takes accountability for their decisions. So, they, if they were the one that allowed to let a typo through, they take accountability. Like it’s not the end of the world to own up to it. Because yes, eventually, whatever you don’t own up to is you’re going to be found out. And I do know, there are certain personalities out there that don’t like to admit weakness, or they get too embarrassed. But you know, in the ad business, you just have to be an accountable person because mistakes will happen, or decisions will be made, that you’re going to have to be accountable. But that one is like, top on my list.
Kelly
No, that’s good. And I’ll riff off of that – be indispensable.
Kelly
People who are indispensable are the last people to get fired. Right? Yes. So those people that I need to have — that person because that person is the only one that can do XYZ for me. And when you’re indispensable, you’re going to keep your job. So how can you make your job do your job so well, that you are indispensable and that’s always been my go-to, it’s always been my goal, and something that I’ve tried to emphasize with my teammates.
Julia
It’s a great one. And something maybe more boring that kind of riffs off of that one is that I had on my list is learning protocols and documenting things that’s on my list today. It’s another obvious one, right? Like for a good account manager, just knowing what the protocols are. And that goes back to the onboarding that we talked about, like just being really present when those things are happening so that they just become ingrained. You don’t think about them, so you can focus on other things. And then we think we pretty sure we talked about this in another podcast two is just being a good documenter of things. Because even if you’re, you know, the account coordinator having the document documented, meeting notes or documented ideas or learning how to write a great creative brief, all of those documents are, you know, your backup as a good account person when your memory doesn’t remember.
Kelly
Yes. Put everything in writing is basically my section on that. Be concise, because you also want to be referred back to stuff. I keep these emails and I’m always going back. Okay, what were the notes on that? You know, just to check and know the date.
Julia
Kelly, are you a, like a note taker on paper? Or are you a note taker on computer? Are you an apple pen person? I’m curious.
Kelly
We talked about this because I know you’re a hardcopy note taker..
Julia
Right?
Kelly
It depends on where it is. If I’m at a face-to-face meeting, I’ll do it on paper. If I’m doing a webinar, I do it on my computer. But I’m constantly taking notes like I that’s how I get my ideas. So, I use on my iPhone, the messaging there I have thousands of ideas and me in the
Notes app. I have thousands of ideas. Okay, a quote for this… And I’m constantly going back and looking through that. So yes, I write everything down.
Julia
Yeah. Yeah, I started to use notes more in my in my iPhone, mainly when I’m like, thinking of something deeply in the shower.
Kelly
It’s hard to do that when you’re in the shower to write notes.
Julia
I told a client the other day, I was like, honestly, like, seems like some of my best ideas lately are when I’m in the shower, or I’m on a run, or I’m doing something where I absolutely cannot write it down. And so therefore, I pull out my phone and write it down.
Kelly
Yeah, it’s for me, it’s always after midnight.
Julia
I’m not up after midnight.
Kelly
I have a new puppy. So, I’m up.
Julia
That’s right. All right. A couple more. To close us out. Be honest. Yeah. Goes with accountability.
Kelly
I’ve had a lot of people who haven’t been honest and mistakes that we’ve made. I’ll give you another example. Way back in the day, when mobile apps were just starting, we hired a mobile app vendor that we had vetted, or we thought we had vetted, who turned up to not be so not be aboveboard. And we paid a certain amount of money to them, and they didn’t deliver, and the client wanted the app done by a certain time. So, I scheduled a meeting with a client and went to them and I said, the vendor is clearly not going to finish this project. And so, it’s our it’s our fault. We made a mistake. We chose the wrong vender; we’re going to make it right. We’re not going to deliver it when you needed it, but we’re going to deliver it in the next month. And it’s going to be on our dime and admitted it. And while they were upset, the biggest reaction was Wow, thank you for being honest.
Julia
Yeah. Huge.
Kelly
So being honest, is important. Let the creatives sell the creative. That’s when we’ve talked about in the past, right? And then another one that I always had as a young account executive, someone said at Grey Advertising was the hot potato roll. The Hot Potato rule is, when you get a new project, or new instructions from the client, you got to act like it’s a hot potato, you don’t hold on to it, you don’t like wait a day to say, Oh, this client asked me to do XYZ, you got to make sure that you package that hot potato, put some tin foil around it, so it’s not so hot.
Julia
I love it I’ve never heard that.
Kelly
And figure out what needs to be done and pass that hot potato to the person who’s going to execute it — get the hot potato off your lap onto someone else’s lap. Otherwise, it remains a hot potato and you can’t work with a hot potato. I think I’ve just taken the analogy way too far. But..
Julia
No, it’s a little true, though.
Kelly
Move it, move it. So that’s, that’s another one of my big ones. And then at larger agencies, one of the biggest challenges that I’ve seen is there tends to be silos. There are silos between the creative between the media between the production between the account management and, and they don’t always work well together. And so, this idea which I hate calling it this, but everyone calls it building bridges. We’re going to “build some bridges”. You’ve heard this expression, right? Are you building bridges with your team?
Julia
And honestly, that’s not one that I use. I have a whole list of things that I that is not one of them, but maybe I should start using it.
Kelly
It’s big on the corporate side, too. It’s you know, build bridges between your departments between your different divisions.
Julia
How about this one – alignment.
Kelly
And raising up the flagpole. And a couple of final tips for me. Think of think of your boss as your second client.
Julia
Ooh, obvious one.
Kelly
My pet peeve is never be late to a client meeting. Always be five minutes early.
Julia
Always. And I will piggyback on that one is always confirm. Like, I’m just confirming the meeting. Have someone on the team will be especially if you’re an account coordinator. If you’re bringing the whole team and your boss confirm the meeting is happening.
Kelly
That’s good. That’s good. I hadn’t thought of that one for this. That’s good. Never lose patience with the client in front of them. Take a deep breath. And you don’t want to get into a verbal disagreement?
Julia
Yeah, it doesn’t…
Kelly
It doesn’t do any anybody good. Yep. Give more than is expected. Even if it’s not in your contract. There’s a lot of ways to give — doesn’t mean necessarily deliverables. But ideas -thoughts.
Julia
Agreed. That sort of thing.
Kelly
Deliver early.
I do this in new business. My RFPs are always delivered at least a day early. And I do that strategically. Now someone might be able to catch me on this. There may have been one or two that I slipped. I never miss a deadline ever. But I try to deliver early and there’s a strategic reason for that.
Julia
Like it, so I do not practice that. Kelly. You have one up to me there. For sure. When I remember that. I like it. Alright, you can aspire if it works for you. Well, I will aspire to that totally.
Kelly
Treat everyone at the client with respect and interest, no matter if they’re the person answering the front door or the care coordinator or just answering the phone. It’s that’s extremely important. Be organized. And here’s the last one. Help educate your client, but don’t do it in a demeaning way. And I think I may have made that mistake in the past.
Julia
I’ve definitely made that mistake. And I will let’s talk about that for a second because it’s hard work for both. We’re excited to like pass on our knowledge. But you don’t want to act like you’re a know it all. And it’s hard to skate that line.
Kelly
Because some clients may not want to be Educated. Or may not be at want to be educated by you.
Julia
Yeah, I have a client that does come to me and ask me for advice about things in business and, and how to deal with certain situations. And I always, try to listen a lot in those situations and give little tidbits from my experience. But definitely, I tread lightly because I don’t want to be a know it all. And I think I definitely, let’s see, in my mid 20s, for sure I had some bad situations where I was coming off as a know it all. And it was the client smacked me back..
Kelly
And I think that is one of the hardest, I think that’s the problem with type A women like us.
We knew where we were going to be, but we weren’t there yet.
And then let’s bring this down to our target audience, which is women. And, you know, a lot of our tips here, are very general. But in terms of tips specifically for women, I think the biggest challenge as an account person is knowing when and how to speak up, especially when you’re in a room full of men. Or if you don’t agree with the man that is speaking, how do you politely disagree, but still share your voice, especially when you know, that man may be in a, quote, mansplaining mode.
Julia
That’s a big challenge.
Kelly
But women have to learn how to speak up, especially if you have an important point to make.
Julia
And how to be intentional about how emotional you get when you are bringing up those points, right? I am dramatic, I have a tendency to come across as dramatic. That’s not necessarily my intention behind my communications. But I’ve been told that I come across as dramatic. And so, there are times where I have to be intentionally, or I have to intentionally dial back on that when I am delivering, you know, an opinion that’s different or, or something like that. It’s a great point, especially for women.
Kelly
Yeah, and it’s a challenge. And I’m in the same position, I think you are in terms of having a moderate myself. It’s not about moderating you not you need to be able to give your point away of view in a way that’s non-threatening, because that’s what you were used to doing and as women, right?
Julia
Yeah, it’s just understanding your audience, right. I mean, it’s everything that we do in marketing. But we just take it to a personal communication point of view. Yeah, I know, there’s so many books, we feel like this would be the perfect podcast to talk about like that we’ve read, know that like, specifically talk about this topic? How to be a woman in the workplace and how to come off strong and confident and not a bleep.
Kelly
Yeah, yeah. And one final thought is certain situations in the past, even in the present, I will sit purposely at the head of the table.
Julia
Oh, that’s a good one. And that drives some men nuts. Yeah. Oh, I’m sure.
Julia
But I had earned my place and that at the table, so don’t be afraid to take your place at the head of the table if you earn it. If you’re running the meeting, if you’re running the show.
Julia
Yeah. Such a good one.
Kelly
Don’t just automatically sit on those side tables around the table. Yeah, beyond lean in on this.
Julia
I was thinking about I’m running the show. Such a good one I’ve never really got really gets down into the psychology of men and women, doesn’t it sit at the head of the table when you’ve earned it?
Kelly
It’s a power position. It’s there for a reason. Don’t be afraid of it now. Now if you’re an account coordinator, maybe you don’t sit at the head of the table you have to have earned the place…..
Julia
Unless your boss has asked you to lead a meeting. Yes might be appropriate.
Kelly
we can end with that one.
Julia
Yeah, these were you really, you really outdid the tips on this one, Kelly. I’m taking away some of these to implement them myself.
Kelly
You had some good ones as well.
Julia
All right. Well, thanks everybody and talk to you next week. Bye. Thanks for listening. You can learn more about us and follow us on social twomarketingmoms.com. Please also smash that subscribe button or leave us a review. We want to talk about what you want to hear. So please give us your feedback. Till next time.
