Agency owners tell me they’re frustrated because their existing client accounts aren’t growing.
They know there’s a lot more value they could bring to current clients in the form of:
- Offering more ideas to help their clients’ businesses grow
- Suggesting more agency services to support the clients’ strategy
- Seeking ways to help other areas of the clients’ organisation
But their account managers either aren’t doing anything about it – or aren’t doing it consistently.
For example, they are either too busy or don’t know where to start when it comes to things like:
- Thinking more commercially about the client’s business & how the agency could come up with ideas outside of the current scope to help the client reach their goals
- Proposing cross sells and upsells at the right time in the right way
- Asking for referrals to other departments/offices of the client company
The absence of these actions and behaviours from the account management team ultimately impacts the agency’s bottom line.
It puts additional pressure on the senior leadership team to find net new revenue from prospecting and pitching – which is more expensive, time consuming and puts a strain on the agency’s resource, team and existing client relationships.
According to Gartner to grow an existing account, you need:
“An ability to hold client improvement conversations”
Gartner’s report findings also conclude:
“If your account manager is either unwilling or unable to do that,
the whole growth engine stalls”.
Essentially what this means is that account managers need to have a willingness to take a greater interest in the client’s business, adopt a more commercial mindset and have a more ‘entrepreneurial’ skillset.
AND it also means they need to be set up for success by having the right support from agency to do it.
I’ve recorded a 5-part mini podcast series about this called “Entrepreneurial account management”.
We kick off by asking why account managers need entrepreneurial skills and how this will grow the agency – and you can access it here.
