The Four Levels of Client Value in Account Management with Jenny Plant

In today's episode of the podcast, we are talking all things account management and I am joined by Jenny Plant from Account Management Skills. This was a fascinating conversation and one where I learned a lot, so I know that you will too. Now, should your account managers just be caretakers of your accounts or should they have more responsibility for the growth of those accounts and getting additional revenue? And when should we split account management into account management and project management? All these questions and more are answered in today's episode of the podcast. So let's get started. I'm Rob Da Costa and this is the Agency Accelerator Podcast. As someone who has stood in your shoes, having started, grown and sold my own agency, I know just how it feels in the ups and downs of agency life. So this podcast aims to ease your journey just a little by sharing mine and my guests experiences and advice as you navigate your way to growing a profitable, sustainable and enjoyable business. Hey everybody and welcome to this week's episode of the Agency Accelerator Podcast. I am really excited to be joined by Jenny Plant today. Now Jenny trains creative agency account managers to retain and grow client business. She founded Account management skills in 2010 to help account managers grow confidence with clients and she's worked in the agency world just about as long as I have. So welcome to the show, Jenny.

Thank you so much, Rob. It's really a pleasure to be here. Thank you.

Fantastic. So let me ask you the first sort of broad question, and this may be a controversial first question, but it's sort of my view of the world and that is that why don't agencies invest in the development and training of their account managers in the same way that they invest in the skills, like technical skills, for example, how to use a software language or a web app or whatever. But it seems to me that agencies naturally invest in that, but not necessarily in developing their account managers. Do you see that as well?

Absolutely. And this is the reason I do what I do because having worked in agencies like yourself since the early 90s, I've worked for 30 years in account management and client side and actually I didn't receive training until it was frankly too late in my career. I was general manager of Publicist Life Brands in charge of an agency of 40 staff, 4 million turnover. And I was given comprehensive sales training. And I thought there's so much of this that would have been so useful when I was an account exec. And I think looking back on my career, I left a lot of money on the table and also I was very reactive rather than proactive. So I Could have added so much more value to my client relationships. And I can only think, why don't agencies typically invest in training? Because I don't think they see the value. And since, you know, I've been training account growth since 2010, I have got so many testimonials from account managers who've come through my training and have actually delivered an ROI. You know, it pays for itself 10 times over coming on training and that now I'm, I've finally got the proof. So, you know, an account manager's job, no one wants to think they're in the business of selling or sales. It's kind of a bit of a dirty word in a, in the, in agency world. It was for me as well. But actually there's a lot of skills in selling, influencing other people, questioning in a certain way, uncovering opportunity, being proactive. There's so much there asking for testimonials, referrals, that I think it really is a missed opportunity and that's what drives me. And the confidence that it gives account managers, I think is brilliant.

It's so true. I also think, again, I don't know whether you agree with this, that a lot of smaller agencies who, whose agency owner was originally doing the client service and the client delivery, and they still might be, they probably think, well, as I grew in my career, I just naturally had those account management type skills and therefore you should have them. And I feel in some ways that there isn't a recognition that actually those skills need to be taught. They shouldn't just be assumed that as your career develops, you will naturally be a full rounded account manager. You certainly might have some great client management skills, but that doesn't mean you can do all the business development stuff, does it?

No, absolutely. And just to have a commercial understanding, I mean, you know, like you say, if you are an agency owner that has an account management background, I think account management is a great grounding to be an agency owner, actually. And you're probably really good at retention and growth of clients naturally yourself. But I agree, if you want your team to be the same, I think an investment of time, coaching and guiding is really, really. It's going to pay dividends.

Yeah. And like you say, you're going to get a good return on investment. So let's, before we jump into some more details about that, let's just kind of give a definition to what we think account management is because perhaps that's where the problem lies with a lot of people in that they see it in a very kind of Client service way only. So how would, if someone said to you, how would you define an account management role? What would you typically say?

Before I define the account management role, I think there are actually two types of account manager. One is what I call a hybrid account manager who's actually doing two jobs. They're doing the project management, which is ensuring projects are delivered on time, on budget, scheduling, trafficking, resourcing and all the nuts and bolts of delivery. And then the account management side of their business, of their role, sorry, which is all about account growth, relationship development, being proactive with ideas, understanding the client's business. So when we talk about define for me account management, I think about 20 years ago you would assume that it was a hybrid account manager, so it would be effectively an amalgamation of all those things. But nowadays, over the last 10 years, particularly as we've become more digitalized, many, many agencies now separate the roles. So they have a project management team and an account management team. So in answer to your question, an account manager's remit is to nurture and develop and grow the existing client relationship.

Yeah. So I really want to dig into that in a moment because I think it's really fascinating about that split and when does it happen and who does what. But before we do that, I think for a lot of smaller agencies who are hiring their first account managers, they are going to be looking for that hybrid role. They're going to be looking for someone who can deliver work and they're also going to be looking at someone who has good account management, client management skills so that they can make sure the client's happy, they can communicate effectively, they can manage it, client expectations and hopefully they can upsell. But what before we jump into that, the one piece that I think a lot of account managers are not good at, and I guess this is where you step in, is the upselling piece. They're probably quite good at keeping the client happy. They're probably quite good at delivering the month by month plans that they've agreed with the client when they're working on the client strategy. But they're probably not very good at selling and upselling. Would you agree with that? And what tips and advice would you give to someone who's in that situation?

Definitely it's either a. Well, there's lots of different reasons I could start with in terms of why they're not doing it, but if you want to jump straight to the tips, I say that there's four levels of client value that we give. Level one is excellent service, we deliver high quality Service on time, on budget. Second level of value is we also, not only do we do level one, but we give them a fantastic experience. They enjoy the process of working with us. So if you're doing, if you're operating at that level, you're quite sort of reactive. But if you're doing it well, you will retain your clients. But if you're operating at just that level, simple things about account growth, like mapping out your services on one one visual so that whoever is responsible for cross selling can clearly see all of the services that you offer, can recognize the gaps in some of the services that a client perhaps is not taking advantage of. But to make it specific, map out those services in terms of your typical client buying pattern. So if 75% of your business comes through people wanting websites, you know, what are all the, what's the natural next step? Because then you can tell a client's story that would lead to that. Just say, look, typically at this point in the website's development, many of our other clients ask us about a maintenance package or they ask us about driving traffic at launch. Would it be useful if we shared some insight into what's working now? So you're literally pulling them towards you. So it's that kind of natural flow of conversation. If we go back to the levels of value, if you go to level three value, you're delivering not only level one and level two, but you're also giving an outcome. You know your client is going to get a return on the investment through working with you. And level four value is you are a futurist. You're bringing future value. Now when you're operating at those two levels, you're really getting under the skin of the client's business. You understand what they're trying to achieve in terms of goals, strategy, which makes any ideas that you bring to them super relevant to where they are and what they need. And the tip for you to grow business at that level would be, and I think this is something that's not done enough by smaller independent agencies, is actually to first of all categorize your clients in terms of which ones do we want to grow and do we see growth potential with? Secondly, you know, what client relationships do we have at that client company? Are we spreading the relationship risk, but then also asking to work with them, what I call upstream. So rather than saying, let's just get into this relationship and work on a kind of ad hoc basis, I'm not talking about negotiating retainer. You could be on a project by project, but you say, look, again, 99% of our clients see the value of working with us when we're bringing ideas earlier in their internal planning process. So what does that look like? Typically, we get involved in helping clients with their yearly plan and then we have quarterly strategy sessions where we're sitting upstream, bringing on ideas on a regular basis that are in total alignment of what you're trying to achieve as a business. Would it make sense for us to spend a few minutes talking about what that look that would look like? So if you are a smaller agency, but you are strategically kind of savvy and you can sit in front of clients and you feel that you can add value to what they're trying to achieve as a business, then why not offer that? And that ultimately is the position that you want to playing.

Yeah, there's so much in what you've just said that I want to unpack. So I really love those four levels. I've not seen it sort of outlined like that. So I hope everyone listens to that. And really, I feel like there's too many account managers that operate at level one and two and that's all they feel they need to do. And they're not very good at operating at 3 and 4. Now, if you don't operate at 3, which is being that outcome focused, like we're getting outcomes for you now, then you're going to have a high turnover of clients. Too many people focus on the bits and bytes of what they do. They like their monthly report reports include all the tasks that they've done. But actually, I always say to people, the clients don't really care about that. They care about an outcome. And if you're not reporting and understanding what the outcome is, then you're likely to lose the client in the long run. Even if you feel like sending them a massive list of tasks you've done is going to somehow justify the fee? Well, it isn't because the clients don't care about that. I think we also need to make sure. And it's a cliche, but it's so true that we are positioning ourselves as a tactical partner, a strategic partner, rather with our clients and not a tactical provider. Because if we're seen as just a tactical provider, we'll never be able to operate to that strategic level and work upstream. And we are seen as very commoditized and therefore people can swap us in and out. Whereas if we are a strategic partner, then there's nowhere they'd want to let us go. So I think that is really, really key. And I think the other thing I wanted to say is that we need to remember that often clients buy us for one specific thing. Like if we're using your example, they might need a new website. So they say, right, you are a great web design agency, so we're going to hire you and they will see you as the expert in that particular subject matter. But unless you are proactive at telling them, actually we do hosting and we do maintenance and we can do SEO and we can do optimization. Unless you are finding the right times to tell them that, they will never see you as experts in those areas. And when you try to tell them too late, like they tell you one day, oh, we're hiring an SEO agency and you're saying, yeah, but we could do that as well. It's sort of too late, isn't it? The horse has already bolted. So there's some just fantastic points that you made there. And I also love the categorization of clients as well.

Yeah, I agree. And there was a few things that you said that I want to pick up on because, you know, if you can categorize your clients, and I call them platinum clients and I have a categorization matrix, but essentially I, if they've got high growth potential, that is they're in a high growth sector, they're opening offices internationally, then they're making new hires, they've got a strong pipeline of products coming through, that is a high growth potential business. And then they, they've got money to spend, then that's your platinum. And like you said, Rob, why not from the outset if you are leading them in the sale, which is your area of expertise? I know, but you know, you could say from the outside, this is our policy of working with our clients. We get involved in your yearly plan. We have strategic workshops because typically our clients tell us that they like us as the experts in our field to leverage the understandings we're having with working with other clients and sharing them with our clients on a regular basis. There was an industry report done by a company called Relationship Audits and Management who specialize in auditing relationships. And when they ask clients the question, would you like your agency to leverage the understanding they have working with other clients and share it with you, 100% of clients say yes, but less than 20% of agencies actually do that. So again, if you feel uncomfortable sort of saying, well, we do this, we do that using first person language. You know, first person, I, us, we, our, it's very salesy, tell a story about what you're doing. With other clients. You know, other clients have said that they benefit from working with us because of our SEO capabilities or, you know, blah, blah, blah. And that kind of leads the client nicely without feeling that you're being salesy.

Yeah, I think one thing is we almost need to remove the term selling because that's what scares a lot of young account managers. They think, I'm not a salesman. That's not what I've trained for, that's not what I do. And it's like, well, no, you're not really selling. You're having conversations and, you know, you're telling your client what you think will help them and what you can do to help them. And if there's a natural fit, that's going to become very evident. So stop thinking about selling and start thinking about, you know, talking, communicating.

Well, this was actually in a Gartner report at the end of 2019. There was a big industry report among 700 business to business organizations and 650 account managers. And this was not our industry specific, but it was all about why account growth is so difficult. Because it's not, you know, unique to us. This is, this is typical. And they ask the question to the account managers, what does it take to grow an account? And you know what the majority of the account managers said? They said, well, we need to go above and beyond on service, which like you said, Rob, it's all about, you know, delivering service, being reactive and keeping the client happy. That's maintenance activity. And they concluded that actually what's moving the needle is to have client improvement conversations. And the way they broke that down was paint a picture of your client's future business, have a unique critical perspective, and deliver a return on the investment for the relationship. So, you know, everything that you've just said, I 100% agree with you. I think we're, we're singing from the, I don't want to say the cliche same.

Well, I think it's because we see it time and time again with our clients, don't we? And I think, oh my God. When you said the account managers think that the way to grow an account is to go above and beyond. It's like, no, that's probably the opposite because you just create this unrealistic level of service that you can't maintain. The client expects it at some point, you fail to deliver it, even though that's not what they're paying for. And then now they're disappointed. And so you're more likely to lose your clients by constantly saying, we've got to go above and beyond. I really, when someone says to me, I ask them, like, what's your position? What's your unique, you know, usp, where's your niche? And they say, well, you know, we go above and beyond. I'm like, oh, no, that's not, that's a cliche. That is not something that makes you different. You might believe it, but it does not make you different. It just means you'll have a high turnover of clients.

Exactly. And you also get trapped in this loop of, oh, no, we keep having to get, make the clients happier and happier and happier if they've got it. And they call it. Gartner actually called it the zone of wasted effort. Because at that point, there's a point that you reach in the client relationship where you need to be, be, be bringing new and painting a picture of the future being critical, getting involved in their business and helping them develop further. But actually you're just stuck in this retentive account retention loop.

I call it not as smart as Gartner. I call it the client service hamster wheel of doom. Anyway, let's, let's move the conversation forward. So I am a small agency. I have got three account managers. @ what point in my journey would I start thinking, do I need to separate project management from account.

Management? Do you know what? I don't have a specific point of view on this. I've worked with different agency consultants like yourself, who do typically work with agency leadership on the numbers. And recently I did a seminar with David Baker in the US his view is that you have five people in the agency and at that point you split. Now, I don't know why he's got that justification. It's probably something to do with numbers, but he talks about splitting it a lot earlier than, say, other agency consultants. So I don't personally have a view on what you should do, but if I work with an agency, I typically look at their natural behaviors as well. Rob. Because what I learned through working with David was he's actually gathered disk profiling data on account managers and project managers, in fact, every agency role since 2008. And he's generated over 22,000 profiles. And not only is the account manager role and the project manager role different in terms of remit, it typically attracts someone with a completely different disc profile where they feel more in flow. So a project manager is more about the attention to detail the following process. They got a lot of satisfaction from delivery and getting stuff done, really to a high standard on time or budget. The Account manager role is completely different. Disc profile who love kind of metaphorically walking the halls of the client organization, meeting new people, presenting big ideas they love. You know, you put them in a room of strangers and by the end of the evening they'll have made friends. It's easy for them. And I can tell, I used to be able to tell through talking to someone. You know, a lot of people don't want to pick up the phone, they're just not interested. They don't want to have the conversations. They're much more comfortable behind the screen getting stuff done. They're super organized, super attention to detail. Put them in front of a spreadsheet and they thrive. But ask them to pick up the phone or make a call or present an idea and it's not their comfort zone. So I think there's another dimension that through all the years of learning, you know, of training so many different people, these, these are other things that have come into my awareness that actually it's a, it's a completely different skill.

Set. Yeah. And it's, it's really interesting. I think the point to take away there for the listeners is that there isn't a right answer to that question that I asked. It's different for different people. So if you take a typical example, like for me, let's say I'm working with a PR agency, they've grown and they've got say seven or eight staff and those staff consist of the leaders, but also say some account managers and a couple of account directors. And we were having that conversation with them about well, when do we split this up? That would be quite a difficult one because the question sort of becomes where the subject matter expertise lays. Because in their current setup, the subject matter expert is the account manager who's managing the account but also delivering the work. So we're now looking at splitting that. Then where does the subject matter expertise.

Stay? Well, I'm glad you brought that up because again, one of my observations is splitting the a.m. and p.m. in my experience isn't as easy for every type of agency. So it's really clear cut in the majority of kind of pure digital tech businesses, app development, etc. You know, business, digital transformation. But when you're talking about PR agencies and even to some extent strategic agencies, where the people managing the client relationship tend to be the strategist and they tend to be working very much upstream with clients, it's not as easy to pass off any kind of projects. I would still, still say though, there is a big reason to do It. I was working with an internal comms agency in the States, for example, and they've been, they split the roles five years ago, and I interviewed them for my podcast and one of the things that came out of that was profitability went through the roof as soon as they did it. Because the person managing the client relationship and the strategy work is not keeping track of hours. It's not making sure that they're flagging to the client. You know, oh, we've gone over budget or we're going to need to do a change order. So there was a definite benefit to them, even though they call their account managers strategists because they are the subject matter.

Expertise. It is a really interesting topic. And I think it also shows the weakness of not splitting it out eventually. Because often what happens is you have an account manager, their career develops, they become a senior account manager, account director, they're targeted with client growth, they're targeted with new business, and they're often not very good at it. And I've seen this time and time again where the agency owners get frustrated because their account managers and account directors are not good at business development. And that's because they're the people that, as you described earlier, that like sitting behind the screen and doing the work and all the rest of it. They're not necessarily the sales people who are the, who are the ones that would be able to walk the halls, as you said. So then what they do is they hire business development people. And I've got to say, my personal view of this is that 9 times out of 10, they fail because they are good in the interview at selling themselves and they're not very good at actually doing the job. So there's, I mean, listen, there's a, there's a lot to unpack there, which we won't have time on. One question I did want to ask you though, if you're splitting the account manager and account project manager roles, how do we get them to work really well together? And let me give you an example of this. So I had an old client a long time ago who was a digital agency, had account managers and project managers, and they really were fighting against each other. So the account manager would come back from a meeting and say, yeah, we've agreed to do this web development, we've agreed this fee. And then the project managers will say, there's no way we can deliver that work in that time. And so how do we get that relationship working really.

Well? It comes down to, and this is described as healthy tension. You know, no one role is kind of leading the other. They're absolutely on the same level. And it is about collaboration and communication. You know, you can do kind of tactical things like disc profiling exercises and doing some kind of work around understanding each other's strengths and weaknesses so that you can optimize ways of working, that's one thing. But I think this is, this comes down to having a clear process for working together. From the moment that you know that you've won the client, you know what happens there. And the agency that I was talking about earlier on, the internal comms agency, they automatically have like an internal kickoff document that both parties are responsible for completing. So one, the account manager is looking for the growth potential the client business, the stakeholders. The project manager is looking specifically at the deliverables and the timelines and the stuff like that. So they're working together from the moment they start in the relationship on this shared deck and then they have an internal kickoff meeting that comes off this deck and both present together. So it's that equal pairing and that that should continue. But inevitably there's some healthy tension because again, account managers are very good at painting the bigger picture and saying yes. They're not so good at saying no. But that can also work to their advantage where they play the good cop, bad copy, you know. Oh yes, of course. Let me check with my project manager and I'll come back to you just to check that's in scope and what the implication is. So there's that kind of trade off because sometimes when the account manager has to answer the question on their own, they might kind of crumble because for them the relationship is so key and they don't want to do anything to.

Time. I think the key message there for the listeners is process is super important. I think having clear roles and responsibilities so everybody understands what the PM's doing, what the AM's doing. But a clear process that underpins all of that and sort of maps the client journey from onboarding to, you know, delivery to retention and growth. And we've got a clear process. So that's super important. Remember, if you're growing your agency and you don't have really good systems and processes, it's like growing a business on quicksand or like building a building without foundations, it's going to fall down. What works shouting across the office when there's sort of three or four or five of you, doesn't work when there's seven, eight, nine, ten of you. So that's crucial. Let me ask you One more question before we sort of wrap this up, but another big, broad question, really, which is, what is the difference between a good account manager and a great account.

Manager? Right. Great question. Do you know what I think, Rob? I think. And this has just come to me, but I think coachability, okay, a great account manager is always learning. They're hungry, they're curious. So, for example, in their personal time, they'll be reading Marketing Week, or they'll be following, you know, if they've got a PLC as a client, they'll be downloading the transcripts from the quarterly investor relations meetings just to understand what the CEO has said about where they're going to be investing their money. Next year. There'll be kind of listening to podcasts like your own, reading books. You know, there's a great book called the Art of Client Service by Robert Solomon. There's other books about sales and selling. So do you know, I would say it's coachability. It's having that curiosity and wanting to develop yourself. I don't know. What would you.

Say? I would say all of that, but I'd say someone, I guess in line with that, someone that is completely willing to step out their comfort zone and someone who recognizes the type of relationship they're building with their client is not an imbalanced one where I have to say yes, because otherwise the client will leave me, but is one that's respectful and one where I have half an eye all the time to identify opportunities and someone that wants to do more than just do a great job, but actually retain and grow their clients. So I think that's a big ask in a way. But I do. I do think that's important. I want to just pick up on a point. The client will name, name, remain nameless. But if she's listening to this, she'll know exactly who it is. But I just had a client call before this podcast interview, and we were talking about the team, and she was telling me that she was sort of frustrated, one of their. With one of their account managers, because she said she asked her account manager, are you using ChatGPT? And she said, watch ChatGPT. So there's an example of someone that isn't doing any kind of work outside isn't staying up to date with the latest technologies or learning about their clients. So that was just something that happened today that made me smile when you mentioned that. So I think. I think between you and I, we've probably given a definition of what a good account manager is. I guess it's Quite hard to find that person because we are asking for a fairly broad skill set, especially when we are combining the account manager and the project manager roles. Let me ask you one final question before we wrap this up because I'm conscious of your time and the listeners time. The question I ask all of my guests, which is if you go back in time and give your younger self just starting out in business one piece of advice, what would it.

Be? I think I would say for my younger self, have more confidence in yourself. Because I suffered from lack of confidence and I think I went on a personal development journey. I've read so many books, listened to so many podcasts and I have challenged myself, as you say, and I think that's enabled me to feel a lot more confident. So I used to underestimate myself and when you're sitting in a meeting and you'll think this, you're thinking this doesn't feel right. But I'm too kind of, I've got low self esteem and I don't want to say anything. That was my.

Journey. So probably you and me and everyone else. Yeah, I think it's interesting, isn't it, that we're too afraid to make a fool of ourselves or to be judged by others so we stay quiet in those meetings and yet we just need to learn to turn down that self talk and trust ourselves a bit more. So I think, you know, that's a good piece of advice that, you know, we could all heed. So if people wanted to find out more about you or account management skills, where would they.

Go? So my website, account management skills.com or you can connect with me on LinkedIn.

@Jennyplant. Great, that's. I will make sure we include all of those links into today's show notes. So I just want to say a huge thank you for joining us today. I found that really interesting. I suppose it's a bit arrogant of me to say, but when I learn something, I know that I've had a great interview and that doesn't mean I know everything. It's just I love keep learning things and I really like some of the points that you've shared with us today. So I know the listeners will as well. So thanks so much for joining.

Us. It's a pleasure. Rob, thank you for having.