In this video Joshua Nelson explains how digital‑marketing agency owners can scale by hiring account managers at the right stage and with the right psychological profile. He advises that once an agency reaches roughly 10‑15 retainer clients (about $15k‑$30k in monthly recurring revenue) the founder should step back from both operations (site builds, content creation, etc.) and client‑service duties (report reviews, client updates) to avoid bottlenecks. The hiring decision should focus on personality and work‑style assessments: a DISC test to find candidates with high Influence (I) and high Dominance (D) – traits that ensure proactive communication and confidence with clients – and a Kolbe test to locate individuals with high Follow‑Through and high Fact‑Finder scores, which predict consistent client follow‑up, attention to detail, and lower burnout risk. Nelson links these traits directly to client retention, churn prevention, and long‑term employee stability, and he encourages viewers to discuss further in his free Digital Marketing Agency Success Facebook group.
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Hey guys, in this video I want to share some of the key strategies and tips for hiring good account managers for your digital marketing agency. So let's talk, let's talk a little bit about account managers and kind of when they come into play, how they come into play, and most importantly, how to find good ones that can step in and relieve you from the client management aspect of your digital marketing agency. That sounds good, give me a like, give me a comment, let's, let's dive into this. So What I find is, if you think about your digital marketing agency, you know, when it's time to find an account manager, usually it's gonna come in around 10 to 15 clients, right? If you think about your agency, the first thing you wanna remove yourself from is operations, right? Building the websites, writing the content, claiming the directories, recording the videos for your clients, et cetera. You need to put somebody else in place, you need to put a team in place to do that for you. Otherwise you'll get bottlenecked and you won't be able to continue to grow and scale. The business. So that's, that's first, but the second thing is the next position you probably want to remove yourself from is client services, right? Going through the reports with the clients, bringing them up to speed with what's going on, keeping them abreast of kind of what you're going to be focused on over the next 30 to 60 days has to be done, right? Otherwise you will churn clients, your reputation will begin to suffer, but at around 10 to 15 clients, if you're doing a digital marketing agency, these got 10 to 15 retainer-based clients, you're trying to sell, you're you're trying to serve and you're trying to manage the team that does the operations and support, you will start to become bottlenecked, right? And that bottleneck will prevent you from continuing to grow, it'll prevent you from continuing to scale. So at that point, you know, you should probably be doing between $15,000 and $30,000 in monthly recurring revenue is when you wanna make the investment in an account management staff. Now, I've hired account managers, I've fired account managers, we've had good account managers, we've had bad account managers. And what's great is we boiled it down to a couple key criteria of what a good account manager looks like and the things you want to look for to make sure you get somebody great to step in and stick around long term. So here's the deal. There's two tests I like to run: a DiSC and a Kolbe, right? This will really help you identify if you've got the right psychological profile to excel and to do a great job and to help you retain your clients and to replace you from that role within the business. So DISC is a personality profile, and it's based on dominance, influence, steadiness, or conscientiousness. And what you really want to look for, and I recommend you give your, your potential account managers a DISC profile before you hire them, you're looking for someone that is relatively high I, influential, means they like to talk to people, they like to communicate, they're bubbly personality types, right? That's important because these people are going to be on the phones, they're going to be on Zoom, they're going to be interacting with your clients. So you want them to be the kind of person that's not going to try and hide behind the technology, that's not going to try and hide behind, um, you know, email, but they're going to be willing to jump on the phone and jump on the Zoom, and they're going to be eager to do it. The second thing you want to look for, and it doesn't have to be the main personality trait, but you do want a relatively high dominance in their personality. So why is that important? The fact is, one of the key things your clients want in their account manager, or in the company they're working with, is confidence. Confidence that you've got the right strategy, that you know what you're doing, that you're actually putting things in place that are going to move the needle. If you wind up with someone that's a pushover, they might be super influential, but they have no confidence and they can't instill that confidence in your clients. Your clients are going to start to question you. They're going to question the results. They're going to question the activity. And you're going to have churn. So I promise you, if you invest the time to find candidates that are high I, high D, you're gonna wind up with good people that wind up doing well for you from a client retention perspective. The next thing is Kolbe. I'm a huge fan of this profile called Kolbe. If you haven't looked into it, you don't know what it is, it basically rates people based on how they operate. Are they high Fact Finder, high follow-through, high quick start, or high implementer, right? You know, and there's different people that operate in different ways that have different strengths that are gonna naturally excel at different things. Knowing the profile of a good account manager can save you a tremendous amount of frustration and a tremendous amount of heartache. What we found for account managers, what you're looking for is high follow-through as the number one trait that you want in your account managers. So it's gonna rate the person on a scale from 1 to 10. 1 being they don't follow through at all, 10 being they're like over the top follow through, follow through, follow through. Anybody in operations in your business, you wanna have a high follow through profile. Tells you 2 things, right? Are they actually going to follow up with the client? Are they gonna continue to like close loops and let the client know what's going on and continue to do their job day in, day out, month in, month out? But the other thing is I found a high propensity to burn out in an account management role if they're not high follow-through. They'll come in, they'll have all the right words, they'll be excited about digital marketing and SEO and pay-per-click, they'll connect with the clients relatively well, but let's say month 6 or 7, for whatever reason, they start to burn out. They start to be like, "Eh, I don't wanna do this anymore, I wanna try something different," and you know, Low follow-through people jump from one job to the next. High follow-through people, they plug into a role, they're excited about it, they learn it, and they continue to do it month in, month out. You want somebody high follow-through, I promise you that. And then this high Fact Finder trait, you want that to be relatively high as well. The thing with high Fact Finder is its attentiveness to detail, which is really important, right? Your account managers have to understand what you're doing for the client. They have to understand the reports. They have to be able to communicate those reports. Usually you want somebody that's going to be about the details and be able to follow through, follow up, and make sure that the things are getting done for your clients. So these are the criteria I found to help us find great world-class account managers to retain our clients at the highest level possible. And so this is what you want to look for, right? High I, high D. You want to find on a Kolbe assessment somebody that's high Fact Finder, high Follow Through, and If you find a combination of those traits, you're gonna find somebody good that sticks around for the long term, helps you retain your clients. So would love to hear, has this been helpful? Do you have any tips on what you found to be great in terms of hiring and retaining and keeping great account managers? Would love to keep the conversation going on this. If you have any questions or thoughts, let me know. Otherwise, hit me up in comments if this has been helpful. And if you're not already in the Digital Marketing Agency Success Facebook group, it's It's a great group, completely free. We share some of our best ideas, strategies, and techniques on how to grow and scale your digital marketing agency. If you're not in there, click the link, join us in there. If you're already in there, let's start a conversation around hiring and retaining good quality account managers to maximize our client retention. Talk to you soon.
