Playing Favorites. Every Key Account Manager Does and Why You Should Stop

You've got favorite clients, don't you? I know you do, because I do too. We all have favorites. Those clients we absolutely adore. In fact, if work wasn't in the way, we'd probably, probably be besties. But as a key account manager, finding friends isn't your number one priority, and being too close to your clients can cause problems. So that's what we're talking about in this episode of the Camp Club podcast. Sit tight. I will be right back. Hello, heroes, and welcome to the Cam Club podcast, a show that is on a mission to help busy key account managers get results. I'm your host, Warwick Brown, and together we're going to explore tips, tricks and trends to help you grow client revenue, crush customer retention, and build a successful career in key account management. Now, you can find links to everything linkable and the show notes@tkcpodcast.com 020 Speaking of 020, I can't believe I'm at episode 20. Never thought I would make it this far and I'm loving it. I hope you're enjoying the podcast as much as I am creating it for you Now. When you come across a client you absolutely love, it feels amazing. They get you, you get them. It's easy. They don't overreact, they're responsive, they're open to suggestions. You take action together, they listen to your advice and it really feels like you're doing this together, that you're both working on creating maximum value. Win, win. Everybody's happy. Heaven. Or is it? There are some hidden dangers. So let's talk about a few reasons why having favourite clients could be detrimental and why you should probably stop. Let's run through them. The first is that you neglect other clients because you have a favorite client. You drop everything when they want something they want to report. Bam. You're right on it. You turn it around in minutes. They want you to have a meeting. Bam. You'll cancel other meetings, you'll move your schedule around. You want to connect with them. You're happy to do anything at a moment's notice. And because you're always in contact with them, they somehow end up getting the most of your time. They ring you, you pick up, you have a conversation. You do what they ask, they email you, you jump on their emails, and it becomes all consuming. You end up neglecting your other clients, the ones that maybe don't call you as often, the ones that aren't reaching out for help. You know, the relationship with a favorite client is easy work. It's Fun work. It's enjoyable work. And you end up devoting far too much time to it and at the expense of things that your other clients might need and work you could be doing, proactive work you could be doing with them. The second is that you over service. That means you do too much for your client. A client's not happy with something. Instead of following the due process, you'll bend the rules. You'll implement a workaround. They don't like something that your product doesn't do, and you can find a manual way to give them that same outcome. You do it, you end up creating work. You end up being doing things that really are out of scope just because you like them, because you want to help them out. You are creating a rod for your own back. And God help the poor account manager that one day inherits this account because someday you will move on from this customer. That's a given. You have created a monster, and it's wasted effort. Your client isn't asking for or expecting over service. In fact, there's a great Gartner report. I will put it in the show notes called why your accounts aren't growing. And they call it this way, wasted. This zone of wasted effort where you deliver good service, but actually exceptional service doesn't get recognition. It doesn't relate to client account growth. It actually returns zero value, just resource, wasted resource. The third reason why you probably shouldn't have favorites is that you end up saying too much. Loose lips sink ships. You know, it becomes increasingly informal and you end up bitching and gossiping about the people in your own organizations, about each other's companies, and it becomes borderline unprofessional or in fact, maybe crosses that line to completely unprofessional. And the thing about this is it can breed, I don't know, a lot of negativity, and it becomes counterproductive. You don't do a lot, you just bitch a lot. I've had a client. I mean, anytime anything happened, they would call me. They would moan about their boss, they would moan about their product, they would moan about their budgets, they would moan about their deadlines. And then I would moan about our products, our deadlines, my boss. And that's all we did. We exchanged insults about our companies. Almost became toxic in the end. I was quite glad to be relieved of that account when I quit that company because it really wasn't healthy for either of us for us to continue. And I really learned a valuable lesson from that about being too friendly, too informal, too open, and Oversharing. So that is a challenge. When you have clients that you really love. The next reason you probably should avoid having favorites is that difficult conversations become even more difficult. You've got price rises. You have to tell them bad news quite often. Maybe there is service issues. Maybe there are delays with features, product releases, bug enhancements. Maybe there are issues delivering your solutions. You've got to raise prices, whatever it might be. You have to say no. And that can be difficult. And when you do deliver those messages, you go in there reluctantly. You go in there not really defending them. You go in there blaming them. You're like, oh, my God, I hate to tell you this, but we're raising our prices. I can't believe that they're doing this. I said no. I said it's not a practice. I said it's offensive to raise these prices at this time. But they're doing it anyway. I'm so sorry. That's how you deliver that message versus here is why we need to raise our prices because of blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. We're investing in this, whatever it might be. But you know what I mean. It's harder to tell those clients the bad news and you end up being on their side more than your own side, if that makes sense. All right, number five in the reasons why you probably shouldn't have favorites is that you step over boundaries. You start doing other people's work, not just doing other people's work. You start telling them how to do their work. You start meddling. If a client is chasing something, they call you, then you chase. If a client's not happy with a reply, they call you. You go and tell the other person to re look at it because you're not happy with the reply either. You essentially become this VIP lane for everything and become a middleman. When you've worked so hard not to be the middleman, suddenly you've reinstated that funnel where everything comes through you and you're not winning any friends in the organization when you're pointing fingers and shaking sticks and telling people that they have done the wrong thing and they need to sort themselves out and not respecting their departments, their decision making and their processes. So, yeah, that's a real risk. And I've done it many, many times. Everything here, I'm not telling you because I'm coming from this pedestal. I have done every single one of these and more. So this is from personal experience and some of this is still a work in progress. So, yeah, don't get it twisted. All right, number six, you slack off you stop delivering your best because you know you can get away with less. This happened to me with a big client. Well, I might as well say their name. Deutsche Bank. I used to look after Deutsche bank many, many, many, many, many years ago. Great relationship with the key contact, the category manager. I mean, we used to go to dinners out of hours. We loved each other. She was absolutely amazing. Big advocate for me, really helped me in my career as well. I learned a lot from her. But towards the end of the relationship, she was moving to another role overseas. I was doing my thing. I quit, actually, and then I moved to another organization, American Express. And Deutsche bank moved to American Express. So they thought, hey, why doesn't Warwick continue to be the account manager? Was looking after them before, he can look after them now. But my relationship with my prior contact, we were just in maintenance mode. You know, both of us were a bit over it. We'd been working together for four years, and as far as we were concerned, it was kind of plain sailing. Not that we didn't do anything, but kind of, gotta say, we weren't doing a lot either. Bare minimum, keeping, keeping the wheels greased. That was it. Then, of course, we got a new contact. And you know what? After four months, they asked for a new account manager. I was devastated. I was like, this is my account. I have been looking after them for all these years. Everything that they have got now is because I worked with my prior contact to make it happen, to get them to this place. But I realized afterwards when they changed account managers, I had dropped the ball. I was. I really wasn't as invested as I was in those first couple of years. And I realized that I hadn't been delivering my best. So I can see with some distance that it was the right decision. And actually I was ready in the end, again, with some distance to move on and tackle different clients and embrace a new challenge. So, yeah, definitely a risk that you stop doing as well as you could for a client because you know you're in a great place and you love each other. Number seven reasons why you should stop playing favorites as a key account manager is that you stop expanding your network. You put all your relationship eggs in one basket. You and your key contact point of contact are tight. You're, like, joined at the hip. You love each other, you do great work together. They're fabulous. So you just become dependent on them. You sort of corral the relationship and it just becomes the two of you. And you no longer look to expand your network and your influence across the Organization, it is massively risky in the event they leave proof in point. When my key contact left at Deutsche Bank, I didn't know a soul. I didn't know a soul. So that was a real problem and certainly a lesson that I learned that I still need to be mindful of my network and expanding my influence and building those institutional relationships, not relying on individual relationships. And the final reason you need to stop having favorite clients is that it clouds your judgment. You're going to have a strong bias towards your customer and in your eyes, they are always right and your company is always wrong. You're supposed to be kind of neutral. You know, you're trying to balance the voice of customer with the needs of your organization. But when you have favorite clients, they are always right in your eyes. That's how you see it. They're right, the company's always wrong. And anytime anything happens in your organization that is going to remotely affect your client, your favorite client, suddenly you're speaking up, suddenly you're saying it's outrageous, it's disrespectful, it's wrong, it's going to be massively impactful to your client. You're fighting every fight and dying on every hill anytime something changes because you don't want to upset your favorite client. So there are some real, real challenges and things you really need to be aware of. When you have some great clients, which sounds crazy to say, don't we all want great clients that we absolutely love working with? Of course we do. But there need to be boundaries as well. You need to be aware of if that dynamic shifts and you move away from friendly to friends. There is a whole bunch of hidden factors that come with that transition to friends. You neglect your other clients, you over service, you say too much, you can't have difficult conversations with them, you overstep boundaries internally, you start meddling, you slack off, you stop expanding your network and your judgment becomes clouded. So there are a lot of hidden dangers. So don't forget those and be aware of them. Just listen to your professional instincts. Know when you've crossed a line and when you do, dial it back. All right, heroes, that is a wrap on episode 20. Thank you so much for listening. I appreciate you so much. If you'd like to help the podcast grow, please do head over to itunes, leave us a five star review and say what you think. I'm always scanning the reviews so I can learn about how to improve the show. By the way, if you would like to suggest some topics for the show, there is a form where you can fill in what your current challenges are and I will certainly consider them for a future episode. Give you a shout out too if you want, so find the link to that over at the show notes@tkcpodcast.com 20 all right heroes, until next time. Bye for now.