Understanding Account People
David keeps encountering clients who don’t appreciate how their account people actually contribute to their overall business, and Blair totally identifies with the traits that David describes.
2Bobs episode 44: “The Best Ways to Disrespect Account People”
What account people do, in broad strokes:
Pull necessary data from the client, even when it’s tough to get their cooperation.
Sell recommendations back to them that are in their best interest.
Lead the client. (Interesting fact: “strategy” is latin for “general” in army who leads.)
Protect margins.
Grow the account.
Send the client to hell...and help them enjoy the trip (e.g., change orders).
Read social signals and intervene before catastrophe strikes.
Manage an account review, disputes, mistakes, etc.
Follow client contacts to their next job.
Keep ear to the ground as agency innovates client offerings.
Personality:
Goal is authority and prestige.
Judges others by their ability to verbalize and be flexible.
Overuses enthusiasm, selling ability, and optimism.
Fears boxed in environment without room to grow.
Transcript
Blair Enns: David, it's a brand new decade.
David C. Baker: Wow, when you put it that way, I feel like--
Blair: You feel so much older, don't you?
David: [laughs] I'm not that much older than you. Watch it, buddy.
Blair: I didn't mean older than me. Hey, so we are revisiting a topic we previously did. In the last decade, we did a podcast on how to disrespect account people and you feel we haven't disrespected them enough so you want to revisit the topic, is that correct?
David: No, that's not correct. I think account people are amazing, but I keep running across my fine folk clients who just don't quite understand, is their value in what they do. Actually, this whole podcast is my quiet desire to slowly get out of consulting. If we can just pull the plug band, rip the band-aid. I'm about four episodes away from it I think so if we can do an episode that answers the most frequent questions and all I can do is send an invoice, people send me a check and then I say, all right, "Go to this episode and this will answer your question, and if you have any questions, contact that guy up in that village in Canada with slow dial-up internet, whatever his name is."
Blair: It's funny because every once in a while you and I get clients, owners of ad agencies or marketing firms and they look at what we do and they think, "Oh man, I'd love to do what you do." The appeal is, you don't have employees and I have a small number of employees and they just imagine this freedom, "You don't really have employees." Then you get here and you think, "Yeah, okay, not having employees, that's nice", and I'm putting myself in your shoes, but the real pinnacle is not having clients either and that's what you're talking about, consulting with our clients.
All right, okay, now that we've unveiled the master plan of the 2Bobs podcast, let's get into this, but before we do, the last call I had before we broke for the holidays, I was talking to an agency principal who runs a really successful firm, 95 people in four offices in four countries. Their origins are in app dev/production, maybe a bit of UX. Really production- focused and development-focused, really successful, came referred by another highly successful person and came with their stamp of approval so I was really impressed by this firm, but one of the first things he said to me is, we don't have account people and I immediately thought of you.
David: Yes, because you know what I would have said, right?
Blair: Yes. I've heard you say it before so let's dive into this and maybe that's the net takeaway of this podcast. Is he making a mistake? Is he missing a trick?
David: Yes, he's making a mistake, yes. It's a pretty serious one, it's not as common now is it used to be. I remember decades ago I was working with a very well known design firm in Cincinnati and of course, their main client-- They did package design, so you can imagine their main client was PNG and they were very successful, made tons of money. One of the most astounding things that I noticed as I was looking over the materials before I traveled there to work with them, was that they had no account people at all and I thought, "How in the world could you be working with PNG and not have account people?" Then the second thing I saw was that their average weighted billable rate was $275 an hour, which is high now but it would be really high, two decades ago
I just couldn't put those two things together. As I was talking with them, all of a sudden the light came on and what was happening is that PNG refused at that point to pay for account people so they just had to hide the account people's billable charges in the hourly rate. If you've got a designer then you automatically got an account person and it was buried into the hourly rate. Of course, it's not quite as bad if you have account people and you kind of are embarrassed about charging clients for it but that still happens quite a bit. It's something that just is shocking to me because I don't know of any other industries where we discount so much the role of what account and project managers do.
In fact, one of the things that I've said for many, many years is that clients, great clients or bad clients, it doesn't matter, clients notice deficiencies in account management and project management long before they notice deficiencies in the quality of the work but here we are focusing a lot, maybe not exclusively, but focusing a lot on the quality of the work without thinking about how to wrap that so that the clients enjoy the experience and feel well cared for.
This is such a hot topic that we've approached this from different angles over the years, but this is the first time where we've really sat down and put together an episode that says, "All right, what are these people like? What do they do?" It's a fun subject to think about for me.
Blair: Give us a high-level description of what are these people like. What are good account people like?
David: Before I had some science to help me determine who might be a good account person at a firm, I used to pay attention to things and when I would show up for the first time at somebody's office if I was met by an account person versus a project manager, I noticed that I was treated quite differently. I was always treated nicely, courteously.
A project manager would greet me like this, they would say all the normal niceties and then they say, "Would you like some coffee or some water?" Something like that, and I would say yes. Then they would say, "Come this way and I'll show you where it is so that if you need it at any point today or tomorrow while you're working with us, you'll know where to get it", and they would show me.
The account person would take my order and would get it for me. They wouldn't show me how to make the coffee. It was just an interesting little thing. I'll just throw a bunch of things out here and our listeners will see if they recognize their account people in here.
Another thing that account people like is the spotlight, so you'll hear them clamor for a title. A title to them is more important than it would be to other folks. In fact, they'll sometimes want to be known as a partner and if that means they have to own 1% of the thing, then that's fine. They don't care about how real the partnership is, they just want to be called a partner. They want that title so that people will pay more attention to them.
Another thing I've noticed is that, this is sad, it's almost sickening to some folks who hear this, but the very best account people are the ones who usually have somebody else walking around behind them, cleaning up the messes and those messes are often the promises that they make without having sufficient authority to make those promises. If you're looking for account people that don't leave messes behind them, you are probably going to eliminate some of the very best account people because that is just not in their nature. They're not driven by cleaning up the messes like project managers are. They're driven by other things.
They're also power-hungry. I don't mean that in an evil way, they see gaps and they fill them. They find ways to wiggle in and to make themselves important. Again, not in an evil way, but make themselves important in the relationship, so they'll sometimes overstep their boundaries with the sales team. They'll do that with the strategy team, they'll do that with the PM team.
They'll sometimes bypass, say a creative director or assistant analyst and go straight to the staff because they want to make sure their client is cared for. I imagine you could probably add a whole bunch to these stories, but those are some of the things that I see.
Blair: You notice I'm being very quiet here.
David: Yes, what does that mean? Does that mean you disagree completely or you were one of these people? [laughs]
Blair: Oh, yes you basically just described me in my career as an account person at various levels. The messes, the inability to handle details, wanting the title, filling power voids. This isn't sitting well with me.
[laughter]
Can we draw this to a close? It'll just be our first five-minute episode? This is why I was trying to dissuade you from coming back to this topic. It's a little bit painful.
David: Yes, but it's important enough that they represent. If we break this down, it depends a lot on what firm we have but in firms where the account people are really, really significant, they may represent 16, 17, 18% of the labor. In firms where they're not as important to the work product, they may represent as little as 10, 11, 12% but even at that small rate, they're still very important to the client. The client experiences what they do at a much higher level than their percentages would scream to them.
Blair: We used to use the word suit. What do you do on a suit in an ad agency? There's the old joke of, "You're in sales", and I think this is an exchange in David Ogilvy's book Ogilvy on Advertising. He overhears somebody say, "I'm an account manager at an ad agency", and the person next to him that he's having this conversation with says, "Oh, you're in sales." He said, "No, no, no, no, I'm not in sales", and he goes on to- describe the job and the guy is saying, "Well, It sounds like sales to me."
I sometimes feel today and felt back in the day when I was in the role, it's a hard job to get your head around. It's kind of loose. You're interfacing between the creative and production and media teams, and the client. You're the voice of the client, you're the voice of the agency, you're in sales, you're in marketing. It's a bit of an amorphous role. I often felt even though I had a hard time getting my hands around the role, I felt like it was a job that wasn't appreciated by the people who were not in the roles. Do you think it's an easy job or a hard job, or is that even the right question?
David: I think it's the hardest job in the whole dang place. Maybe being a principal with all the risks that entails is more difficult, but outside of that, I think it is the most difficult job for the same reasons you're mentioning. You have to be an ambassador. At one point you're fighting for the client's perspective, but they're not paying your salary, and there's people that are always questioning what you do, like, “What do you really do? Why are you there? Do you really need to go to lunch with that person? How much have you really contributed?”
It's just from all sides, you get this questioning about the value that you bring to the table. The best account, people have won the hearts of both the client and the agency they work for, for sure, but ones who haven't, especially ones that are newer, here's something that's really strange to think about. I'm going to make a statement, and then we'll probably have to back off of it a little bit.
This is also true of project managers, but every account manager has suffered a significant career failure. The reason I say that is because you don't go to school to be an account manager. There's little seminars that you may go to pick up some tips, but nobody graduates with a degree in that. They graduated with a degree in journalism or design, or coding or something. They weren't really great at whatever that was, but somebody along the way noticed that they were really good at managing the client relationships that they had as a part of their work.
They slowly or maybe even suddenly, but usually slowly, they diminish the technical role that this person brought to the table from their training, and they said, "Hey, you are amazing over here." Some of those people embraced it because it was also something that aged better as the years went by. Also, they found more fulfillment in it. They felt like there was more of a career path. That's, I think, where some of these seeds of doubt come from because there is no training for it and so because of that, we dismiss the role. We say, "Well, anybody can do it because nobody's ever had any training in it." That's where part of this comes from.
Blair: I just so identify with this and I think it's almost like, "Well, you don't quite have the hard skills, or the technical skills to do these other jobs in the firm, but boy, you have the soft skills, so we're going to put you into account management." I just had this conversation with the son of friends of mine the other day in front of the parents. The parents are quite successful technical people. They have hard skills. I know they've worried a little bit about their son. They see him drifting through life.
I look at a guy and I think, "Man, you've got the best human skills I've seen in top 1% easily." I was giving him advice in front of his parents saying "You know, you might not want to hear this and your parents might not want to hear this, but it's really meant as a compliment, man, you should think about going into sales.” I cringe at that and everybody in the room cringes because there's the dirty word associated with it.
When I think of sales at its highest level, and I would include account management in that, even though it's not just sales, what I was saying is just valuing his soft skills. I think in a world of AI and robotics and reverting things to the lowest common denominator and getting machines to do the work, I think those soft skills-- I just look at this young man and I think, “Man, these are really valuable. They're even more valuable when I was his age." I think it is the right thing to honor these skills, but they are kind of freaks, weirdos, and rejects from other roles in the firm, aren't they in some way?
David: They are for sure, but those soft skills that they bring to the table, they're leadership skills. That's why they tend to rise and fill vacuums because the same skills that allow them to shine with clients are the same skills that allow them to gather the troops and inspire them, and help move things through and get them done by certain deadlines, and help the client. Your desired future state, the phrase that's so important in the principles that you teach, these account people, it's second nature for them to help the client see that desired future state. Try to ask a project manager to do that. They'll need more training and it won't be as natural for them.
Blair: Yes, they're leading the client, and they're also leading the agency, and then they're bridging the gap of trying to manage the relationship. When it's done well, it's really a thing of beauty, but it's not-- Maybe that's the point of this podcast. It just goes unrecognized. I feel like I'm finally getting the recognition from you, David, that I've deserved all of these years-
David: [laughs]
Blair: - from my previous life back when you didn't know me. [laughs]
David: It's purely unintentional on my part.
Blair: Of course it is.
David: I'd rather hold you down.
[laughter]
Blair: All right, we've talked a little bit about the people themselves and a little bit about the job. Okay, what do these people do?
David: Yes, because we've just been painting this big circle around it, and we haven't really said anything specifically about what they do. I get this question a lot. As I was thinking, and you and I were texting this morning about this topic, I said, "All right, I am just going to put down the most important things that these people do, and I don't know how many I’ll end up with." It came up with exactly 10. I didn't stretch it. I didn't lose any or anything like that.
These are the 10 things. I'm just going to go through them. We'll put them in the show notes. Marcus can help us with that, so that you don't have to necessarily take notes. These are the 10 big things. They might sound little things, but they're the 10 big things. As you're thinking about the quality of your account people, you might balance them against this list or if you're thinking about transitioning one of your tactical people, one of your doers into this role, you might just anticipate to what degree they might be good at doing these 10 things.
First, they pull necessary data from the client, even when it's tough to get their cooperation. This happens a lot because clients are very busy. It's not the most important of the 10, but it's important. The project can't move forward unless you just pull this stuff from the client. Sometimes they're doing it for them. Sometimes they're completing the brief with the client and the office. Whatever it is, they're helping get the information without the client being resentful.
Often they're creating tension and they're going headlong into that tension knowing that, "Yes, I'm creating tension. This isn't an easy conversation for me or for the client, but I have to get this information." That's a soft skill that is in short supply.
Blair: Absolutely, rather than just taking orders, you're pushing back exactly like you just said.
David: Second, they're selling the recommendations back to the client. They're doing this not with the big reveal that this industry used to do years ago. It's in lots of little ways, reviewing with the client, why we're doing this and helping them see why this is the best path, really thinking in ways that are in the client's best interest and helping them see that. Selling recommendations back to the client, that's the second one.
The third one is leading the client. This is where we sometimes involve the word strategy. I was curious as I was with you in New York a couple of weeks ago, listening to some of the things that you were saying to the group that you'd assembled. You were talking about strategy and I realized, "You know, where does that word come from?" I looked it up. It comes from a French phrase, that means to lead like a general would lead. That's strategy. That's just so appropriate because strategy is leadership. They're leading the client, rather than taking orders from the client. That's the third.
Fourth, they're protecting margins.
Blair: Big one.
David: That's really critical. There are other people that decide to work efficiently, other folks that decide how much we should charge. In the end, this is the interface. If you think about the big bridge, this is the bolt that holds the bridge to the rock. This is at the heart of what we're doing for the client so that we can keep doing it for the client if we're protecting our margins. That's fourth.
Blair: They're on the front lines fighting that battle. People back in the office are saying "Go get this much money", and it's "All right."
David: Nobody else wants to do it. Fifth, grow the account. This is the one that we've talked about in previous episodes. This is the one that falls down the most when you have somebody who is not the right type of person managing the account. If it is not the right person, then the account doesn't grow. This is an essential role for any account person to grow the account.
Blair: Which goes hand in hand with leading.
David: Right.
Blair: If you're good at leading the client, you're good at growing the account or you tend to be.
David: Yes, exactly. Some of this starts with having the right account to grow in the first place which is not all the account person's role but ideally, if the account doesn't grow, then it's usually the account person's role more than anything.
Sixth, they send the client to hell and help them enjoy the trip. That's different from just sending them to hell because anybody in the firm can send them to hell but an account person can help them enjoy the trip. They feel like they're taking this medicine that they hate but they're doing it willingly because it's good for them. I'm thinking about things like change orders and saying, "Now you really need to stretch. You need to spend this extra $135,000 and here's why." It's helping them see this, and taking their medicine and not resenting it. That's the sixth one.
Blair: I think it's Eleanor Roosevelt, her quote, "The definition of a diplomat is somebody who can tell you to go to hell and have you think you'll enjoy the journey." That's what you're talking about here.
David: I need to look that one up. I didn't know that she said that. Next, is they read social signals and intervene before catastrophe strikes. You've been in conversations with humans. I presume you have. I've never seen you in one but I presume you- [laughs] What a way to lead a sense? Where somebody completely misses a social signal and you're just-
Blair: Like a project manager?
David: Yes, right, exactly. You're just cringing, thinking, "How did that person just completely miss this?" Yet an account person picks that signal up and does something with it.
Blair: "What my colleague meant to say was--"
David: [laughs] Yes, or "Joe, would you go get us some more coffee? I'll just keep going while you're gone." Reading the social signals, yes.
Blair: [laughs]
David: Eight is managing account review, or disputes or mistakes. In other words, when the relationship starts to get a little bit rocky, even if the client isn't upset, sometimes they are upset, especially if social signals have been ignored, sometimes it's just a mandate from on high. "We've got 49 firms we're working with, we want to whittle this down to nine so everybody's got to reapply for their relationship." This is disheartening but the great account person can see us through this and lead the troops without letting them get too discouraged. Just managing the account review, handling any disputes, all that sort of stuff. That's eight.
Nine is following client contacts to their next job without losing this current one. It happens simultaneously. The client contact leaves and they're doing two things at once. They're trying to make friends and salvage the account that has just incurred a change at the top and they're trying to follow this person. They can do that two or three times. This is often the very best new business plan that they have.
Finally, they keep their ear to the ground as the agency innovates around client offerings. There is nobody else at the firm that is this close to how the public is changing and helping us see how we need to revise our service offerings, how we need to package things differently, how value pricing is taking over some particular segment or whatever it is because they're in touch with the client, multiple times every single day. If it's not just them, maybe they're managing other account people as well. That, my friends, hopefully, people don't think that's soft. Hopefully, they understand that's a big job.
Blair: It's a big job. With 10 things on your list, you could probably add some other things to them. I remember near the end of my agency car-- Maybe not my agency career but as an account person, I'd been in the role at a couple of different firms for a few years and I remember thinking, "I don't have any skills." I looked at my friends who were carpenters and they knew how to build a house. There were lawyers, so they had all these very specific knowledge sets and skills. Whatever it is that they did, I just looked at all my friends and thought "Well, you know how to do this. You know how to do this." I'd looked at myself and I thought, "Well, I know how to buy people lunch-" [laughs]
David: [laughs]
Blair: "-and hide the expense account." That was the first thing at the top of my list. "I know how to buy people lunch." I still had the sense that I was contributing but even I didn't recognize in the different areas. It's really interesting to see you break out some of these specific points. Even that last one of "keep your ear to the ground" as the agency innovates client offerings. As a trainer and previous to this as a consultant, I've been frustrated so many times by clients of mine who are either in account services roles or new business roles, who would have a hard time selling something to the client and I would work with them over a period of time.
It's fine. Everybody struggles with sales at some point but my frustration was there was no learning and coming back. There's no information coming back from the experience. I think there are people who just bang their head against a brick wall and don't learn from it. Then there are people who are very tuned in. This speaks to social cues and some of the other things on your list but they're just very tuned in. Maybe it's a high emotional intelligence or sense of self-awareness or something. They're just very tuned into what's going on in the client's side, what the client is feeling.
It's not just how the client is feeling, it's not just social cues but the patterns that are going on the client side of the organization. The conversations that are happening on the client side of the organization and they can see these patterns, roll them up, take them back to the firm and say, "Hey, I'm seeing this pattern here." They might not put it in those words but, "There's a trend here, we should think about reacting or getting ahead of this."
David: In that situation, they're selling to a different party. Now, they're selling back to their employer how things need to change. It's like constant selling in a good sense.
Blair: As we're having this conversation, I've just been getting all these flashbacks. I was working for a multinational ad agency on a really big account. I was the account guy. It was the middle of summer. It was a television shoot. I show up on set and I'm wearing a suit and everybody else is in shorts and flip flops. One of the creative guys looks at me and goes, "What are you doing wearing a suit in this heat?" I said to him, "I want to remind everybody who's in charge of the money." [laughs]
David: [laughs] You just stepped right into the stereotype. That's just great.
Blair: I know. Being a young account person in an ad agency back in the day, man, it was so much fun. It got old pretty quick when I realized I wasn't building these hard skills and I had other challenges with it but for the first four years of my professional career, man, it was just so much fun, so much fun. Even if there were moments when my bosses would recognize some of the things that I did but it felt like a constant battle with other people on the agency side to see or recognize the value I was bringing to the organization. This has been really good for my ego, David.
David: Good, good.
Blair: Are there any last points you want to make about the personality that maybe you haven't talked about? The personality of a good account person.
David: Yes, sometimes, it's good just to think about some general truisms about how these people think and how they interact with their world, so I'll just mention a couple of things that might be helpful. One is that these folks have a goal and that's authority and prestige. It's not good for us to have our little feeler's heart when they want to have that authority and prestige. This is how they operate. This is how they think. It's not an evil thing and if you want to demoralize somebody like this then pull the rug out from under them in those areas and you will succeed.
Another is, especially as I think about how they interact with the project management team which is really their counterpart back at the firm, account people tend to judge others by their ability to verbalize and their ability to be flexible, their willingness to be flexible. Those are the two things that PMs struggle with the most. They struggle with thinking on their feet. They are typically using DISC language. They are mid to high S people and high C people. Those folks don't verbalize on their feet very well. Immediately, you have an account person who's just dismissing them because of their inability to verbalize on their feet.
They are rigid by definition. They follow a checklist, they're not flexible. You can see we've set these two parties up for some innate friction. We just have to understand that. Not try to remove it but try to understand how we can use that to our best advantage for both parties. The other is that these folks tend to overuse enthusiasm, selling ability and optimism, so we have to listen carefully without demoralizing them but understand that it needs to be factored. It needs to be filtered a little bit. They tend to be too optimistic about what's going to happen.
As you think about, for instance, the projections they make. You always have to discount them to some degree. and make sure these people don't feel boxed in. Make sure they feel like they have room to grow. There's no top on the upstairs of the building. There's just look up to the sky and there's nothing holding them back. That's how you motivate these folks. It's similar to salespeople because the personalities are quite similar. Just keep it in mind how these folks are naturally, helps us appreciate them more and understand their contribution to our businesses.
Blair: I feel like this whole podcast has been about a young Blair Enns. I listen to you describe the personality traits and everything else that you've talked about on this episode and I think, "Man, if only my bosses back then had understood me the way you understand the account role. Maybe I wouldn't have been fired as often as I was."
David: [laughs] Are we going to do one where you understand me a little bit better at some point?
Blair: What's that about?
David: I'll do one on robots?
Blair: [laughs]
David: All right. I think we need to end with that one right there.
Blair: All right, David. This is a good one to launch. I don't know where this episode airs. Probably early but maybe not the first one in the new decade, but Happy New Year to you and your family and new decade.
David: To you, too.
Blair: We'll talk to you, hopefully, before this decade is out.
David: All right. Thank you, Blair.