Welcome to the first in a series of five bonus podcast episodes. I've created this podcast mini series to show you how you can develop an entrepreneurial mindset in your agency account managers, so they can:- help increase the lifetime value of clients- generate more referrals- help you maintain a healthy sales pipelineIn this first short episode, I'll be tacking the 'elephant in the room'. Why do you feel your account managers are not spotting those growth opportunities? And over the next four episodes, I'll then be looking at the key qualities for entrepreneurially-minded account managers. By the way, everything I'll share in this podcast series is covered in my Account Accelerator programme and ultimately it's designed to build an entrepreneurial mindset in account management. You can read more about the programme here:https://www.accountmanagementskills.com/account-acceleratorOr if you'd like to have a conversation about how I could potentially help your account managers, please email me jenny@accountmanagementskills.com. Let's have a chat and see if this might be suitable for you or members of your team. 

Welcome to episode 97. My first ever podcast was with Kate Whittaker, head of corporate communications at DUAL Group, so working on the client side. During that episode she was explaining the exceptional agency who worked with her, particularly about their excellent client service, but also how they really understand her and her business. So for this episode, I invited the leadership team of that agency, Free Partners, to talk to me about how they work and think. You'll hear from Managing Partner, Lorraine Jeckells, Brand Director, Greg Phitidis, and Creative Director, Guy Cornet.  We chatted about:- their agency's specialist positioning, focusing just in the insurance market and why that's beneficial to their business, to their team and to their clients. - their agency values and how they bring them to life through their ways of working. - their internal processes and how the three departments (account management/strategy/creative) work together in a client centric way. They also go deep into the importance of the creative brief, why they have a tactical and a strategic briefing process, and how they grow their own talent from graduate level so that they are moulded into the Free Partners ways of working. And finally, how they delight their clients by being proactive and bringing fresh thinking and initiatives without waiting passively for briefs. If you’re listening to this at the end of 2023 and you want to build a more entrepreneurial mindset in your account management role or your team, I'm enrolling right now for my twelve month training and mentoring program called the Account Accelerator. I created the Account Accelerator because agency owners were telling me they knew their existing client accounts could grow further but they needed their account managers to do three key things:1. Act as trusted advisors rather than order takers, so they understood their clients business objectives and felt confident to have conversations about how the agency could help. 2. Spot upsell and cross sell opportunities and follow them effectively so they could increase retention and generate new business opportunities with existing clients. 3. Ask insightful questions to uncover client challenges and feel confident presenting new ideas and asking for referrals and testimonials so they could help a strong sales pipeline of new leads and capture proof of happy clients. So if all of this sounds interesting, then please visit my website https://www.accountmanagementskills.com, where you can book a call, have a chat with me and see if this might be a good fit for you or a member of your team.

Welcome to Episode 96. My guest is David Meikle, the author of ‘Tuning Up’, a book about improving performance and reducing stress in advertising and marketing. This chat will be particularly interesting for you if you're finding the pressure and stress of working in an agency unmanageable, or you're responsible for creating positive agency environment in which your team can thrive. We discuss:- why David describes the relationship between the agency, the client and the client's procurement department as the triangle of doom. - David’s signature relationship diagnostic tool, The Meikle Matrix, that essentially helps you pinpoint the heart of the problem with any relationship- how this diagnostic tool can help you in practical ways in your agency. I highly recommend you reading this book for me. You can visit David’s website at https://www.tuningup.co.uk for more information about the book and also to road test a prototype of The Meikle Matrix for yourself. If you’re listening to this at the end of 2023 and you want to build a more entrepreneurial mindset in your account management role or your team, I'm enrolling right now for my twelve month training and mentoring program called the Account Accelerator. I created the Account Accelerator because agency owners were telling me they knew their existing client accounts could grow further but they needed their account managers to do three key things:1. Act as trusted advisors rather than order takers, so they understood their clients business objectives and felt confident to have conversations about how the agency could help. 2. Spot upsell and cross sell opportunities and follow them effectively so they could increase retention and generate new business opportunities with existing clients. 3. Ask insightful questions to uncover client challenges and feel confident presenting new ideas and asking for referrals and testimonials so they could help a strong sales pipeline of new leads and capture proof of happy clients. I've had 30 years experience in account management and, having trained account growth since 2016, I know not all account managers have the skills, the experience or the mindset to deliver at this level, and many agencies don't have the right internal processes in place to support their account managers with account growth. But, I believe with the right strategies, systems, processes and the support, your account managers can become more entrepreneurially minded, which could have a big impact on your agency's bottom line. So if all of this sounds interesting, then please visit my website https://www.accountmanagementskills.com, where you can book a call, have a chat with me and see if this might be a good fit for you or a member of your team. 

Welcome to Episode 95. This episode is particularly relevant for you if you’re responsible for agency new business.  I'm joined by Benjamin Dennehy, UK's Most Hated Sales Trainer, and I hope by the end of listening to our chat it might just change your thinking about how you currently qualify prospects and sell your agency’s services, , particularly if you’ve never received any professional sales training.Benjamin invites us to challenge our beliefs around pitching and giving away your ideas for free which is so typically entrenched in the marketing services industry.He also shares some great examples of how to approach things differently.NB: If you don’t like swearing this isn’t the episode for you.Please go and follow Benjamin on LinkedIn, his content is not only useful and practical it’s very different to the usual stuff you see about sales.http://www.linkedin.com/in/benjamindennehy/www.salesmatrixcourses.comwww.uksmosthatedsalestrainer.comwww.youtube.com/c/UKsMostHatedSalesTrainerIf you’re listening to this at the end of 2023,  I’m opening enrolment soon for my one year Account Accelerator training and coaching programme that starts on 11th January 2024.  It is designed to give those responsible for account growth in the agency the entrepreneurial skills and mindset to support the growth of your client accounts and your agency. If you're in account management at any level or you have someone in your team who this might be suitable for, please send me an email to jenny@accountmanagementskills.com or drop me a DM on LinkedIn and I’ll let you have all the details when they’re available so you can decide if it’s a good fit. Places are limited for the January cohort.https://www.linkedin.com/in/jennyplant

This episode is for agency leaders who are supporting their account manager to grow the existing client business. I’m going to share tips for ensuring the agency leadership team are providing the right level of support to their account management team in three key areas;1. Providing the commercial context2. Internal processes3. Relationship risk managementIf you are an account manager, or you have an account manager or account director or client services director in your team, who you want to provide with the mindset and the skillset to grow the existing business, then we will be opening applications soon for the Account Accelerator programme, a year long programme we're kicking off in January 2024. We'll have an initial nine week period where we give you all the training, all the strategies, a toolbox of different ways that you can grow your business, and then you will also receive the support from me to implement. You'll also join a peer group on Slack with other account managers, account directors, group account directors, client services directors who are all doing the same thing.If you're interested, please contact me on LinkedIn or send me an email at jenny@accountmanagementskills.com or visit the Account Accelerator programme page. We'll be updating the website very soon with a full page of all the learning outcomes that you can expect to achieve.

Welcome to episode 93. If you’re working in creative agency account management you know how essential it is to have a positive relationship with your creative director built on trust.I asked Creative Director, Joey Tackett, to join me and discuss what’s most important to him about working with account managers so we can see account management through the lens of the creative team.Joey shares:1. The key skills he believes AMs need to be respected by their creative team 2. Where the relationship can break down and why 3. How he diffuses tension between the AM and creative team4. Some useful tips for making your client presentations more impactful I hope you enjoy the insights from my chat with Joey and pick up some tips to help you in your account management role. If you want to develop your account management skills, be seen less as an order taker and more like a consultant by your clients, then check out the details of my 9 week Account Accelerator and 1 week Account Booster programmes on my website https://www.accountmanagementskills.com. 

Welcome to episode 92. This episode is for you if you’re curious to know how an SEO strategy agency is using AI tools to reduce the amount of repetitive, tedious tasks and free up the team to work on more of the strategic thinking for their clients.Dale Bertrand, Founder and President of Fire&Spark shares with me:• How AI tools have reduced his team’s workload and improved efficiencies • A step by step breakdown of his internal automated workflow• Why creating predictive models might end up being your agency’s secret sauce• What Dale now looks for when hiring new team members I think you’re going to enjoy this chat and hopefully come away with some inspiration to look more closely at your internal processes to see where you can speed them up or eliminate them altogether.I’m now sharing examples of relevant AI tools that account managers can use for those who come on my Account Accelerator training programme. The training is designed to help those in agency client service at every level to have a more systematic and predictable approach to client growth. The client-centric learning outcomes include being more consultative with clients, adding more value proactively and having sales conversations without feeling salesy.If you or a member of your team is interested to find out more, all the details about the 9 week Account Accelerator programme as well as my shorter 1 week Account Booster programme are on my website: https://www.accountmanagementskills.com

Welcome to Episode 91.This episode is for you if you're interested in how the AI landscape is changing for agencies and what you need to know from a legal perspective about your use of AI.   I chatted with Sharon Toerek, Founder and Owner of Legal + Creative| Toerek Law. The topics that we covered include:- the ownership of the outputs- potential protection of your inputs- designing policies and contracts, including clauses that will cover your freelancers and relationships with contractors, and not to mention your strategic partnerships with other agencies. - future developments and what's foreseen to happen, as well as the current US legal environment. So lots and lots of different topics that we're going to cover today. We will include all of her details in the show notes on my website here: https://www.accountmanagementskills.com/podcastWe also ran an AI for Account Managers webinar recently together with Roy Murphy and the recording has been asked for several times. If you don't want to miss out on any future mini trainings we're doing in this area, then please sign up for my newsletter via https://www. accountmanagementskills.com and we'll make sure that you get notified of future podcast episodes and any mini trainings. 

Welcome to episode 90, which is for you if you’d like to know what a non-billable CSD does in an agency.Luke Bowler from Therefore Interactive joined me and he shares:· How he went from studying to be a designer to moving to the account management role· Why his CSD role is non-billable and how he decides where best to spend his time· How he interacts with the project management team who are running the day to day projects· How he cleverly keeps abreast of his client’s industry news despite the fact they’re spread across multiple industries· The project management tools his agency is using as well as how they’re incorporating AIIf you’re listening to this episode before 20th July 2023 I’m running a free webinar on AI for account managers. Roy Murphy from Synthetic is going to provide an update on the current AI landscape, how brands & agencies are using AI, ethical considerations and challenges and we’ll be sharing some specific use cases for account managers. You can sign up to join live and also receive a recording. https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_Pxcr6NIuSZ-rs84h7Lap3AIf you don’t want to miss out on future free trainings, you can sign up to my newsletter by going to https://www.accountmanagementskills.com

Welcome to episode 89. This episode is for you if you're curious to understand what a senior account director does in a brand strategy agency. I chat to Andy Kaye, senior account directory at Mr B & Friends and we discuss:-  the importance of being proactive with clients and staying informed about industry trends- share tips on staying up to date with your clients business- discuss how often you should be looking at your forecast- why and how to build strong client relationships that result in clients coming back to you- and how to transform your internal briefing process to make it more experiential- and lots more... You're going to take away some great tips from this episode that you can go back to your agency and use. And if you're in an agency account management role and you're keen to be seen by your clients as more of an advisor than a reactive order taker, then check out the details of my account management training courses. We are kicking off both the one week training and the nine week training in mid July 2023 and you can find all the details on my website:https://www.accountmanagementskills.com