1.) Know Your Client: It is a MUST for Account Managers to do a thorough research about their clients, their strengths, the key people in their company, and their business goals. This will help you understand their goals and needs so you can align your service to them accordingly.
2.) Be Proactive: The last thing you would want your client to do is to send a follow up on items you need to accomplish on specific deadlines. Account Managers should be proactive in providing updates to the client most especially in cases where an unforeseen challenge or problem occurs. Communication is mostly done via email and while staying proactive, you also need to maintain giving high level information. Being proactive or providing the necessary updates is different from Spamming the client
3.) Be Reliable: It is always important to set proper expectations to the client. Being reliable does not only mean giving quick responses to the client. It also means being able to deliver what the client needs on a given deadline. This way, the client will assign more campaigns to you as they know how reliable and credible you are in meeting their needs.
4.) Listen to the Client: Sometimes, clients will challenge your knowledge about the business and your usual process of accomplishing things. The best thing you need to do is to listen to your client, study everything they need and collaborate with your team members first before rejecting any client proposal. It is necessary to have the “whatever it takes” attitude.
5.) Identify Key Accounts: It is true that in the world of Account Managers, not all accounts are created equal. It is common that you will handle multiple accounts. It is essential that you know how to prioritize the accounts you are handling, making sure that all leads are being delivered based on the preferred delivery schedules by your clients. Always look at the delivery schedules and end dates. You should never allow any missed deliveries to happen. Delegation of accounts to the other members of the team might be necessary so everyone is contributing in meeting the goals and needs of all accounts. The Key Accounts you have will be the revenue driving force of your company.
6.) Use the Right Tools: In most cases, Account Managers are expected to be good at using Excel Worksheets and Docs. We should invest in using project management tools to better monitor the client proposals and campaigns. There are free tools like Trello and Monday.com or a paid one like Jira, that can help you track different requests and the progress of your tasks until you accomplish them.
