Jenny Plant, Founder of Account Management Skills, on How Account Leads Can Add Value for Clients and Agencies Alike.

Welcome And Why Jenny’s Here

Sure. Jenny Plant. I'm the owner of Account Management Skills Training.

Jenny, thank you so much for joining us this morning.

Thank you so much for having me, Neil.

Okay, I have to start with uh you are no stranger to a microphone. You have uh I checked this morning. So as of this morning, you have 162 episodes of the Creative Account Manager Podcast live up wherever anybody wants to get their audio content. How often have you been the guest on a show versus the host?

Not I've a handful. I'd say a handful. So I it's weird, Neil, isn't it? Because I imagine you're on my show. I I feel quite nervous. Usually I don't.

Okay, well, don't be nervous. Don't be nervous. But but I I asked because yes, you had me on your show uh uh quite recently. And I have um between the two shows that I've hosted, I have maybe just shy of a hundred uh episodes out. So I'm I'm quite far behind you, but it was uh a very, very different experience when being asked questions versus being the one who asks questions. So uh I appreciate you um joining and putting yourself out there.

I'm gonna do my best to make it interesting.

I'm sure you'll do a great job. I I want to cover um maybe two broad categories, um like both of which I think are very interesting, and and you'll obviously have a really strong perspective on. So so one, I want to sort of cover, you know, what do you do? Because you've had a really interesting career, and I want to uh hear more about um this sort of how you got to where you are, what are you doing, what are you kind of looking to achieve with your business? And then um I think sort of from there, we can get into kind of like what are you thinking? I think we're at a very, very interesting point in time. Um uh I think account management skills are important and enduring, but maybe under a different kind of pressure. So um, so yeah, broadly I want to start with kind of like what do you do and then get into what are you thinking? How does that how does that sound?

That sounds great.

Awesome.

Okay.

The 2009 Sales Training Epiphany

So I I had an epiphany in 2009, and at the time I was working as client services director for Publicist Life Brands, which, as you know, is a healthcare um group. Um, and I'd been there for six years, and I was stepping up from client services director to general manager, and the epiphany moment was that I was assigned because of this promotion, a sales trainer, and I felt like someone had put me put on magic magic glasses and I was seeing the world differently. All of a sudden, I was looking at how to prospect, how to qualify, how to have conversations to uncover clients' pain points. All of these skills, it was the first time in my whole career that I'd been given sales training. And the reason this was so much of a an epiphany was because I'd been in the industry in healthcare, not in healthcare specifically, sorry, agency account management since the 90s. So throughout my career in different different agencies in account management, it wasn't until I was kind of touching general manager status that I was suddenly given this training. And I I look back at my career and I think if someone had given me this, given me this training when I was an account exec in a Hatton Garden agency in the early 90s, just think about all the value I could have given to my clients, the different conversations I could have had, and all the money that was left on the table from the agencies I worked for. Because when I was given this sales training, the first thing I did was say, I get all my account management, my account management team together, and I said, right, I said to Marcus, Marcus Kauke, this is a shout out to him, come and train my team. Let's do a session. And what was remarkable was my team were going out to see their clients and coming back saying, I've got another project, or I've asked for a referral. And and I was just amazed. So I stepped out of Publicist Life Brands in 2010. Um, my unfortunately, as as most people that make a career change, my dad was diagnosed with cancer, and I wanted to spend more time with him. And also the the business was going through like an acquisition. Anyway, I stepped out and I thought to myself, I want to package up this sales training and train frontline account managers because they need to have these non-salesy selling skills that then they can look for new opportunities for their agency to grow their existing accounts. So, account management skills training was that that was that was the spark. And and when I left Publicist and I started blogging about it, I was so enthused. I mean, it was ridiculous looking back. I was entused and blogging, and because I had quite a big network, one of the readers that came onto my um my list was just happened to be the chairman of the pharmaceutical marketing society. And after reading quite a few of my blogs, he said he actually contacted me and he said, I think we should talk. Now, we didn't actually talk for another year, so I carried on blogging. But eventually, when we did meet, he said, How would you feel about coming to deliver this training for account managers in healthcare agencies? So I still have that relationship with the pharmaceutical marketing society. This was in 2016, and I'm still delivering training for them. But obviously, I'm delivering my my own training and consultancy for agencies, and it's not just pharmaceutical agencies or market access healthcare um agencies, it's every type of agency. But essentially, and I know this is a very long story to answer your question.

No, it's a good story.

Well, that's thank you. This that and I feel so passionate about it. I loved what I do. I have cohorts of account managers, I work with agency leaders and owners to structure their team. And through that time of training uh frontline account people how to grow existing business, I've, as you can imagine, I've learned so much and developed my offering um in accordance with the key pain points and the things that they struggle with.

Why Agencies Avoid The Word Sales

So um so so many questions from that from that uh amazing setup. So you were like obviously, I'm gonna I'm gonna go back, uh, I'm gonna go back in time a little bit and I'm gonna um sort of unpack a couple of things I think that that you talked about. So, I mean, you were obviously um uh recognized as very good at what you do because you were being promoted up into kind of like a senior, you're getting moved up to a GM role. Um, uh, you know, you obviously had a team that was high performing uh that reflected well on you, but yet this sort of core set of selling skills was just absent, or maybe had sort of you know had had not met its full potential in that team, um, that almost seems like a bit of a disconnect, or you'd think that uh, you know, a key metric for account folks is you know growing their portfolios and and you know, nurturing clients. And um how how was it that that sort of you and your team were seen as high performing and yet still missing those skills? And I guess that is analogous to the folks that you're training now are likely seen as high performing but still missing that skills. It feels like those skills are really an important piece of the account management puzzle.

Well, here's the thing, Neil. In every other industry in the world, if you say you're an account manager, it's almost synonymous with sales and selling. But for some reason, in the marketing services industry, account management has always been about relationship development, um, making sure that you sort of drive and deepen the relationships and manage that client and create a great experience. It's almost like the word sell sales is you know, everyone doesn't, it's like, oh, don't say that. We're not selling to our existing clients. It it's it's really not um very and even now to be honest, whenever I say, I don't use the word selling in in any of my uh materials, my marketing materials, because it turns people off. They they one of the the key things I hear from account managers is I just I don't want to be salesy. So you're right, you're absolutely right. But this is one of the I think it's a bit of an anomaly in our marketing services industry.

It it it's interesting. It makes me think of of um I went out and I started uh my first agency uh in like 2005, and and I was um, you know, I'd been doing this stuff long enough that I I sort of knew what I was doing. Like I knew enough of what I was doing that I I'm sure I could muddle muddle through. And and um, you know, there was one key skill set that I just felt that I did not have that would that would you know hold me back from any degree of success. And it was it was selling. And and I I was talking to a friend of mine who is an unbelievable salesperson and has grown like multiple really successful businesses. And I said, Oh, you know, I need to, I need to find somebody who could be like my salesperson because I can't sell. And he he laughed out loud and he said, like, I don't know if I know anybody who sells better than you. And he said, selling isn't convincing people to buy things that they don't want or they don't need. Like selling is about being like connected and passionate about the things that you believe in and and you know having that passion be you know infectious, you know, into your you know, into your clients or your teams. And and it it just completely shifted my view of selling because I was in the category that you described, which is which is oh yeah, you know, selling is a is a very bad four-letter word.

I I totally agree. And you know, no one wants to be sold to, you know, you can smell it a mile off, you can feel it. But if you feel that you're genuinely have, you know, if you feel you've got solutions to problems, then it would be remiss of you not to suggest those uh solutions. So this this you're I agree with you. It's I think it's a skill that a lot of people have naturally, you know, they're they're naturally good at explaining things, uh good in listening, identifying issues, and say, hey, you know, I had a another client the other day that was talking to me about a similar problem. What they actually found useful was um, you know, and would it be useful if I kind of talked you through what how they help how I helped them solve it or how they helped, how they solved it. So there's there's lots of different ways that you can solve the client's problems. So no one's talking about doing anything that the client doesn't want, doing anything that you don't want. It's just that extra proactive piece that is is often missing.

Four Levels Of Client Value

Um, and you know, things are simple things like once you start working with a client, you know, you might start working on a on a type of project, but six months down the line, or one year after, one year down the line, they forget what other services that you have absorbed. You know, the amount of times that my account managers come back and say, Oh, my client said, I didn't even know you did that. You know, so there's it's sometimes really, really simple.

And and yes, yes. I'm I'm writing stuff, I'm writing stuff down if I if I felt like I paused there because that's a it's just it it feels so um almost obvious sometimes when you when you say it, things like, yeah, it's really important that you remind your clients of all the services that you have. But but when you say things like that, I'm sure light bulbs go off um, you know, for your uh uh for your audiences. And I I think about this, you know, the the the the money part, I think, often of account management, like the transactional, like we're buying something and selling something, and there's a there's a whole bunch of complicated stuff in there, right? Like there's there's implied hierarchies, and there's um, you know, and I think that some account folks uh see the um the sort of like the monetary part as almost sullying this um you know the the purity of the relationship. But I think that the the fact of the matter is you know, brand folks, um you know, part of their job is to spend money that they've been allocated on things that are really good for their brand. And so an account person coming and saying, Hey, I have an idea of something that's really good for your brand uh that you can spend some money on, uh, and that will be, you know, that the flywheel will keep going, um, is actually like an incredibly values-aligned thing with what the brand manager is is needing to do and is being evaluated on. So like there's almost something where it's like the thing that is most inherent in the relationship is also the thing that folks tend to shy away from sometimes.

Exactly. And a good account manager, the more they understand your business, your challenges, your goals, the more they should be able to connect the dots to how their agency could help or how they could introduce you to someone else that could help. So if this is all about helping, it's all about adding value to keep that relationship current, alive, and to also keep the client's perception that you are valuable. Because I talk about this spectrum of you know how you show up. A client sees value through their own eyes. So, sort of if you if you imagine four levels of value, level one for a client is that I come and work with an agency and they deliver high quality work on time, on budget. And if you are operating as an account manager at level one, you are a proficient responder, right? You you're very good at kind of crossing the T's, dotting the I's, getting everything delivered, um, and and that's great, and you're very responsive. Level two value for a client is that not only do you deliver on time on on budget, high quality work, but you also give the client a great experience. They enjoy the process of working with you, and at that level of value, your account management team are very good relationship builders. You know, they're very attuned with the client's goals, their KPIs, how they're measured, and they they're a you know, they're great to deal with. Level three value for a client is not only one and two, these build that you the agency is delivering a return on the investment. They actually get the challenge and they can solve the business and achieve the business outcome. Solve the problem, but achieve the business outcome. And at level three um value from an agency's perspective, your account management team need to be sort of more consultative, more challenging. They need to really understand where the client is at, the competitive environment, their their own customers, and what's going on in the business. And then level four value is all of that, plus you are bringing future value. So the agency showing up and leading you into the future, saying, Hey, you know, your brand's not showing up in in search anymore. Let let's let's talk about GEO. What do we have to do to show up differently? I'm gonna I'm gonna talk you through what's working, what's not, what other farmers pharma companies are doing better and or they're successful. And that's where another level of value is unlocked. So it would with that spectrum, with those levels, I think you can quickly assess as an agency where do we think we're operating currently, and also where do our clients perceive us to be operating? And that's a good starting point, I think.

Predictable Revenue Through Repeatable Process

That's also a fantastic distinction, right? Because um you I think sometimes account folks just assume that their clients perceive them as they perceive themselves, but um, there's actually work that needs to go into making sure that that uh the you know the that future value work is actually being recognized as such in the in the in the very, very busy day of a of a client, right?

Uh absolutely and you know not all clients are equal. I think the other thing that I learned on my journey was initially when people come and talk to me about working together, they're talking about training their team. But if you if you stand back from an agency owner's perspective, they kind of want three key things. They want more predictable revenue, so they want to know that their account management team is you know forecasting uh correctly that so that they can make resourcing decisions and hiring decisions. So predictable revenue is is really key. They also want their account management team um to have like a repeatable performance, like you know, let's document how we work. We don't want just one high performer on the team that's good at um proactively suggesting ideas, and then the third one is competitive advantage. So you know, if you really think about an agency owner, what do they want? They want to future-proof their business, and and their client relationship is the lifeblood of that business, so they need their account management team to be doing those three things, but it's not just about that individual uh account manager having the skills, it's it's I call it the three levers. It's it's first of all, I need to make sure that my account managers are operating on the right, you know, focusing their effort and time on the right clients. You know, if we are gonna bother, like we just said, uh showing up at level four and being that futurist, then we need to make sure that we're spending all that effort and time on the the clients that we really want to have for in our future that really do have growth potential. Um, so where where's that commercial clarity? That's the first thing, like setting your uh team up so that they're focusing in the right direction, they're working with the clients in the right way. You know, are they offering these extra strategic sessions to go through how you know GEO and the AEO um is is now and then the second part for an agency owner is um they need to have the skills. Obviously, they need to know that the how to show up and ask questions, how to listen, how to propose ideas, how to how to ask for referrals and testimonials. Um that's the skills part. But then the third part is making sure that um account management is is embedded as a repeatable process in in the agency. So I sometimes find that it is a three-legged stool. Like, if you don't give the the team the commercial clarity on where they should be focusing their time and effort and have some visibility over that, you can't just rely on uh them operating in in that way. So like I work with so many different types of agencies, but I'm just thinking of one example of I had a I was working with this sustainability agency, they did they do a lot of annual reports, um ESG consulting, and they had a very large account management team and who were going out speaking to their clients. Some of their clients were just getting them to do annual reports, but they could obviously clearly see that there was an opportunity to talk to this client about um the agency doing some uh sustainability consulting. The the opportunity was there, but the problem was when they came back to the agency, their sustainability consulting team were rammed with work, so they weren't available to help them develop proposals or go and have further conversations. So setting your account management team up for success is not just A skills issue, it's sometimes like a structural problem where they're not they're either unwilling or unable. And if they're unable, you know, that's a lot of the time is not setting them up for success.

Hybrid Roles And Setting Teams Up

Oh a thousand percent, right? Like that there's there's a there's so much scaffolding, I think, that needs to be around account folks. Sorry, I have to cough one sec. Sorry, I'm gonna go on mute folks. Sorry. There's so much scaffolding that needs to go around account folks, um, you know, including um, you know, giving them the time to think. And then also when they bring business back, making sure that the organization has the capabilities and the capacity to deliver on that business and you know, to deliver on it well. I think one of the challenges with with being an account person is that um, you know, so much of your credibility is tied up with how the team can deliver, not even how you deliver, right? So um, yeah, it's it's uh I also I love the the four list, the three list, and then the other three list. Um I I'm gonna I'm I'm sending this out to my team too. Um so is is I I'm I'm I'm thinking about this through the lens of someone who who's maybe thinking about their team. And I'm I'm sitting here both as like an agency owner and a and a podcast host. Is can everybody be trained to be a great account manager? Or is is uh sort of being in a great account manager kind of like you know, having the ability to sing? Like, I am sure I could go to a vocal coach and uh would never be a very good singer. Um sorry, I'm gonna get a glass of water. I've got a thing in my throat that's just not going away. Give me one sec, okay? Sorry.

No worries, yeah, yeah, yeah. You've got a good voice, Daryl. It's like the late late night show voice you've got at the moment.

You know what it is? It's that it's that I had like my last cup of coffee just before the show and then had no water. And so it's uh I think it's all it's all coffee. Um yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. So it it listening to this through the lens of someone who who currently does and has managed account folks and thinking about account folks that have been on my teams or that I've that I've sort of come into my orbit. You know, I wonder sometimes if like, can everybody be made into a great account manager? It's it's it makes me think about you know the ability to sing. I could take as many singing lessons as as you might like me to, and I will never be a particularly good singer. And I'll I'll I'll sort of put a bit of a finer point on it. So you were talking about you know, account folks like sort of you know offering up these excess extra sessions on like geo and and uh and you know helping to future-proof the business. To me, if you go all the way back to to how that starts, that starts with, I think, an account person, you know, walking to work in the morning or or or pouring their coffee and like thinking, just you know, innately thinking about their client's business and then you know, having an idea and then executing it on, but it but it it it often feels like it comes back to just that curiosity and desire that's baked into the individual. Can is that right? Can that be can that be trained? Do you sort of find some folks can only go so far? Or or have you been able to kind of create a program that that can really help everybody excel?

So this is a very, very good question. And I've asked myself the same question.

It was a very long question, too. I apologize.

Wait, and it's really apt. I'll tell you why, because having worked with lots of different types of agencies, right? You've got to remember I was talking to my procurement friend the other day. When they are buying marketing services, services, most marketing services, there are 24 different categories, which means you might have a PR agency, you might have a uh performance marketing agency, a design agency, uh, an app development agency, a consulting agency, a digital transformation, a medcoms. There are so many different types of agencies. Within those agencies, the role of account manager often varies. But but fundamentally, there are two types. There is one that is what we call the hybrid account manager, which is essentially an account manager and a project manager in one, and on the other end, there's lots of different agencies that separate those two functions. So they'll have a separate project management team and a uh that's different to their account management team. And those individuals work very closely together. I've worked with both types, and specifically when we're talking about account growth and being more proactive, obviously it's much harder and you have to be a lot more prioritized with your time if you are a hybrid account manager. Because when the doodar hits the fan and things need to get done, always your role defaults to project management. Project management is getting things delivered on time, on budget, very much about the resourcing, the the trafficking, the the delivery. You can't be thinking and spending time pontificating about how else we could bring value. That has to be deliberately sort of embedded into your agency's uh processes. And the the reason I say I've I've worked with all different types is I work very closely with um uh David Baker in the US, who's uh an agency consultant and he works with agency leaders to establish whether everyone's sitting in the right seats in the agency and that the agency's performance is optimized. Often when he is uh suggesting and proposing to to a business that they separate those teams for the first time because it makes more commercial sense, he'll sometimes then refer that client to me so that I work with the perhaps project managers who have put up their hands to say, actually, I want to go over to the account management side. So recently I had I was working with uh an agency that's in the educational sector that that service the university market in the US. Lovely, lovely uh ladies, um, five of them, and they had said, right, we're gonna make this structural change. I have been effectively taking orders and being delivery as a project manager, but I want to be an account manager. So I worked with them for a year. What started off with all of them a little bit shy saying, please don't make me salsy, you know, please don't let me, please don't let me make me say anything I don't want to say or you know be pushy and all this. Halfway through the program, we were they were like high-fiving that they like one of the ladies, I'm not gonna say names just in just in case they they get embarrassed. She'd come back from a two-day trip to to go and see the clients in person, which is what normally they weren't doing. She came back to the agency with with an having identified an additional $50,000 in revenue, right? So she was on the on the call with us, like, and they're all high-fiving and all these Zoom emojis are like celebrating the win. So, what I've seen, and going back to your original question, is can anyone do account management? I think it is, but you gotta you you gotta understand what the role is is all about, understand whether it's that pure account manager role who is responsible for walking the proverbial halls of the client's organization, really getting under the skin of the client's business, being sort of big picture thinking, thinking what other solutions do we have that we could, and not being afraid to initiate conversations because because there's also a natural inclination, you know. We all have our genius when we're in flow. Some people's flow is being behind a screen, being super organized, you know, putting things and and really the engine room of operations, but you ask them to pick up the phone or or go to a networking event or initiate uh or present some ideas at a client meeting, and it's not their flow. They don't want to do it, and they they don't want to aspire to that type of role.

Account Manager Or Project Manager

And is that a question? What what what question do you pose um if you find yourself in this situation? I I have often with with junior folks, um uh sorry, I will also say uh I'm a very big proponent of separate account and project management roles. Um I started my career like a thousand years ago as a project manager in an organization that had both. I think I was maybe indoctrinated. Every one of the agencies that I've run, I've run two. It makes it sound like I've had a hundred businesses, but um, you know, the two agencies that I've run, we we really see those as discrete crafts. Um uh so I will sort of put that out there, um, which is why I love talking to you about this stuff. It's just the the craft of account management, I think, is so important and so special. Um and and I've had conversations with junior folks who often, when you like you're really junior, you kind of do a little bit of everything. It's typically sort of task-based, it's not even project-based. And you know, they often end come to me and say, well, I, you know, where should I go next, right? Should I go into a project management stream or should I go into an account management stream? What are the kinds of questions that you would ask or pose to somebody who is contemplating, you know, do I actually want to be an account manager or should I be a project manager?

It's a really good question, actually, because I think as you go through your career, I'm just looking back on my own, you might get really good at a task that you've been given, but you don't really know what else is available, or or you might not have the permission, let's say, to spread your wings a bit. And I think I when I look back on my career, I was I was I had a series of incidences where I was left holding the bag, sort of thing. You know, I remember a time when I was working in one of my first agencies, and both of my bosses were off. They got sick, and I was just running the clients, like just you know, and just intuitively taking the calls, taking the briefs, like internally kind of managing everything. And I think sometimes you need those moments to really know what what you what you love. I mean, I would say that David actually, because he's been consulting forever and he's a member of Mensa because he's so blimmin intelligent, he has developed or he's been gathering disc profiling data on the roles within agencies since 2008. And because he's such a genius, he pattern matches, and he's actually found that project managers have a different disc profile to account managers. Interesting. I know, and I was so inspired by this data gathering that I started doing it myself. And I I mean they tell you actually, I did the disc training and they tell you ex exactly not to do that. They call they call it weaponizing disc. But anyway, we'll we'll overlook that because you know, with with enough, I mean, he's got like like tens of thousands of profiles, and and clearly there is patterns, but I think the reason that that pattern has emerged is because let's suppose you're a you're a project manager, you have to be super organized, you can't let anything go, you know. And I remember being having like I was doing some consulting for someone, and part of that was to analyze this spreadsheet, which was effectively a scope of work. I it made me sleepy. I was not in my flow. So I know that I'm the project management side, I'm pretty organized, right? But I'm not the best organized. I have a business support manager, Alison, who works with me. She is super on it. We call her Eagle Eyes, she doesn't drop anything, but I'm better at talking, I'm better at proposing, I'm better at sort of creative thinking and coming up with ideas and training people like that. I am in my flow in what I do now. So I suppose one of the tests you can do if you are an agency owner listening to this, maybe it's a dilemma you've got, but maybe it's not. But I would set some tasks and I would ask teams to actually go away and fulfill the tasks and watch the behaviors. I mean, I think when I talk to agency owners, they'll have a pretty good idea just from the behaviors that they see from their team, like the hesitancy to contact the client or the their level of attention to detail and organization and proposing ideas for operational um kind of uh improvement is just off the charts. So watch where they come alive because I I'm glad to hear, Neil, that you your experience is separating the AMs and the PMs. But there are there are lots of agencies that combine two roles, and you have these people trying to be good at both, and sometimes you're just not.

Well, it's I I think that there are there are moments where it's it's you know, quite frankly, almost impossible to be good at both, right? Like, you know, I think about um, and again, this is not sort of every minute of every day, but I think about the scenarios where um you know you're on a call or in a room with a client and you're talking about you know a project kickoff, and to think that that one individual is going to be helping to sort of lead and direct that conversation, think about strategy, align the work against the goals of the brand, um, you know, sort of be really, you know, reading the room uh while also taking very, very detailed notes and thinking um, you know, very intensely about implementation and risk. And and it's like it's just it's it's it's virtually impossible, I think, for somebody to shape shift in those moments between those two states. Um and and I think that there's there's yeah, I think there's lots of value. I think there's a big part of that then diagram in the middle where those roles overlap. And so I always say to my team, um, if I am coming in to sort of adjudicate uh conflict is too much of a too big of a word, but uh, you know, a question about roles, I want to be adjudicating situations where you are both trying to do something uh and there's overlap versus situations where you're standing apart and pointing fingers at each other and saying, that's not my job. Um and that that I think gets, you know, where where the line begins and ends gets a little bit tricky. But um, but yes, I think there's there's a there's a there's a ton of value in both. And I think it's about unlocking the um the potential of of of both of those crafts, right? Um, which I think is a lot of of what you've been talking about, and I think a lot of what your work is is about getting folks up to that level four, which is really unlocking the value of that of that craft.

I agree, and even more so now with what how AI is disrupt disrupting the industry. And just going back a step, I you know, when you work, when when you see agencies that have both roles, and those both roles, they're all it's almost like a positive tension between they work hand in hand, neither one is better than the other, but they work like a well-oiled machine. It's just beautiful because no opportunity is wasted. And I remember interviewing one team for my podcast, actually, um, a very well-established internal comms agency in the US, and their head of operations and head of client service or head of client strategy, as they called it, came on my show to talk about this. And the the operations uh lady said, you know, I don't want my account management team to worry about how the work's gonna get delivered. I just want them to be present with their clients, asking the questions, unlocking the opportunities. They don't need to worry about how it gets delivered, when it gets delivered, how we're gonna resource it, etc. Just go out and have those conversations, add the value, suggest the ideas. And it was just beautiful. I mean, they they'd they'd had that model for over six years at the time, and this was a couple of years ago, but um there is definitely a benefit, but yeah, that's all they're gonna say.

Yeah, it's it's also a bit of a luxury, obviously, to be able to, you know, afford or put the energy into building both of those skills. Like I do understand why some agencies go uh go hybrid, but um uh that's a that we could keep going on that. That's a whole podcast in and of itself.

Procurement Relationships That Protect Accounts

Um, okay, you you uh you mentioned something that I want to pick up on, and you also very uh nicely uh introduced the topic of AI and account management today, which is uh uh really what I want to kind of talk about in the in the back half of the conversation. But before we get there, um you mentioned procurement, you mentioned having a front in procurement. Um and and and how do you see really good account management um acting as a lever in what can in some situations be an increasingly procurement-led um uh sort of process or procurement-led world. Um, I've seen, you know, I've I've been uh on the other side of situations where we've had very happy clients. I think we've we've you know managed to, you know, not all of our clients, but some of our clients manage terrifically well. They love working with us, and yet uh a procurement mandate comes down that uh you know they need to diversify agencies, or there's uh, you know, a new rate card pressure that the agency, you know, just can't necessarily succumb to. And and account management is is part of the evaluation criteria, but it ends up being about a bunch of numbers and not about a bunch of experiences and and relationships. Like, how do you see account management acting as a positive lever in these situations where procurement is becoming uh sort of more intensely involved?

You mean developing relationships with procurement?

Um yeah, developing relationships with procurement or or um you know developing a relationship with your client such that that relationship um uh uh becomes extremely durable uh in the face of procurement reviews or or uh you know KPI pressures. Like it it I don't know if that makes sense.

Yes, yes. Well, I right this is how I describe procurement. Every procurement department and the individuals in them, in every company is is on a I call it, I shouldn't really say this, the the shark, the shark scale. You've got the one end, you've got procurement who are very transactional and they only appear when you know they're buying the service and they've got all of the tricks that they use to kind of cut the costs. On the other end of the shark spectrum, you have the the massively evolved partnership procurement teams. Um, and and farmer is is a good example actually of some of the procurement teams I've worked with who are very much about long term relationships with their suppliers, right? And everything in between. I personally, because I've had several procurement people on my podcast, I'm personally of the opinion, partly because of my own experience, in nurturing and developing those relationships with individual procurement people. You know, they they are interested in who you are, what you do, because you're on their supplier list. But if you don't stay close to procurement, and we'll talk about how you do that in a minute. But if you don't do that, then like you said, Neil, all of a sudden, out of the blue, you might get um a request to re-pitch for your business for the business, which actually happened to a creative agency that I work with. They at and at the time they had like a big concentration issue. I think there was about 35% of the overall agency revenue tied up with this one client. Now, you could argue that they if they'd have stayed close to procurement, then they would have seen it coming, that they change of CEO. Um, and the first thing a CEO does sometimes is want to make their mark by cutting costs. So that that request to repitch for their existing business came as a massive shock. The other reason that I think procurement relationships are worth trying to nurture over time is it keeps you top of mind. You know, just it doesn't have to be every week, but on a quarterly basis, if you kind of package up as a value story what you've been working on with your client for the last quarter, um and you know, maybe there is some value story to tell. Like if you're you've done a massive amount of photography, for example, and and you talk about, well, because we did so much photography, we've actually negotiated some rates, we were able to uh extend that uh saving to you, and this is what that looked like. Um, I think keeping yourself top of mind, it's one of your internal clients. That then when another brand team in another part of the organization is looking for your particular skill set, maybe you'll be top of mind to think about.

Yeah.

Um, and in fact, I'm just thinking another a medcoms agency that I have been working with for a number of years. The the owner actually said to me, Jenny, that was the best bit of advice you ever gave me, was to to keep close to procurement because at the time she didn't really have much relationship with them, but then she proactively did, and it actually saved her agency when they were looking to consolidate relationships and partnerships.

I I think it's so it's so important. And you talk about that packaging up every quarter. Um, I would say every agency owner, account person should be like listening to this, writing that down and putting an asterisk beside it. Um, because if you can't package something up that tells a compelling story to procurement, then how in the world would procurement ever be able to positively evaluate your agency, right? Like, like understanding what is compelling to procurement and being able to articulate how your agency is delivering that value is exactly the kind of criteria that that procurement is gonna be going through in their head when they when they look at the list or they think about who to cut or they think about you know who to pitch. And and in fact, I would even go one step further and say if you are you know developing a relationship with procurement, you know, say to them, like, it's the end of the year, you know, you're gonna get uh you know evaluated or promoted, or you know, and and you've got a piece of paper with a bunch of stuff on it that you want to show your boss. Like, what is on that piece of paper that is important that we can help you get better numbers on or tell a bell better story about? Like actually proactively lining up how you evaluate your business with how procurement evaluates the business, I think is is it like it's almost common sense when you hear it, but it just I don't think it happens all that often.

Absolutely agree with you and and also education, like if you are showing up in that level four futurist bucket, don't forget that procurement wants to be kept up to speed with what's changing as well.