
The Handbook: The Operations Podcast
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That’s where The Handbook comes in. Our goal? To help you take your business to the next level of business maturity.
This podcast is for operations and service-business leaders who are juggling it all – people, processes, finance, tech, and everything in between.
Every other week, we dive deep into a specific challenge that businesses face as they grow in headcount and complexity. You'll get practical insights and real-world advice from experts who’ve been there, solved the problems, and know what works.
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The Handbook: The Operations Podcast
Jenny Plant: Great Sales & Great PM - Can One Person Do It All?
Part of the remit of an ops leader is to ensure they’ve got the right people, in the right place.
In many agencies, account managers handle sales, client relationships, AND project management. However, this hybrid role often leads to trade-offs.
Everyone’s got their own strengths and preferences – and these responsibilities seemingly require very different personality types.
A great sales person might struggle with rigorous project management, resulting in issues like over-servicing. While an exceptional project manager might struggle with developing a sales pipeline, leading to stress, missed targets, and a shallow pipeline.
So, should these roles be separated?
We'll explore this with our guest, Jenny Plant. With over 20 years of experience in agency account management, Jenny founded her consultancy, Account Management Skills, to share sales training skills with account managers.
Jenny will share:
- The pros and cons of separating account and project managers
- What value agencies seek in their account managers
- How sales training can improve client relationships, retention and business growth
Jenny's website: https://accountmanagementskills.com/
Jenny's podcast: https://accountmanagementskills.com/podcast
Follow Jenny on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jennyplant/
Follow Harv on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/harvnagra/
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This podcast is brought to you by Scoro, where you can manage your projects, resources and finances in a single system.
Hi all, welcome back to the show. Ops people, we have to be unicorns, masters of all trades. But should others in our teams be expected to be as well? In the agency space, it's quite common to have account managers, which you expect to be great salespeople, great client relationship managers, and expect them to be excellent project managers. In my experience, this hybrid role often comes with a trade off. People in that role might gravitate towards aspects of the role that they're most comfortable in, whether that's project management or managing the client relationship and developing sales. This can lead to disappointment on the part of the operations leader that the individuals might either not be as rigorous around project control as they'd like, leading to issues such as over servicing, or they might be great at project management, but be less comfortable discussing new opportunities with the client and actively developing their sales pipeline, causing stress for the management team, including the MD, finance, and operations. As Ops people, we have a say in informing how our agencies are structured and staffed. So is it reasonable to expect one person to be able to do all of the above, manage projects well, and develop business and client relationships, or should these roles be separated? And regardless of whether we separate these roles, account managers in agencies don't often come from a formal sales background. So how can we ever expect them to deliver on that side of their role? How can they develop those skills? That's the topic of today's episode. Our guest today is Jenny Plant. If that name sounds familiar, it's because you may have heard or seen something about her podcast online, or you might already be a fan. She's the host of the brilliant Creative Agency Account Manager podcast, which she's been hosting for nearly two years. Jenny has over 20 years of experience in agency account management, but she tells me it was when she took on a role at a global healthcare comms agency that she had her aha moment. There, she had the formal sales training where she learned everything she felt she should have known for her first account executive role. It's then become her mission to share that knowledge and that led to her setting up her own consultancy Account Management Skills. Through her company, Jenny provides training on account management skills for creative agencies. Her goal is to support client retention and help agencies grow existing client relationships. I had the pleasure of chatting with Jenny previously and listening to her podcast. So I'm really excited for you to join this conversation and hear what she has to say. Let's get into it. Jenny, it's a pleasure to have you here today. I have to admit I'm a bit nervous talking to a professional podcaster who's been doing it over two years. I've been doing it two months, so I've been kind of sweating it the past hour being like, I better not screw this up.
Jenny Plant:Please be, be assured. I am, no way. I do not think I'm professional at all. I still cringe when I listen to myself. So gosh, please. No gosh, please. But thank you anyway. That was kind.
Harv:Thank you so much. So first question, we're going to quickly start with terminology. I know everyone can have a different point of view, but I wanted to start with yours. In the agency world, do you see the job titles, client relationship manager, client services managers, and account managers, are they all kind of cut from the same cloth or do they have different nuances? What's your point of view on that?
Jenny Plant:No, they don't at all. I think it's a bit like the wild west. All of our agencies do something slightly different and therefore we all call these key points of client contact, something completely different. So anything from account manager to relationship manager there was, there's an internal comms agency in the US who call their account people strategists because they lead the strategy as well as the client relationship. So
Harv:Right.
Jenny Plant:it's across the board. And also there's kind of different levels as well. So you have these multitude where agencies have different. You know, they can start with account exec, account manager, senior account manager, account director. I mean, it's just bonkers really.
Harv:Right. Right. A lot of job titles, all roughly in the same ballpark of what the responsibilities are. So it comes to kind of internal, whatever they've decided to call those roles.
Jenny Plant:Exactly. Yep.
Harv:Okay. So what we're going to be talking today about is the role of the account manager and particularly in agencies where the role covers both sales and customer relationship and the project management side of things. First of all, how common is it to have this kind of hybrid role?
Jenny Plant:Very common. I, I see it. I work with different countries, mostly English speaking countries. So I do a lot of business with the U S, some with Australia, and Europe, but definitely it's not uncommon, it's across the board really, you do find it in every country.
Harv:Any thoughts on why you think this is so common to have this hybrid role?
Jenny Plant:I think it's partly traditional because that's how we used to do it 20 years ago.
Harv:Hmm.
Jenny Plant:I think it was about 20 years ago with the advent of digital agencies, that there was a requirement for a more specialized skillset in managing the type of projects that we were doing. I'm old enough to have seen that shift. So you saw the rise of more separation of the two roles, I'd say at the beginning of 20 years ago, and it's
Harv:Hmm.
Jenny Plant:it's just grown and grown and grown as more agencies are now digital. But having said that there are still, as we said, still hybrid account manager roles. you know, PR is a, an agency industry that's specifically, you can find a lot of hybrid. Medical communications agencies are the same, a lot of hybrid. But I think more consultancy based companies tend to have the hybrid role.
Harv:Yeah. I've seen that, you know, my past agency, we did everything from strategy to branding through to digital. And it was only the digital that had the dedicated producer roles, whereas everything else on the project management side was covered by hybrid account managers as well. So as a prelude to the discussion, can I ask where you stand on this debate? What's your point of view?
Jenny Plant:I feel quite strongly that if your current business model is working for you,
Harv:Yeah.
Jenny Plant:Then carry on.
Harv:Okay.
Jenny Plant:There's no need and there's no one size fits all because every agency is slightly different. Every agency operates slightly differently.
Harv:Yeah.
Jenny Plant:The
Harv:Yeah.
Jenny Plant:key question to ask yourself, if you are the owner of an agency and you're thinking about, you know, how do I structure my team? I think one of the key things, is for me, is I spend all this time and money getting a client. And when we have the client, are we retaining it and growing it, most importantly, are we capitalizing on that relationship? Because we all know the statistics. The Harvard Business Review said it's 5 to 25 times more expensive to get a new client than it is to grow an existing. So there'so much potential within your current client base to expand. So it could be cross selling upselling, you know, adding more value, coming up with more ideas, getting referrals, getting introduced to other parts of their organization, to their network, there's all of that potential. And I think that's the key question for me. If it's not broken, don't try and fix it with a new business model. Whatever's working, go with it. So I, I, I feel like that. I know a lot of people are different. They're, they're quite black and white, but I've, I've, worked with so many different agencies. Some agencies don't have an account management function at all, you know? So that's my, that's my stance on it.
Harv:If it ain't broke, don't fix it. And if you do start recognizing some of the pains that might lead to somebody thinking that they need to distinguish that. Before we get into that, Jenny, I wanted to ask what kind of qualities are good qualities to have in an account manager?
Jenny Plant:I think, if you, if we're talking about. Are we talking about a hybrid or a pure standalone
Harv:Let's say standalone so that we can distinguish these functions.
Jenny Plant:The standalone has a natural ability to lead a client relationship. They're able to manage the client relationship without ruffling feathers. They're very good at reading social signals and pre empting disasters. They're kind of emotionally attuned to what's happening. They rally their colleagues and their behaviors include an ability to sell ideas, protect profits, to Commercial curiosity and to understand the client's business, their market, their customer. So it's quite an entrepreneurial mindset because you are responsible for your book of business, your key accounts, and you're responsible for nurturing it, nurturing them. You have a forecast target. Your goal is to make sure that you are building trust, building the relationship, looking for growth opportunities. And, and I think typically, again, it's coming back to the pure account manager role, as well as that generally speaking, they tend to be quite enthusiastic, optimistic, and very at ease with meeting new people. They're more akin to salespeople than perhaps the pure play project manager is.
Harv:Mm hmm. And that was going to be my next question. How is that distinct from what you see as a great project manager?
Jenny Plant:For me, a great project manager has a really good attention to detail. They are process driven. They're super efficient. They are the engine room of the business. hmm. They are able to problem solve, they have a very thorough approach. They're highly respected and you just, you know, there's someone that you can rely on. That's not going to let anything fall through the cracks. And conversely, the account managers, they might be kind of big picture, but not so good at the detail.
Harv:When I hear those strengths or qualities in a good account manager versus project manager it almost sounds to me like those could be very different personalities, the introvert versus the extrovert, you know, attention to detail versus really liking building relationships and keeping the client happy. So you can see where that tension can come in with the hybrid role
Jenny Plant:Absolutely, Harv. I mean, interestingly I've been working with um, David Baker, in the US and many agency people are aware of David cause he's very well known. He's done DISC profiling. He's got over 28, 000 DISC profiles, having looked at all of the agency roles over time.
Harv:hmm,
Jenny Plant:And he's actually found that typical account managers and project managers have a different DISC profile as well.
Harv:right,
Jenny Plant:you're right to observe that what makes you a great account manager isn't necessarily what makes you a great project manager. And I have personal testament to that because I, in my career was a hybrid account manager
Harv:right,
Jenny Plant:and I loved, loved, love the meeting of new people. If you put me in the room of a networking event, by the end of the night I'd have spoken to many people,
Harv:right,
Jenny Plant:exchanging business cards and loved that; presentations. But when you put me in a room behind a big spreadsheet and I had to do a scope of work, I just felt tired and overwhelmed. And I did it, because I had to do it, but it wasn't my flow.
Harv:I've seen that as well, Jenny, from my experience, it's very similar to what you're describing there is that, people kind of gravitate towards the skillset that they're more comfortable in based on their personality and their experience. Right. So when you get that kind of a very outgoing kind of bubbly personality to try to focus on the details of really rigorous project management, you might get things like the over servicing and, scope creep being allowed because it's really hard to put your foot down in front of the client. And then on the other end of things, when somebody is just much more comfortable not speaking to people and being focused on the work and making sure that's being done really efficiently, you know, they, they can struggle with the client handling because things can be a little bit too strict. so if that's the case and we still have hybrids, is it still possible to have this kind of unicorn role or is that just the reality of it, that you're always going to have this kind of tension and people are going to be better at one thing or
Jenny Plant:I don't see the hybrid role going away partly because it's more usual when you start an agency, you would probably have a hybrid role there because everyone's wearing multiple hats.
Harv:hmm.
Jenny Plant:I think it's just a decision as you grow the business, what makes more sense for you and the type of work you're working on, the type of business, how you sell as well,
Harv:Right.
Jenny Plant:becoming, I'm seeing a trend with a lot of agencies, productizing what they do.
Harv:Mm.
Jenny Plant:Offering products and programs rather than bespoke, pricing based on specific projects. And I think we're going to see more and more of that.
Harv:Mm.
Jenny Plant:so yeah, we're, we're changing, I think the business model is changing. And I think like everything, if you're a business owner or leader, you have to evolve with the changes that are happening.
Harv:Do you think even at larger agencies, it's sustainable to keep the hybrid role or is that kind of one of the triggers maybe that size gets to a certain point, and then it becomes much more necessary to have very distinct roles and responsibilities?
Jenny Plant:I think it's a good question. I think there's probably different, definitely different scenarios. Either you get to a tipping point and it makes more sense for you to split them out. So you're early in your progress and it's easier at that stage. Rather than, you're fully established and then you decide to split the roles. I've worked with agencies that are on that journey and it seems a bit of a trend. How you do that is as important as what you do, because part of it is looking at your team and it's a combination of what the business needs and what the individual wants to do. You were talking Harv about you know, your natural propensity to do one thing or the other. I think it's all about getting people sitting in the right seats. So that they can flourish and be in flow. The last thing you want is to have someone with more of a project management leaning, being given a forecast target to achieve. And being told to walk the proverbial halls of the organization, look at what the client's market is doing and look at the commercial opportunities of where you could grow the account. It's just not, maybe it's not interesting, you know, they much prefer the satisfaction of completion of projects. You know, that flow where you see everything coming together and that's what you're good at.
Harv:Absolutely. So Jenny, I wanted to talk about how these roles operate together. Let's say somebody does decide that, up until now, they've had this kind of hybrid role, but they've started to recognize some of the pains and they think that they're at a certain size, or, whatever's triggering them to lead to this kind of process. How do you think these roles operate together? What's the handoff point between the account manager and the project manager if you do decide to separate these?
Jenny Plant:I think the first thing to say, if you are thinking about doing this, you have to kind of treat it like a change management program. Cuz it is upsetting the apple cart. What we're effectively talking about is re-engineering job descriptions to be quite different to what perhaps they were before. And I think everything needs to be thought about in that way and to bring people on the journey with you. To talk first of all, about the why you're doing it and give everybody enough time to kind of get used to that idea, then look at the might have an idea of who would maybe have a natural propensity to do one role or the other. The ideal scenario is everyone says, well, I would prefer to do the account manager. I would prefer to do the project manager and they all fall in their natural buckets. So, you know, I probably could draw on the experience working with a couple of agencies that have separated the role in terms of working together. I think having a RACI model. You're very familiar with RACI, I'm sure. For those listening, you there's four elements to that, who's responsible, who's accountable, who's consulted and who's informed and then looking at your client journey and plotting out who is going to do what role for each stage of the journey. and I mean, just to give you an idea of, internal communications agency working in the U S who have a account manager that acts like a strategist and a separate project management team. The account manager that they call a strategist works with the project manager throughout the journey for every single project, regardless of size.
Harv:Hmm
Jenny Plant:Conversely, I've been working with an award winning UK digital marketing agency that's worked in the separation, the AM and PM team for years, and they work slightly differently. They choose which projects they will put the team on and which projects they will put just a project manager on to lead. there's that complexity as well. It's thinking, is this for all clients? and this UK one, they would put a team onto retainers.
Harv:Okay. Mm-Hmm.
Jenny Plant:one would put, put every, every team gets, every project gets to. But the first point is to involve your account manager in the closing of the business. So maybe it's in the kind of the final pitch stage of the business. So the client has familiarity and then both the PM and the AM would then work on the pitch proposal to turn it into a scope of work. So the account manager will be looking through the lens of commerciality. So Right, how are we going to develop the relationship? What is the strategy around where we see the growth potential and the opportunity and the project managers looking at it through milestones, timelines, costs, and how we're going to manage it physically.
Harv:Right,
Jenny Plant:And then you go to contract stage. And again, both are involved in that stage to make sure that they fully understand, all of the terms on both sides.
Harv:mm hmm,
Jenny Plant:Then you would have an internal kickoff stage where the project manager would lead with the account manager supporting, and then an external kickoff with the client, where the account manager would lead with the project manager supporting. So I think they operate as a team, but where it makes more sense for the account manager to lead, then they do. And the project manager supports and vice versa.
Harv:right,
Jenny Plant:So rule of thumb, and this isn't always the case again, it could be project dependent is the account manager would be driving the key relationships and, and in particular running quarterly business reviews, end of year reviews with clients, at the beginning of their fiscal year, sitting with perhaps a strategist to look ahead to what the scope of work is going to be planned for the year, but anything to do with making it happen, nothing gets, you know, they work very closely together.
Harv:mm,
Jenny Plant:internal sign off as well.
Harv:right
Jenny Plant:But the project manager, as I said before, is the engine room to make sure everything happens. So resourcing, scoping, how, you know, which project management system we're going to using, all of that from start to finish.
Harv:You know, we're talking about kind of differing skill sets and one thing I've noticed, whether somebody decides that these roles, they want to operate them separately, or in this hybrid. I don't know if you'd agree with this, but I, I've seen that often people that have these account management roles in agencies don't necessarily come from a sales background. You know, they might've started as an account exec executive at the agency and kind of grown through that process. So, so it's quite likely that they don't have that kind of formal sales experience or skillset, beyond perhaps hopefully being really good relationship builders, if that's the kind of angle of their skillset versus the project management side, do you tend to find the same?
Jenny Plant:Absolutely. It's, it's very, very normal. I think sometimes when an account exec in that hybrid role gets promoted to AM and then maybe A ccount Director Some agencies, AD AD stage, that's where they expect them to grow accounts. Whereas if you're AM, the expectation isn't that you will be sales.
Harv:Right.
Jenny Plant:there's that scenario, but conversely, there's also people that reach an account director role and has effectively been a very, very good project manager.
Harv:Mm hmm.
Jenny Plant:They go into another agency that's always operated with separate roles. And all of a sudden they're faced with a forecast sheet and targets and, you know, client development plans, and the expectation is that you can do this. So it's often the type of agency that you've been brought up in
Harv:Hmm.
Jenny Plant:and how the management has led the team.
Harv:That's a really good point. When we were chatting in our previous call, you, you brought up an interesting story, you know, we're going to talk about that you've set up your own consultancy and that's been going for a number of years, but you were telling me why this was kind of a trigger for you to set up. It would be fantastic if you could tell us about that.
Jenny Plant:Yeah. I mean, I'm a dinosaur. I started in the early nineties in a Hatton Garden, London, independent agency, about 90 strong.
Harv:Okay.
Jenny Plant:It was what was called a through the line. So we were doing above the line and below the line. So
Harv:Right.
Jenny Plant:above the line was the ads, and below the line was kind of brochures, direct mail, stuff like that. I was the hybrid account manager.
Harv:Okay. Mm-Hmm
Jenny Plant:Mostly in my career, Harv, until I reached general manager of Publicis Life Brands, I've worked mostly agency side. I've also worked client side. So as a marketing manager for an airline, I worked for a pharmaceutical company. So I have had both sides, but mostly agency side. And it wasn't until I was general manager that I was given sales training and it was like a huge light bulb had gone off. All of a sudden I was seeing everything through, through a commercial lens, which wasn't afforded to me when I was in my first agency.
Harv:Yeah.
Jenny Plant:And it was like, I thought if only someone had given me this sales training when I was starting off as an Account Exec I would have made more money for the agency I work for. I would have given so much more relevant value to the clients. I would have had better conversations with my clients because I understood more about what they were looking for, know, because clients want outcomes. They don't necessarily want process. I think there's, there's kind of four four levels of value. The first level is service delivery, you know, delivering that project on time, on budget. You've got the next level, which is not only do you do level one, but you also give the client a fantastic experience.
Harv:Right.
Jenny Plant:You're a great relator. You understand what their needs are, their KPIs, and you're really good at developing relationships. So that's level one and level two. Then level 3 for a client is not only you do one and two, but you also give a return on investment. You are delivering an outcome based on the investment they're making. And at that level, you know, account managers need to be a lot more commercial. They need to be challenging. They need to understand the client's business. I mean, no one really gave me the remit to, do some research on the client's business. It was very much about the agency project. It wasn't about the client business.
Harv:Right.
Jenny Plant:And then the fourth level is not only do you do one to three, but you also are a futurist. You bring the future to clients. You're situationally aware, you understand the marketplace, the trends, and you're bringing those ideas in advance. So, you know, what opportunities could you be bringing to the client that they're missing out on? You know, we've had several big algorithm changes or the cookies have disappeared. If you were at the forefront of your industry, you could be weaving that into client conversations. You could also be capitalizing on what's working with other clients and sharing it with them. You know, there, there was a study by Relationship Audits and Management, which is an auditing company for relationships. And they did a study and they asked, they, they basically audit the relationship. They questioned the clients and the question was, do you want your Agency to leverage the understanding they have with other clients and share it with you? You know, without naming names. Do you know what percentage of clients said that they wanted the agency to do that?
Harv:Was it all of them?
Jenny Plant:Yeah, a hundred percent. And yet, I mean, that's such an, a normal kind of thing, but how often do we do it? And the account manager, the one that knows the client best is perfectly placed to do that.
Harv:hmm. Very, very good point. On that futurist thing, that's a great idea and great suggestion. Is that just a regular phone call and a lunch that you would go and share some, drop some nuggets of wisdom or what you've seen? Or have you seen this work really well with emails or creating a more formal presentation or something like that? What, what works well?
Jenny Plant:I think you have to create business relevant contexts. So if you're having that conversation in a day to day status call, that's kind of okay, but the client might not be expecting it. They just want you to get on with the project. You know, why are you distracting me asking me questions about my business challenges, just focus on the job at hand. So I think where you do have those contextual moments, and by that, I mean, you know, yearly planning sessions, quarterly business reviews, quarterly strategy sessions, innovation sessions. You could even, you know, have masterclasses or strategic workshops. It's in my experience, much better to have a dedicated moment, rather than to squeeze it in. You can have lunches. I'm not saying you can't. Yeah, of course. But contextually, it might not be expected. Well, I think lunch is yes, but status calls, monthly reporting, however your agency currently works, think about the touch points you currently have and converting them into more business led conversations.
Harv:hmm. I like the idea of creating more of a moment though. Then people start expecting that of you and your agency and they start valuing that and you stand out from everyone else who's not doing that and is maybe only relying on the lunchtime catch ups now and then every six months or whatever. Jenny, I was scribbling down those pillars you had mentioned, you know, service delivery, great experience, ROI, and being a futurist. We're going to talk about kind of the training that you offer, but that sounds like a really strong foundation. Is that what your training programs are built around?
Jenny Plant:Yeah, that's one of my models.
Harv:Okay.
Jenny Plant:That we talk about when we talk about raising your value. And then we go into how you do that. I've been doing this since 2016 full time, teaching account managers how to grow existing business. And through that time, I've seen everything, I mean, every reason that you wouldn't want to do it, every excuse, not for it to happen. And what I've realized is the skills themselves is just the tip of the iceberg. What people really want from account managers is, they want the business outcome they want is more predictable revenue from existing accounts. So they want to know that that forecast is on point. You know, you're going to retain that and grow that client. You also want the account manager's skills to be repeatable. So you want that repeatable performance
Harv:Right.
Jenny Plant:Not just for all those skills of growth to sit with one person. So you want a process and, thirdly, you want a competitive advantage. You know you see the opportunity that all of this profitable business just needs unlocking rather than chasing the new business. So it's those three things. And when, when I do my program, skills is just one part of it.
Harv:Right.
Jenny Plant:We talk about the strategy, you know, to have that commercial clarity. Which clients are growth worthy, which ones aren't, what's our plan? You know, there's multiple different ways to do it. And looking at relationship risk and then the skills is the second one, which is all about being consultative. How to ask questions, how to propose ideas, you know, it's all the hows, how to ask for referrals. And then the third part is the cultural continuity. So it's the processes. How do we embed a process? Just as you have a project management process, we could have an account growth process.
Harv:I love that. I love that. It just sounds so impactful to me, just recognizing that a lot of people on this path have just kind of graduated in it and haven't had the opportunity to learn those kind of, Well, just experiences or have somebody really frame that in an actionable way. So I think that's fantastic. So do you offer multiple training types as well? Can you tell us about that?
Jenny Plant:Yeah. I mean, I, I sit down with the client and decide where they're at currently and what
Harv:Okay.
Jenny Plant:So if there's a proper sort of diagnosis, there, there are three core programs that I offer,
Harv:Okay.
Jenny Plant:Which is my account accelerator, which is working with me for a year.
Harv:Okay.
Jenny Plant:I found that that they are for senior account manager above. Basically people who come and work with me in those three areas and take back the learnings to their business and implement them so that the business benefits. So I've got lots of client services directors, account directors, senior account managers who are charged with the forecast and they are responsible for implementing those processes. I have short courses, so Account Booster is a three day training for a group, and that's run by a couple of colleagues of mine. I also have an online program, Account Kickstarter, which I've just updated, so it's fresh and it's got all my new stuff. So, that's quite exciting. So if you don't want to be in a training environment, you want to self learn, you know, in self directed learning, then there's that. But there's other ways that I can work. I mean, I do a webinar where you might want, working with a very quite not famous, but brilliant agency. That's got lots of high profile accounts. They don't have a dedicated account management team, but they want all of their front facing client people, regardless of what their title is to be commercial and to be looking for growth opportunities.
Harv:Right.
Jenny Plant:So I offer like a webinar where I can give you all the principles, and then some follow up consultancy so that everyone's levels of awareness are raised around, you know, what could we do differently?
Harv:That that's really valuable as well. Cause everyone has that opportunity, if you're communicating with the client to kind of upsell, cross sell and that kind of thing. Is there any kind of trigger that you think people have when they're reaching out to you? In fact, you know, is, is there, is there something that's happened internally or do you think it's just, just being aware that you offer these programs and that light bulb moment happens?
Jenny Plant:I think it's either a challenge or an opportunity. So the challenge might be, you know, we are not, it might be a skill set thing. You know, they're observing their behaviors of their account managers and
Harv:Mm hmm.
Jenny Plant:we could be doing this better.
Harv:Yeah.
Jenny Plant:Or it could be, we're just not growing the accounts. We've got these fantastic relationships, but we're, we're kind of trying to fill our pipeline at the moment.
Harv:Mm hmm.
Jenny Plant:We're recording this in, you know, mid 2024, a lot of pipelines have stalled because
Harv:Yeah.
Jenny Plant:taking longer to approve. So a lot of agency owners are turning their attention to existing clients and thinking, you know, how can we add more value? How can we do more things for these clients and help them more? they're looking at that. So that's another reason that my account growth training appeals to them. But it's, it's probably
Harv:Excellent.
Jenny Plant:one of those couple of scenarios.
Harv:Mm hmm. Okay. Jenny, if anybody wants to learn more about you and your programs, where can they go look?
Jenny Plant:Yeah, they can contact me on LinkedIn, Jenny Plant,
Harv:Okay.
Jenny Plant:And just send me a message or accountmanagementskills.com.
Harv:Excellent. And your podcast as well. Lots of great interviews there and lots of learning opportunities.
Jenny Plant:Yeah. Creative Agency Account Manager Podcast, it's the podcast that I wish I'd had when I was an account exec. So I try to get a range of guests like you talking on different aspects of the agency business
Harv:Mm hmm.
Jenny Plant:To improve and to upskill the account management community.
Harv:Amazing. Excellent. Jenny, thank you so much for being here. Hopefully at some point we can have you back and go into more detail, into maybe one aspect of your training programs or something like that where we can explore that in a little bit more detail. But that's fantastic advice for today. So thank you so much.
Jenny Plant:Harv, thank you so much for inviting me. This has been fun.
Harv:I hope you agree that was a great conversation. It's an interesting conundrum. The hybrid account manager is super common. The role is not going away. And it's not easy to dismantle if that's the way you've staffed and structured your agency until now. Yet we can clearly see that the skills and the characteristics required for each side of that role are so very different. Like Jenny said, first and foremost, if it's working well, then there's no point in tinkering. But what do we do for recognizing some of the issues with this kind of hybrid role in our agencies? Well, we've got a few options. Starting with the most difficult, you could engage your HR team or your HR supplier and discuss how this kind of transition can be attempted. It's tricky. You're changing people's job descriptions and their job titles, so people might not be very happy. That being said, it's not impossible. It just needs to be done sensitively. Another option, you could consider starting to hire in more distinct roles going forward so that over time you're starting to create that new structure organically. For example, starting to hire PMs or producers that support that account managers. Or another great option, and it's the one that Jenny and I spent the most time talking about. Spending time thinking about each of your hybrid account managers, and understanding which skills they're stronger in. The sales and relationship, or the project management side of things. Based on that, invest in your team and in your business by engaging someone like Jenny to really skill up your team members that are lacking in the commercial aspect. And for those that have that down, but struggle more with delivering projects on budget, perhaps engaging someone to provide training on business finances, like Alfie, who we spoke to in a previous episode, so that they really understand how the over servicing has a negative impact on the business and support them in developing their PM skills. Better yet, get everyone that's in this kind of role better trained on both sides of the role so that they're both more commercially aware but also much more sensitive to the way a project should be delivered profitably. That's it for today's episode. Quick question, if you're enjoying the podcast, have you shared it with a friend or colleague? If not, this is your cue, please do so. And, have you subscribed to the Handbook Newsletter? This is written by myself and it goes out every other week, and I talk about my own experience with the most recent topic covered in the podcast, and share the key takeaways from the guest interview, so It's easy for you to remember what was discussed in case you want to action and implement any of those ideas at your own agency. You can sign up for the newsletter at scoro.com/podcast, scroll down on that page and you'll see the newsletter signup form. And don't forget to share your feedback or suggestions with me for the podcast, including any topics you want to see covered or people that you think should be on the show for an interview. You can DM me on LinkedIn. I'd love to hear from you. I'm at linkedin.com/in/harvnagra. So one more time, please share the podcast and spread the word, sign up for the newsletter and DM me your thoughts and feedback. That's it for me. I'll see you in the next episode. Thanks very much.