Editor’s Note: This is the 5th installment of our Business Functions Series. Find the other issues here: Activities To Functions - AIC #178, Client Delivery Function - AIC #179, Admin Functions - AIC #180, Agency Cash Management - AIC #181

You've probably considered at some point putting a project manager in front of your client. After all, the project manager is good at handling details and keeping things on track, and that's what clients want, right?

NOPE

Clients want to know that somebody is looking out for them. They want to know that somebody is paying attention, somebody is being thoughtful, and somebody is finding a way to make their business better. As I wrote way back in AIC #29, the Account Manager is actually The Account Conductor.

The account manager is managing the cacophony of client needs, agency operations, and strategy into a beautiful symphony of growth and opportunity. But the ten bazillion dollar question is, “How the fuck do we get there?”

Often, if you are a founder doing selling, a client will say something that they think is really important, like, "So, you are going to be the one managing our account, right?" and often, in your first one, two, or five clients, the right answer will be “Yes, of course!”

And it needs to be that way at the very beginning because you are still trying to define the product of your agency: What does the client strategy look like?, What does the delivery workflow look like?, What does reporting look like?

You are trying to figure all this stuff out, and the very best way to do that is to fucking do it yourself. but somewhere around client number five, it's all too much. You can't do it anymore. You cannot be the conductor that creates beautiful music from client needs, staff needs, agency growth needs, delivery problems, finance and admin, and all the other stuff that you have to do as a founder. Immediately, you think, "I know I will hand account management over to a media buyer or keyword researcher or graphic designer or somebody."

So you toss all of that responsibility onto someone's lap and then spend the rest of the day worrying that they have fucked up a client call. And they have, almost certainly. Immediately, you hop on your white steed, ride into the next account call, and save the day. You, my friend, feel like a hero.

You’ve fallen into a classic trap of investing your time in fulfilling the activities that you've been contracted to do. I'm sure in the last couple of issues I have mentioned that you are the chief executive officer, not the chief execution officer or the chief doing officer or the chief make-it-work officer or anything else. You have to consistently remember that your job is not to do the stuff that your agency does. Your job is to run the fucking agency. Let's jump in and figure out how we turn this account conductor role into something that is real, tangible, and that you can manage this business function really well.

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The idea of a composer is exactly the right one. The composer creates the world through the music that they write. They evoke emotions. They create musical logic. They create tension and relief. They help bring insight, and they translate specific experiences into a universal understanding.

In order to create an Account Management unction you have to write the freaking symphony. This is a through line that is true amongst all business functions - each business function needs a definition of good, and that definition comes from the symphony that you write.

Here are the elements of your symphony (in no specific order):

Every one of those elements exists somewhere right now. Most of them exist in your (or somebody’s) head.

That is the actual problem. Back in AIC #178 I said the reason you can’t hand off a function is that you have trapped all the context about it inside your own head.

Account management is that trap at it’s worst, because context doesn’t easily fit in a process doc or a checklist. It sits in the conversational history with that client, the thing their CMO said on a call back in March, and dating back to when they were a prospect rather than a client.

Your job is to write down what good looks like for every element on that list, so that somebody who is not you can pick it up and play it. YOU ARE CREATING THE STANDARD

If you can’t answer those in writing, or bring an example that can be systematized and structured, you don’t have an account management function. You have you, & some very nice people who send emails with links to reports inside.

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Let's go back to the moment you rode in and saved the call.

It worked! You got on the call, you smoothed it over, the client relaxed, and the account stayed. You were right, and you were the only person who could have fixed it that day.

And, FYI, you just trained your client (and your account manager) to do something that you REALLY don’t want.

This is what happens next, every single fucking time:

I call this the Escalation Ratchet, because a ratchet only turns one direction. There's no version of this where the client wakes up next month or quarterand decides they'd rather deal with your account manager after all.

In AIC #179 I told you about the five words that kill your growth: "NEVER MIND, I'LL DO IT." This is the client-facing version, and it's worse.

When you take over a deliverable, it only really screws up your team workflow and puts more stuff on your plate. BUT, when you take over a relationship, you have disintermediated your own agency and become a contractor for your client. (And you showed your team that you don't really trust them to do hard and important stuff, either…)

In AIC #180, I told you a story about poking my head into an ops meeting & I sucked all the oxygen out of the room. That was bad, but I could fix it by apologizing and remembering not to do it again. But once you train your client to think that they get better results by dealing with you and you train your team that you are willing to push them aside, that genie isn't going back in the bottle. You can't really undo that…

If your account manager is the conductor, what are they actually conducting? They are conducting the score that you wrote - and almost all agency scores have four movements:

By the way, that last one is hard…learning to say no to clients, learning to light a fire under your own team, and to think about what’s best for the client is a tall order.

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Last issue I said somebody on the account management team needs to be tracking what's actually in the contracted scope.

Over-servicing never feels like a mistake while it's happening. It feels like being good at your job. The client is great, the work is going well, and throwing in another couple of hours is the generous, obvious, decent human thing to do.

Then you look up and your delivery bucket is sitting at 68% instead of the 40-55% we talked about in AIC #181, and that prepaid profit you were so disciplined about is gone. Nobody screwed up, really… but the nice people that work with you were nice enough to give the nice people on the client side more than they paid for….

Run the math from last issue against your own accounts. If a unit of work is priced at 30 minutes and it actually takes 45, and your client bought 100 units, you just gave away half the work for free. Nobody chose that. It happened because nobody was watching the scope.

While we're in here, let me clean up something from AIC #29, because a few of you are sharp enough to have caught it. In that issue I was pretty pleased about AI shoving agencies off time-and-materials billing. Last issue I told you to have your team track their time for a week every other month. Those two things aren't in conflict, but I never spelled out exactly why:

Your pricing power is based on the value you deliver. Your margin is a function of time.

Run the Kilroy Matrix against your account management list. It gets brutal in a hurry.

Same uncomfortable RACI MATRIX conclusion as last issue: You are accountable for the success of the relationship, BUT you should be responsible for damn near none of the day to day engagement.

Number four requires enormous restraint, but it is the essential exercise of management.

Two functions are left, sales and marketing. Those are going to be different from everything we've covered so far, because they're the two you're actually supposed to keep, at least for a while. That should be a fun couple of issues.

An orchestra doesn't need the composer in the room to play the piece beautifully. It needs the piece to be written.

The difference between owning an agency and owning a job isn't revenue. It's whether your client asks for you, or asks for your team.