Harnessing Account Management for Agency Expansion Success with Jenny Plant

Mike (02:30.917)
Jenny, thanks ever so much for joining me on Hegel, the B2B sales for podcast.

Jenny (02:35.414)
Thank you so much for inviting me. I'm honoured.

Mike (02:37.797)
That's a pleasure. And how long have we known each other, Jenny? It must be three, four years now? Must be.

Jenny (02:43.49)
At least. I think we've been in the periphery and the networking circles, haven't we? But we only sort of started really connecting about three or four years ago, yeah.

Mike (02:51.717)
We did, exactly. And there's lots of overlapping touch points as well in the kind of people that we know and the kind of work that we do. So, Jenny, for the audience, just describe kind of who are you, kind of what do you do, and something unusual about yourself.

Jenny (03:06.19)
Okay. So I train agency account managers, how to grow existing business. I have been in, in an agency account management, most of my life. I started in the early nineties, but I also had a few years client side as a marketing manager in an airline. Um, and what people don't typically know about me, uh, something I don't talk about a lot when I left publicist life brands, where I was general manager, I

winning a contract with a biotech in Tel Aviv. And it was for a brand branding project with a campaign. So I started a micro agency, I pulled together virtually a team, and I worked on that contract. And it was, I could have if my life had gone slightly differently, I could have started my own agency at that point. So I loved it, it was really successful. So that's something I don't talk about a lot.

Mike (04:00.189)
Ah, very good. Very good, thank you. So let's talk about, we prepared a couple of questions in advance, obviously, as usual. So the theme for this podcast really is this is all about what happens after you've won the new client account. So the art and science of account growth for marketing agencies, which we know, and you know far more than I.

It's an ongoing problem for agencies often is how do you find brilliant account people that not only understand what the content is, but understand commercially how to grow the account. So in your view, agencies aren't capitalizing on the opportunity to grow their accounts. Cheaper, easier, more profitable, which puts obviously unnecessary pressure on the new biz pipeline and senior leadership team.

You want to just talk about what the opportunity is.

Jenny (04:59.374)
Okay, so I think your account management team are your hidden superpower to grow your business. And it's so under capitalized on. And, you know, Gartner did a really interesting study about why accounts aren't growing at the end of 2019. And one of the biggest things is the account manager is key to the growth engine.

But if they're either unwilling or unable to do it, then the whole engine fails. Now, in my experience, I've, and I've been doing this since 2016, full time training account managers and having done the job myself, there's rarely a lack of willingness to grow existing business. Um, obviously that, you know, there are some exceptions to that in terms of mindset, a little bit of reticence. And obviously if they're a bit disengaged with the agency culturally,

then no, but ability wise, they have the ability to, you know, cross sell, upsell, ask for referrals and be more proactive, but they're not able to do it. And I think like we, we spoke about before we started recording, having done this for so long and I train them on how to do it. It's not actually that it's that they don't have the time to be proactive enough.

Because as we know, you know, what does growth look like for an existing client? It means you coming up with additional thinking, additional ideas, um, additional, so that can create more, you know, help the client solve more of their problems. And it's that's easy for you because you've won the business. You've gone through all of that new business phase. Um, so.

But it takes time. So your account managers are prime position because they know your clients inside and out. They're closest to the business. They can spot the opportunities because you can train them into how to spot the opportunity. But it's then having the time to come back to the agency and say, hey, did you know that our client's still struggling with X, Y, and Z? Why don't we come up with some ideas and thoughts? Get the team together.

Jenny (07:20.042)
And then go back with some ideas proactively, but that bit, um, they can't do because, and this is going a bit deep too quickly, maybe, but, but actually, you know, agencies work often on a pricing model that doesn't allow that flexibility, so they're charging by the hour, so, um, or, you know, some agencies are doing output pricing. So they're, they're doing products and programs, which is slightly better because you've built in the profit from the.

Mike (07:29.081)
No, not at all. Carry on.

Jenny (07:49.39)
from the beginning or retainers, but even retainers sometimes go off track. So I think sometimes it's down to pricing. There's sometimes, if you set your account management team, a billable target to reach that's not generous enough. So it's too high. So you're asking, you're not giving them the permission to find that additional time to spot the opportunity and then come back and.

capitalize on the opportunity. And, and second of all, when they come back to the agency and say, right, you know, let's get our creative team together. Let's get our strategy team. Let's get the senior management involved and think about what this could look like when we go back to with this new idea, they're not available. So I've had account managers. In fact, the other day I had a brilliant agency and they do annual reports.

And then do, you know, specialization in sustainability and you know, it's very trendy and the agency is absolutely smashing it at the moment, their team, very engaged account management team. They're going out to talk to clients. They're spotting that currently that client isn't utilizing one of their other services. So for example, you know, we know that there's, they could do with some consultancy around sustainability. So.

But the account manager is saying, I know that the strategy team are so slammed that I can't even go to them and say, Hey, there's another opportunity because they're already busy. So what I'm saying is every agency out there has a huge opportunity that's being underutilized, which is to add additional value to your existing clients. However, we trip ourselves up.

for multiple reasons in how we're able to do that.

Mike (09:46.785)
So let's unpick a few things here. I get a lot of talking to my agencies to see if this resonates. I'll talk to an agency leader, founder, CEO, and we're talking about three different things. A head of client service, an account director, and a project manager. And it's often very blurred about who does what.

And, you know, account management can be seen as being what used to be seen as being many years ago as being the relationship only kind of like building. Uh, and they're not involved in client delivery, but then they're detached from the content. And so when they meet senior stakeholders, they don't know what's going on. And that therefore lacks credibility or their project managers who are very good at project managing, but are not, um, geared up mentally, uh, skillset wise.

to grow an account, they're just very good at delivering today's work. And then you get head of client service, which is a bit of a kind of blend of both in some ways. What's your experience with that? Because I think agencies really struggle with, especially agencies in the 10 to 50 range, employing an account director is really expensive. So when's the right time to formalize it? And when's the right time to maybe upskill some of your PMs? Or is that a bad approach?

Jenny (11:11.786)
No, I think it's a very good, very, very good point. And I've seen a pattern since the early nineties. Um, I suppose, no, in the last 10 years, I think agencies have been finally separating the role of account manager from project manager. And I would say the, the warning I would have, and they're two completely different skill sets. It's like the CEO CFO dynamic. The account manager is always looking for opportunity growth. They love dealing with the clients.

Mike (11:32.101)
Bye y'all.

Jenny (11:41.87)
coming up with new ideas, they're very commercially minded. The PM loves to get the details, follow the process, do the spreadsheet, make everything work. And, and, and you find, and actually David Baker has, has done disc profiling on all of this since 2008. And he's got over 30,000 profiles and he's seen that even the disc profile is different. So you're talking about two different beasts. So your point about

Mike (12:01.37)
Bye.

Jenny (12:10.094)
hiring an account director is expensive. Yes, it is. And also, if you get an account director who actually had a hybrid role of PM, AM during their career, you might find that you're expecting them to be more commercial, but they haven't been exercising that muscle because in previous agencies, they've had more of a project management role. They think they're good because actually in the industry, we train or...

you know, other people train account managers as if service delivery is account management. It's not, it's being commercially minded. It's looking at the opportunities. And that's why I say that my, my program is focused on adopting an entrepreneurial mindset because that's what it takes. And I tell you what, when you have these account managers and sometimes they're the least experienced, they become firecrackers. They just need the roadmap. They just need the permission.

Mike (12:45.521)
Right.

Jenny (13:09.706)
So that's the first thing. The thing about the lines being blurred again, you know, I have a racy. We all familiar with the racy model who's responsible, accountable, consulted and informed. And you can plot your client journey from the moment you get the client project through to the end of the project. You can plot that to define roles and responsibilities.

Mike (13:16.198)
Mm.

Jenny (13:39.018)
Those touch points, Mike, and I don't think the account manager is, should be, or is generally devoid from the project details. Why? Because they've orchestrated those touch points and I call them upstream and downstream touch points. So your account manager needs to be sitting with the client, planning their yearly activities, then running and leading the quarterly strategy sessions.

together with whoever needs to be there. Could it be a strategist, could be a creative, could be your tech team, whoever, with the project manager supporting. But during the weekly status calls, some of those, the account manager doesn't need to be, maybe the monthly reporting, the account manager's there. So there's this who's leading, who's supporting, but that communication continues throughout the journey, the client.

journey, but no one's ever in the dark and they shouldn't be. Because also the touch points are happening behind the scenes.

Mike (14:43.609)
And how do you...

So in terms of managing multiple accounts, so obviously if you're a big agency and let's say one of your accounts is Procter and Gamble, then you're probably a dedicated account director to P&G because it's so big. Most agencies that we know are probably not like that. They're in the mid tier. There might be like 10 to maybe 10 people up to a couple of thousand people. In that kind of environment where you've got multiple clients, do you think

account managers, account directors should be covering multiple accounts or should they only be focused on one account or how does that work?

Jenny (15:24.094)
Yeah, it's a great question. I think it's perfectly possible to work on multiple accounts. However, every account is slightly different. You know, we're not in the mass market model. We're not selling widgets to, you know, around the world. We are in the consulting model. We should have on average about 20 clients. Now, every client is going to come to you with a slightly different need.

and you're going to have varying degrees of service based on the contract. So could the account manager work across multiple accounts? Yes, of course. But if it's a P and G that is a completely immersive retainer model, then that's not possible. So it's down to both the size of the account and the nature of the work. And then there's also the demands of the client.

So one of the exercises that I do with my participants, my program is to categorize your clients, you know, who are the most, the growth potential clients that you want to nurture, i.e. have they got a strong pipeline of products coming through? Are they opening offices around the world? You know, does what you do suit where they are and what they need? Um, and also what's, what's their kind of spending with you? Do they have a healthy budget?

So if you plot those and say, okay, these are our platinum clients, then again, that's another layer of thinking when you're thinking about effort and account management time and focus, because you want to think, well, there's a potential commercial opportunity there, you know, we've got referral opportunities to other, maybe other brand teams, if you're dealing with one brand manager. So we will go a little bit further for them.

Mike (17:11.437)
Yep. Exactly.

Jenny (17:17.822)
because of the opportunity. So it will require the account manager to spend a bit more time. So when you're assessing, because this is a frequent question, is my account manager too overloaded? It's not a simple answer. I think you've got to be close enough to their business and their portfolio of clients to make a judgment call. I don't think it's just based on revenue alone.

Mike (17:43.409)
So talking about revenues, let's talk about benefits for a second. In agencies that you've seen where account management works really well, agencies that you've worked with, you've trained them, and they've embedded account management skills, what's the kind of benefit to the agency in terms of just commercially, approximately, how much growth do they tend to see organically? So within existing accounts, where they're growing accounts, as a kind of, there is no one rule. But as a broad indicator,

Are we talking an extra like 5%, 10% of growth? What do you think we're talking about?

Jenny (18:17.546)
least, at least Mike, okay. When you, okay. So this happens, the speed at which growth can happen is instantaneous, right? My training, I've had people from one training session, they've got a client meeting coming up and they are talking to their client that they've had the client for a couple of years and they start by saying something like,

You know, many of my other clients have been asking us about how, you know, key opinion leader meetings are going to be changing in the next couple of years. Um, and they've been asking us for ideas on, you know, what they can do next year. And all of a sudden the clients is prick up and they start leaning forward. Oh, you know, because they want to be on top of their game. They want to know what the trends are. So they start leaning and say, well, hang on a minute.

What else are you talking to your clients about? Right. So there's a little bit of FOMO going on. So I've got hundreds of examples like this, but one, one example, just to your point about how much revenue can it generate, um, I think their client was about 300,000 a year and during that one meeting, when that agency account manager sparked the conversation like that.

the client started leaning in and saying, tell me a bit more about what you're doing for your other clients. Because he had a bit of a FOMO all of a sudden. Also, he wanted to know about the trends in the key opinion leader space. We were talking about pharmaceutical healthcare marketing. And she said, well, we're doing this and we're doing this for client and we're doing that. And he said, I want a proposal for that. No, no, yeah. And put me down for, she walked away from that meeting to go back to the agency and write a proposal.

to the value of 150,000. Now I had that on video and there are so many other examples of that. So what's the potential for this? The potential is just infinite. It's like how long's a piece of string? If your client, clients are looking for you to help them solve their problems, right? At the end of the day, your job is to find out what those problems are and to come up with solutions.

Jenny (20:40.118)
how you can help. That's it. And we all kind of know that. It starts to get complicated, doesn't it? In the life of running an agency business where you're putting out fires and you're very reactive. It's this proactivity that we like.

Mike (20:50.385)
Exactly.

Mike (20:57.221)
So let's move on to the second question about misconceptions. Misconceptions about what it takes actually to grow an account. So do you want to talk about some myths and about kind of busting some of those myths?

Jenny (21:11.55)
I think the myths are that you can send your team to a training course and they will come back and be able to implement if you have them and if you haven't given them the time to do it. So the big myth is you have to have the internal support system in place and allow your, uh, give them the coaching and the support, but also the time to be proactive.

Mike (21:21.569)
Yes, I'd agree with that, yes.

Mike (21:40.177)
Yeah. And the coaching also, Jenny, I think something we share is like you, I do a lot of training, mine's around procurement insights and negotiation skills often. But the idea that the training is gonna unlock all this benefit on its own. I say to clients, training should be about 20, 30% of the intervention, you know, 80% comes after the training's been delivered.

Jenny (21:40.962)
That's the myth.

Mike (22:07.589)
And that's around coaching and support and time and feedback loops and peer-to-peer learning and all sorts of things.

Jenny (22:14.162)
Indeed, I absolutely 100% agree. And that's why this year, my account accelerator program is now a year long program. So they have the training, but they also have me in their corner. We've got a Slack group. They, we have Q and a calls, um, every fortnight. So it's a blended mix. And by that state, and we set KPIs from the beginning, from the beginning. So I can absolutely catch up with this.

internal team and their agency leader, as well as be their support. So I agree with you, Mike. I think, I think the days are over that you have a training session and you're done. It has to be that continuity piece. And if you don't invest for the whole year, for example, then someone in your team has to be responsible to be the go-to person, the one that's more experienced that they, the team feel supported with, that they can answer questions with.

Mike (22:52.71)
Yeah.

Mike (23:10.405)
So I think another kind of misconception to talk about maybe is the, oh, well, if I just give someone an extra day a week, they can just go off and start walking the corridors and will naturally see 20% growth in accounts. So why doesn't that work if you just do that?

Jenny (23:27.486)
Well, again, it's funny because sometimes you get an account manager who's actually a project manager and project managers, they don't care about really, they don't care to walk the proverbial halls. They're probably a little bit more reluctant to pick up the phone. Not project managers. Let me just broaden that out a little bit. So I've seen patterns and usually I can tell within five minutes of talking to an account manager, whether they have the profile that...

It finds it easier. So if you've got someone that's maybe come from client side and is now an account manager, they are not as, that they're not perhaps a service orientated. And also if you have a specialist who maybe has been really good at, you know, PPC or social, social media.

updates, but they aren't as proficient with, um, client relationships. You know, if you said, pick up the phone and speak to the client, they'd rather cut off their, their nose. You know, it's, you have to look at the character of the person because it's like everybody in life. If you end up in doing a job that you love, that you find easy, you know, I love talking to clients. That was the best part of my job.

But you put me in front of a spreadsheet and I feel really tired. But conversely, some people absolutely come into their own if they are in the weeds of, you know, down road, downloading the Google analytics, looking at patterns and on, and the way things work. But actually you ask them to go to a networking event and talk to people and they'd rather, you know, so.

Mike (24:57.245)
Hmm. Yeah.

Jenny (25:24.702)
It's finding the right kind of person, first of all, fundamentally, that finds that kind of thing quite easily, quite frankly, they just need a bit of technique, a bit of coaching, some methodologies, some starters for 10, how to spark the conversation, even the, you know, a draft script they can work to. So yes, it's not as easy as I'll give you a day. Also, Mike, let's, let's not, you know, ignore something that's quite

prevalent as well. If you've got maybe a frontline account manager that's not intrinsically motivated to grow an account, they, you know, by intrinsically motivated, I mean, maybe they want the recognition from you. Maybe they want promotion in their job. Maybe they want to advance their career in some way. So there's something else going on. But if you get someone conversely, that's a little bit disengaged.

they're just here to collect the paycheck, then they're not gonna go the extra mile. They're not gonna want to kind of put themselves out there a little bit. So you've got to look at the intrinsic motivators, I think.

Mike (26:36.829)
Interesting. So we touched on something earlier on as well, just before we get to the last question, which was, we've said quite a few times on this podcast and people have probably sat there saying, oh, you know, having a commercial mindset. Yeah, it's easy to wave your hands and say be more commercial, but what does it really mean? So in my experience, when I talk about people having a more commercial mindset, there's two or three key things. You know, one is around, well, do you have the ability...

the innate skills to price something. So can you give pricing options? Blair Enns is like, you know, three pricing options. Consulting firm has been doing that for a number of years. But do you understand how to price a piece of work? Do you understand how to negotiate a piece of work so that it's a balanced deal? Do you understand how to create value for a client? So it's all very well, Jenny, you know, we might say, oh, well, there's an extra 150,000 pounds worth of fees there, but unless you can demonstrate there's an extra million pound.

of value to the client, then the idea they're going to get that budget signed off is farcical. You need at least a five to one ratio of fee to benefit before someone's going to start taking notice. When I talk about commercial mindset, that's very much what I mean. So what's your experience of what does a commercial mindset look like in an account manager, account director?

Jenny (27:59.822)
I think a commercial mindset means having a client development strategy of which there are several elements. It's not just looking at mapping your current relationships to look at referral opportunities and strength of relationships and gaps and red flags, but it's also about understanding the value that you bring to your client and your offerings and what...

outcome, what business outcome each of your offerings ultimately has. And this might sound so basic to you, but the amount of account managers that come to my training, they don't really understand the broad depth and breadth of the services that they, their agency offer and what problems they solve. So they might have been familiar with a couple of the, the project, the types of services like say, for example,

Um, you're in the e-commerce space, you know, and you might know how to build a website, but what about driving traffic to the website because the agency also offers, um, paid social paid search SEO services, but they've only had experience with building websites, helping clients build websites. So what, how can agencies, I think the question is how can agencies develop that commercial mindset within their frontline account management team?

is doing a lot more internal training first of all, in what are we actually selling and what is the client buying? Because the client is buying business outcomes. How do I ladder down from what their business outcome is to what kind of services we offer and solutions? And I know that might sound really basic, but account managers sometimes they can't talk confidently about case studies.

that the agency has done in the past. So you can't really get off the starting blocks. So it's, it's the commercial mindset is that's step one in the commercial mind mindset journey is understanding what you're actually selling. And then it's what is the client business doing? You know, how much research have you done? Are you, you know, if it's a publicly listed company, are you following broadly what the CEO is, um, you know,

Mike (29:54.212)
Mm.

Jenny (30:23.826)
when they're addressing the shareholders and investors at the quarterly meetings, are you downloading the transcripts to seeing where the business is investing their money? What's the pipeline of new products? Where are they focusing their energy? I did an AI for account manager webinar the other day, and I was playing with some of the chat GBT tools, and there was a...

It's now not called code interpreter, but there was a function on chat GPT called code interpreter, which is you could, I had a client that was working for Diageo, which is a drinks manufacturer and they were working on just one brand and they were thinking about the possibility of being introduced to other brand managers for other brands. Okay. So the starting point is do a bit of research into, you know, your brand versus other brands. What's the potential and relative?

budget that the account, the client might have relative to your brand. So you can download, this is all available publicly that, you know, the PDF from the investor relations meetings, you know, and because it's full of data and multi pages and a lot of people don't have time, you could upload it using code interpreter in chat, GPT, and it will analyze it and pull out some graphs that will tell you very quickly. Actually.

Mike (31:29.721)
Yep.

Jenny (31:49.81)
our brand that one we've been working on for three years is in decline. But look at these other brands and they've just launched this other brand I didn't know about. So it gives you.

Mike (31:57.645)
Exactly, because they're public documents.

Jenny (32:04.878)
Mm-hmm.

Exactly. You're just, you're just manipulating the data to make it easier for you to interpret. It's not about sharing any secrets. This is all publicly available. And you know, that you can also go to websites like seeking alpha.com and, and look for the transcript. Um, you just put in your company name. If it's a PLC, obviously, I mean, for those in the UK, if you're an account manager in the UK, you can do the same with companies house. If you're dealing with limited companies, download their report and accounts.

Mike (32:16.274)
Correct.

Mike (32:33.998)
Exactly.

Jenny (32:36.534)
and there'll be a chairman statement or an owner. It will give you some indicator. It would also tell you when their year end is. So where you should be having that conversation with them about their yearly plan. This is what I'm talking about collectively when I say have a more commercial mindset.

Mike (32:46.869)
Exactly. Correct.

Mike (32:55.365)
So Jenny, this has been fantastic. We're at about 32 minutes. So I'm going to ask you to summarize. If you were talking to an agency leader, they're 30, 40 people, they're growing, but they've got some big accounts and they're not breaking through on their account growth strategies. They're acquiring new logos, so their new business is working, but they're not growing the accounts that they're acquiring. What are the three bits of advice you'd give them?

What are the top three things to start with to improve account growth?

Jenny (33:31.994)
I would apply the 80-20 rule. So focus.

your 80% of your effort in 20% of your client base. So that means categorize your clients. So you can see which ones do have the growth potential, focus your energies there, which might look practically like bringing the team together and having a, maybe an offsite 90 minute or zoom 90 minute brainstorming session where you say, where are we at with this client?

Mike (33:50.393)
Yep.

Jenny (34:07.446)
Who are the relationships we have? What do we know about where they are as a business and where they're going? How can we help them bridge that gap? Go, let's start from where we are. Because I talk, you know, my, my clients are at development agencies, design agencies, creative agencies. You're all offering something slightly different, but where is our, where is our ability to help them next? What do we know from other client buying patterns?

Mike (34:30.985)
Hmm

Jenny (34:37.054)
They're here, they've bought this, what do they tend typically buy next? And come up with some ideas proactively and go back to the client and say, look, typically our other clients like us to come proactively with ideas. We've spotted that you have this issue or we've been watching your competitors and they're doing this differently. You know, would you be interested in finding out what they're doing? Something, and that will spark the conversation that will lead to more opportunity.

Mike (35:04.554)
Very good. Excellent. Jenny, it's been a real pleasure. Where can people find out more about you?

Jenny (35:10.41)
You can connect with me on LinkedIn, Jenny Plant, or you can go to my website, acco and you can find out about my account accelerator program. And thank you so much. I've loved it. Thank you so much, Mike.

Mike (35:21.765)
Jenny, it's been brilliant. Thanks. Thanks ever so much for joining us. That's a pleasure.

Thanks Jenny. All right, let me just start recording.