Knowing Me, Knowing You
The Secrets of Successful Client Relations

Report on an NMK seminar in May 2002.

Speakers: Jo Weatherall, Frank! Communication Solutions; Shelley Boden, Enable; Gordon Plant; Anne Davis, Euro RSCG Wnek Gosper

This evening seminar explored some of the issues around account management in digital media. It was chaired and introduced by Jo Weatherall, who began her talk with a quote from an agency chief executive who once told her �We don�t need account managers, because most of our projects are one-offs�! For Jo, it is this kind of attitude, typical in many new media companies, which helps to explain why so many interactive projects are one-offs, and new media agencies have struggled to build up the kinds of large, long-term accounts commonly found in the advertising industry.

Jo gave a brief outline of account management in new media, based on some private research she had undertaken. According to her findings, 72% of agencies were selected via a pitch process, and 15% of clients took agencies with them when they changed companies � emphasising the importance of maintaining strong client relations. Disappointingly, 62% of clients reported that agencies �very rarely� came to them with innovative ideas, and only 50% of clients had any form of appraisal with their agencies.

Based on her findings of what clients liked and disliked about working with new media agencies, Jo gave the audience her top ten tips for account managers:

1. Know your client: learn as much as possible about your client�s objectives, business practices and working culture.
2. Add value over and above your job role: where possible, always be looking to give more than is simply required � the extra effort is genuinely appreciated.
3. Empathise with your client and their situation � be supportive if they themselves are having difficulties in their organisation.
4. The devil is in the detail: make sure that contracts and processes are all tight, so future disagreements and uncertainties do not arise.
5. Share knowledge � educate and inform the client, and encourage them to learn as much as possible about interactive media, rather than hoping to keep them ignorant and dependent.
6. Don�t make the client feel uncomfortable with the technology. Never try to blind with science � in meetings, the account manager should be prepared to ask technical teams the kinds of obvious questions that the client may be too embarrassed to ask.
7. Don�t waste people�s time: keep the client informed without swamping them with information.
8. Be available � make sure the client can easily contact you, and always has up-to-date contact details for you.
9. Look after the budget � make sure that you never get in the situation where you have to ask the client for more money.
10. Be honest, proactive, responsive, resilient, interested and understanding.

Following Jo�s outline, the first speaker was Shelley Boden, an experienced account manager with a number of interactive agencies who has recently established her own consultancy, Enable. For Shelley, the recent downturn and increased competition for work has meant that account management has become a key source of competitive advantage among agencies. In particular, account managers can play a vital role in getting clients, keeping clients and growing clients, and Shelley summarised these different roles:

Getting Clients: it is often the account manager�s responsibility to put together the right team for a prospective client. This involves establishing roles and responsibilities from an early stage, and ensuring the team is appropriate and enthused. It also means doing your homework, and finding out as much as possible about the brand and business case of the client, so that you are in a strong position to prove your understanding and capacity to provide a return on investment.

Keeping Clients: Shelley stressed the importance of �doing the detective work� � that is, analysing your client, at both the level of the individual and business. Try to find out your client�s allies and rivals within the business, the internal politics and hidden agendas. Make sure you stay informed, but impartial, and try to ally yourself with those �rising stars� in the company who will be the decision-makers of the future. At the same time, make sure you do the research on your client�s core business: its strategy, competitors, objectives and industry.

When it comes to maintaining healthy client relations, the account manager should always be looking to educate the client, to share knowledge and trust. Within your own agency, you should look to be your client�s representative � protecting their interests and brand wherever possible. Accompanying this, the account manager needs to ensure that communication protocols and project processes are as clear and rigorous as possible, with as little scope for ambiguity and disagreement as possible.

Growing Clients: Assuming the initial project is completed successfully, it is important that as many within your client�s business as possible know about it, and that post-project reviews and ideas spread effectively through the organisation. Shelley suggested seminars, steering groups and de-briefings as a good way of ensuring that your expertise and value is more widely understood and appreciated. Grow your list of contacts within the organisation, and try to maintain good business and social relations, even when there is no current project directly being worked on.

In contrast to Shelley, Gordon Plant discussed the importance of the end-user, rather than the client, in ensuring that accounts are successful and long lasting. Keep clients by keeping users is his mantra, and although not an account manager himself, Gordon�s extensive experience working on interactive projects had given him some valuable insights into how an agency-client relationship can work, and how it can come unstuck. In particular, Gordon gave the following observations:

• Clients and users often have conflicting requirements. While in the short term, meeting the client�s requirements will appear to determine the success or failure of an interactive project, in the longer term it is the reactions of users which will ultimately determine the project�s success, and the satisfaction of the client.
• Clients may well have limited knowledge or even fallacious beliefs about user wants and needs, and without this sound understand of their users, it can be difficult for the account manager to convince clients that what they are trying to do is right.
• Without a user-focused criteria for evaluating success, clients tend to focus on more immediate concerns, such as visual appearance, rather than user satisfaction and usability issues.

Under these conditions, account managers can easily find themselves stuck in different traps, all of which can lead to unsuccessful interactive products and difficulties in the long-term agency-client relationship. Gordon outlined what he saw as these �classic traps� of account management:

• Playing Piggy in the Middle: The account manager gets stuck between the big expectations and unrealistic demands of the client, and the technical constraints and limited resources of the project development team.
• Making promises that your tram can�t meet: in an effort to please the client and keep short-term relations good, the account manager ends up agreeing to ideas and modifications that the team are unable to deliver.
• Over-reliance on the client�s reactions: the relationship becomes dependent on how much the client likes the work, rather than the end-user who will actually determine the success of the project.
• When, in the longer term, the project fails to satisfy users, the client (no matter how much they liked the work at the time or got on well with the account manager), will invariably start looking for another agency.

Gordon suggested that these traps can best be avoided by establishing a close relationship with both the client and the user at the start of the project. Observing, understanding and learning from users is an extremely cost-effective way of adding value to the client and creating an interactive product that really delivers user satisfaction. In the early stages, before production has begun, this can be achieved by extensive use of reference sites and paper prototypes. As the product begins to take shape, the account manager needs to ensure that there are numerous opportunities for user observation, and a shared understanding between the client and the production team of realistic opportunities and constraints in the development process.

The final presentation was by Anne Davis, who leads a 30-strong interactive team at the advertising agency, Euro RSCG. For Anne, an account manager had to have three key skills requirements:

1. The expertise to interpret what the client needs
2. The knowledge and communication skills to translate these needs for your team
3. The management skills to motivate your team and create an atmosphere of trust with the client

Anne described the position as an agency�s shop window � it is through the account manager that everything about the agency and the managing of the project is seen. This means that the account manager must be permanently unsatisfied with the work being done, and always looking to improve the client�s experience and satisfaction levels. This should be accompanied by a rigorous attention to detail, with total command over a project, including its documentation, schedule and budget.

Alongside these strong management skills, however, the account manager also had to be, in the words of David Ogilvy, �a contributor� � someone that had a deep understanding and knowledge of the client�s brand, business, organisation, culture and competitors, and is always looking to add value to the client. When this comes to new media projects, Anne stressed that account managers should be learning about digital media production, and keep abreast of the creative and technical development processes. For Anne, it isn�t enough simply to communicate information and sign-off deliverables � the account manager has to take an active role in ensuring that appropriate, high quality work is being done on the client�s behalf.

Presentations

View the speakers' powerpoint presentations:

• Jo Weatherall
• Shelley Boden
• Gordon Plant
• Ann Davis

This event is presented in association with Business Link for London: www.bl4london.com

If you would like to take a look at the original event click here.