Your account managers are what keeps your agency going and growing, they manage client relationships and grow their businesses. Getting the most out and the best out of your staff is an ongoing process that you can help to facilitate. Think about it, are your account managers spending time on things that could be better managed elsewhere? Are they making work, instead of focusing on other areas where agency growth can happen? Or are they failing to meet delivery dates or going over project scope?
Here are a few ideas you can use to free up time for your account managers to help your digital agency thrive.
Ongoing accounts audits - time tracking tools
Time tracking, it’s a great concept, yet rarely followed through with. Time tracking is a necessary evil for agencies, the bottom line is your managers are working off billable hours and monthly retainers and you need to track hours to ensure that your clients accounts remain profitable for your business. You can help your account managers stick to time tracking procedures by providing them with the right tools. This could be time tracking apps or if your account managers find it easier than a simple excel spreadsheet will do. Find what works for them and encourage them to stick to it. This is also an exceptional tool for account auditing and work tracking. You can pinpoint what tasks are taking the most time from your managers and then shift accordingly.
Clearly Define Project Roles
Before your account manager takes on a new project, the scope of work involved in the project should be outlined. Take a look at the account and the tasks breakdowns and have your account managers assign those accordingly. Ideally, your account manager should handle any tasks that they specialize in, when you start adding other tasks like design, coding or copywriting (dependent on your offices specialties/services) then your account manager starts to get bogged down and the amount of time they’re spending on one account grows.
Find a outsourced development and design partner
As a marketing agency you handle many different moving parts, that could mean SEO, strategy, copy writing, PPC and social spending, social media, website design and development. But your account managers should not be handling all of those moving parts. Think about it, there is no one whose strengths lies in all of those productions outlets. Offering a wide variety of services is necessary, but housing the talent to complete that work on a full-time basis isn’t always financially smart or necessary. If your core service is inbound marketing and that’s where the bulk of your business lies, do you need a developer on staff? What we’re getting at is, there is a benefit to staffing for your core services and then outsourcing to a design or development partner to handle the rest. You focus on strategy and they bring your vision to life. It helps to increase project output and removes added stresses from your account managers.
These are just a couple of ideas to help you to give your staff more breathing room. When you remove the added stresses and find transparency in the work they are handling, they are more equipped to succeed.
