From Order Taker to Leader: Drive Client Success with Proactive Management
In a 1:1, I was asking the account leader standard questions to understand the status of a client projects: how things were going in their mind, how have we been creating opportunities to present to the client to drive success…
X: “That’s not my job...”
Me: “It’s not your job?”
X: “Making strategy and ‘upselling’ is something the sales team does. I just follow requests from the client…”
I was floored.
Here was a senior leader in the agency that was OK with staying in the status quo of simply following direction from the client.
Phrases like, “It’s underperforming but that’s what they said to do *shrug*” turned out to be a common mentality.
This experience and a few others like it led me to the premise that account leaders (AMs) and project managers (PMs) in agencies must stop simply following direction and start proactively leading. Become the driving force to guide clients to success. They hired us to provide that value.
Of course, there are lines within a partnership for scope and you need to have scope management (guidance and communication around what is included in the project) to mitigate scope creep, but this line of thinking is a red flag and is incredibly inefficient. There’s also an issue of company culture that’s let this line of thinking develop, but that’s for another post...
I’m not saying AMs and PMs should stop taking guidance from their stakeholders, but a growth mindset shift needs to happen. Instead of simply doing what your told and only giving the client what they ask for, account leaders and PMs need to ‘super serve’ and proactively level up.
Account leaders and PMs have much more power in the relationship than realized with the client because they should have a full picture of what’s happening with their project and experience under their belt to be able to develop an informed point of view.
Instead of being an order taker that assumes no control over the project AMs and PMs need to:
do continuous discovery during the project lifesycle to mine new data and insights from the client
challenge and communicate with clients if they don’t agree with requests and suggest changes based on supporting data for what’s best for the organization/initiative based on their experience
continuously review and optimize performance of changes from lessons learned
communicate, again and again…while maintaining the relationship
Changing this current mindset state is difficult but clients will never increase their scope of work, recommend your team to their peers, or think of you more than a ‘vendor’, if AMs and PMs don’t embrace a growth mindset and make the choices to take charge. Further, outside of their own project’s growth, the organizations reputation is put at risk too.
In addition to this one encounter, I have seen a few teams receive feedback from clients who’ve expressed frustration that their AMs or PMs aren’t more strategic or proactive and just take orders. These stories are the inspiration for exploring this issue in this post.
Experienced account and project leaders should take this feedback and give themselves the permission to embrace their business knowledge. Step up as a true project leader and trusted advisor for clients and stakeholders. Do this with confidence and authority and it will drive bottom-up organizational change too.