Empathy can lead to better decisions, yet it’s often underestimated in business.
So let’s walk in a client’s shoes for a few minutes!
Imagine you’re looking for video editing services. You found a nice, professional-looking company, got in touch with them, hopped on a call, and now anxiously wait for any updates on the commissioned piece.
And yet days pass, and there’s complete silence.
No updates, no messages, no calls. Nothing.
And while the video editing team might be working hard on the requested project, you have no idea what’s going on. Did they forget about you? Are there any delays? Is the team scrambling, having realized they bit more than they could chew? And most importantly, will you get your money’s worth?
Complete silence easily leads to imagining catastrophic scenarios.
That’s what happens when a company neglects proper communication. And unless you surprise your client with truly spectacular results, this treatment might leave a bad impression. Bad impressions, especially when accumulated, may result in losing your clients. And negative reviews… And… Ok, let’s not enumerate all of these. It’s enough to say that it’s potentially a total catastrophe for your business.
To avoid such black scenarios, or if you just want to guarantee client satisfaction, you could at least consider implementing professional agency account management.
What is Agency Account Management?
Agency account management is all about nurturing client relationships:
- making sure there’s a stable line of communication between the client and the internal team,
- keeping everyone on the same page, ensuring no one is unaware of what’s happening with the project,
- ensuring the project is delivered on time without exceeding the budget.
You can think of an account manager as your concierge — a person who welcomes you in a new place, makes sure you have everything you need to enjoy your stay, answers any questions, and orders new services on your behalf.
💡 Foundry reports that over 60% of B2B marketers consider Account-Based Marketing essential to achieving their marketing goals.
Why Agency Account Management Matters: 6 Perks
As previously mentioned, the biggest perk of an agency account management is continuous communication. But this umbrella term hides much more than just ensuring everyone knows what’s going on with the project.
1. Consistent Quality Control
First of all, being in constant touch with the client and delivering regular updates maximizes the chance for the project’s success. Thanks to that, you can spot any mistakes before it’s too late, avoid misunderstandings, and ensure desired quality.
2. Stable Feedback-Loop
In the same vein, you get regular feedback from the client, learning their likes and dislikes, as well as better understanding their taste, brand, and the general vision.
3. Expectation Management
It’s easy to overpromise and underdeliver. It’s even easier for your clients to have unrealistic expectations, either due to wild imagination or taking marketing slogans too literally. Either way, constant check-ins help reign those expectations in and prepare your clients for the end results; this way, there are no unpleasant surprises at the finish.
4. Fostering Trust & Increasing Client Retention
Stable communication that embraces both pleasantries and professionalism can go a long way of creating strong business relations, forming a foundation of respect and transparency. When clients feel heard and valued, they are more likely to remain loyal and recommend your services to others.
5. Improved Project Coordination
Regular client updates force the team to stay accountable and to plan their work accordingly, so that they always have something to show. Meeting deadlines, achieving milestones, and completing tasks on time will be more crucial than ever.
6. Prioritizing Client Communication Tasks
Last but not least, having a dedicated account manager ensures that client experience is prioritized and not buried under hundreds of other tasks, as it often happens. While everyone agrees that good client communication is important, it often gets neglected during crunch time. It also means that other team members don’t have to split their attention to answer client inquiries.
💡 Still not convinced? According to Zendesk CX Trends Report 2023, 60% of consumers have chosen one brand over another due to the level of expected service.
What Skills are Crucial in Agency Account Management?
The nature of agency account management may differ depending on the company’s size, type of projects, and industry, among others. For example, a bigger company might invest in a whole team with specialized roles, while startups would rather have one person with a wide scope of responsibilities. Cooperation with other departments can look very different from case to case, and the same goes for how well you need to understand a particular industry; but all in all, there are core, universal skills that are key to the role. Which ones? Let’s take a quick walkaround.
Personal Skills
Without a doubt, an account manager needs to have solid personal skills, making them approachable, trustworthy, and reliable. They need to make an impression of a client’s advocate, someone who’s on their side, and will protect their interests. Also, proper small talk can’t hurt.
Listening Skills
Clients need to feel like they’re being heard and valued, but it can’t be achieved when the company’s representatives talk too much about themselves. Active listening is an undervalued yet crucial interpersonal skill, necessary to better understand client’s goals and needs.
💡 According to McKinsey & Company’s research, adaptability (24%), coping with uncertainty (18%), and synthesizing messages (12%) are three skills that most increase the likelihood of employment in key positions in the future.
Empathy
The ability to see the situation from the client’s perspective is not only helpful in grasping their expectations, but also in navigating tricky situations. Compassion can go a long way in easing any tensions and finding compromises that could satisfy everyone.
Software Skills
Account managers hardly ever work with one client only; usually, there’s a whole fleet of them. Juggling so many cases without feeling lost or making mistakes is a great skill, even more valuable when it’s backed by an organized system that collects information automatically. Setting it all up though is also a handy skill!
50% of agile-driven project teams enhance their workflow with extra tools (State of Agile Report, 2022).
Team & Project Coordination
Juggling clients is one thing, but juggling projects? That’s another beast entirely. On top of being well-versed in the client’s goals and expectations, an account manager also has to know what’s going on across all the projects in order to make good calls.
Also, they oversee timelines, assign tasks, track progress, and clear roadblocks, making sure nothing slips through the cracks.
Conflict Resolution & Negotiations
Finally, an account manager has to be able to deal with difficult situations, where tempers are rising and conflicts brew. Acting as a mediator can then come in handy, but that requires a reputation of a reliable, unbiased person.
What are Key Agency Account Management Roles?
As previously mentioned, bigger companies might find it beneficial to invest in a whole account management team, made up of specialized, yet fairly similar roles.
1. Account Manager: The Long-Game Player
Account managers provide personalized support and strategic guidance, ensuring client satisfaction by becoming their first point of contact and a trusted partner in achieving their goals.
What Does an Account Manager Do?
| Responsibility | Why is it Important? |
|---|---|
| Client Relationship Management | Building trust is a long game. Account managers keep the relationship warm and genuinely helpful, with the goal of increasing the overall client lifetime value. |
| Point of Contact | Clients want one go-to person they can rely on — someone who knows what’s going on and will pick up the phone when things go sideways. |
| Strategic Planning | It’s not just about reacting to requests; good account managers help align client’s vision with business reality. |
| Problem-Solving | When something goes wrong, account managers are the ones putting out fires — calmly, quickly, and with a plan. Nerves of steel required! |
| Project Oversight | While micromanagement isn’t necessary, knowing all the moving parts is helpful. Clients feel safe when their account manager is on top of things. |
| Performance Reporting | Clients want real, tangible results. Sharing clear and insightful reports proves you’re on the right track. |
| Upselling & Cross-selling | Account managers are in the perfect position to suggest relevant solutions. Done right, it feels helpful — not salesy —and drives results. |
| Contract Management | Keeping tabs on terms, renewals, and compliance helps avoid surprises. It’s about protecting both the client and the company. |
| Client Onboarding | First impressions matter; a smooth onboarding process builds confidence and sets the tone for a successful partnership. |
| Feedback Collection | Listening to clients helps improve customized service offerings and services, as well as find out any issues early on. |
What is the Account Manager’s Average Salary in 2025?
Considering the scope of responsibilities and the finesse of the required soft skills, how much can an account manager expect to make per year?
- According to Glassdoor, an average base salary is $73,814,
- According to Indeed, an average base salary is $71,300,
- According to PayScale, an average base salary is $63,565.
2. Account Executive: The Deal Closer
While account managers are all about nurturing client relations, account executives focus on bringing in new clients and closing the deals.
What Does an Account Executive Do?
| Responsibility | Why it’s important |
|---|---|
| Lead Qualification | Identifying best opportunities is a core task of an account executive, putting in most of the effort to sway prospects with real potential. |
| Sales Presentations | Sales presentations are great tools in addressing client’s pain points and showing a clear, actionable plan on combating them. A pitch has the power to make or break it! |
| Proposal Creation | A proposal needs to prove that the company is the right fit for a specific use case; a good account executive would make an extremely strong case in favor of the partnership. |
| Negotiation | Sometimes, a compromise is necessary — an account executive needs to be able to find one, navigating between the client’s and the company’s best interests. |
| Pipeline Management | An account executive can’t let a good deal slip; but that requires keeping a close eye on all the proceedings, knowing when to take action and when to step back. |
| CRM Updates | While updating the CRM may seem like a small task, it can be grueling, especially if others have neglected it. An organized CRM, however, is key to identifying the best business opportunities. |
| Client Communication | Similarly to account managers, account executives also serve as a first point of contact in the early stages, addressing questions, doubts, and solving issues. |
| Feedback Collection | Why did this specific client gave the company a shot? Why did another turned the proposal down? That’s the most valuable info for both the sales and marketing teams. |
What is the Account Manager’s Average Salary in 2025?
Taking all these into account — pun intended — how much can an average account executive expect to make in a year?
- According to Glassdoor, an average base salary is $80,115,
- According to Indeed, an average base salary is $73,466,
- According to PayScale, an average base salary is $65,659.
3. Senior Account Manager: The Guiding Star
Senior account managers are usually responsible for handling the most complex or the most profitable client accounts on top of managing the account management team.
What Does a Senior Account Manager Do?
| Responsibility | Why it’s important |
|---|---|
| Client Relationship Management | Similarly to account managers, senior account managers are responsible for managing client accounts, but only those that require extra care and a unique approach. |
| High-level Strategic Planning | A senior account manager is responsible for creating a holistic and long-term strategy for client success that’s aligned with the company’s goals. |
| Team Leadership | Leading internal teams, setting personal and team goals, as well as providing guidance and giving feedback, are all important for efficient collaboration and high morale. |
| Complex Contract Negotiations & Renewals | Seniors also handle the most complex negotiations, navigating any changes or requirements with ease, and also using their authority to make decisions on the company’s behalf. |
| Problem Resolutions | When things get difficult, a senior account manager should step up to deal with them, be it client challenges or internal conflicts within the team. Great mediation skills pay off in such cases. |
| Performance Monitoring & Reporting | Another responsibility is preparing reports that prove to the company’s higher-ups that the account management team is doing its job and is doing it well, translating client loyalty into appropriate metrics. |
| Identifying New Opportunities | While building long-term client relationships, a senior account manager should be able to spot any areas for improvement to the current offering, or even propose new ones, knowing exactly what the client needs. |
| Feedback Collection | In a similar vein, a senior account manager needs a proactive approach to collecting feedback from the high-value clients, as well as he should monitor the market to notice new trends or incoming challenges. |
5 Agency Account Management Best Practices & Tips
Many client success stories don’t start with flashy wins, but with quiet decisions made behind the scenes. Here are five underrated agency account management moves that can make all the difference in long-term partnerships.
1. Don’t Serve Clients — Serve Their Best Interest
Clients choose your company because of your knowledge and expertise that they lack themselves. This means that their own ideas might be hit or miss — and it’s your job to make them realize that.
Backed by data and past client cases, show them what works in the industry and what’s the straight path towards failure. In other words, don’t be afraid to tell your clients “no!”.
2. Automation is Your Best Investment
Sure, it’s no big deal to enter your notes to Notion or copy-paste the responses of a filled-out client intake. But such tasks easily add up, stealing more and more of your time. Before you know it, more time is spent on administrative tasks than on the actual work, making you feel productive, but hardly pushing you closer to your goals.
At one point, investing in software that will automate the bulk of your work becomes a huge time-saver. Not to mention, how it reduces the risk of losing important information, collecting all data in one, organized space — like Zendo, the Client Portal for custom, productized, and subscription-based services.
3. Answer Questions & Dispel Doubts Before They Appear
Stay prepared; while no clients are the same, they often have the same questions or doubts. By preparing the right resources, be it a wiki, guide, or onboarding, you can lose less time on repetitive questions and focus on more pressing matters.
But to know what to prepare in such documentation, you need to stay sharp and listen carefully to what your clients say. Note down everything — you never know what comes in handy!
Tool Tip: Using self-service customer portal software may turn out to be a major time-saver, as it greatly streamlines communication with your clients. You may utilize it to distribute resources among your clients and share files, while they can make use of it by submitting requests, tracking progress, or making payments.
4. The Best Partnerships Start With Small Projects
All businesses dream of snatching impressive deals at the drop of a hat. But the more expensive the projects get, the more wary clients are — and that means that most people won’t invest too much too soon. Many clients prefer commissioning smaller projects first to get a feel of the service provider. Once they prove their worth, clients might follow up with something much more interesting.
This is a reminder that all clients should be treated with the utmost respect. Even if they represent a small business, who knows — in a few years they might come back as a force to be reckoned with. Never burn any bridges!
5. Client Success Isn’t Always in the Metrics
The thing is, client relationships are difficult to measure. While it’s tempting to depend on KPIs and other metrics, they can also become a crutch. They can show if you’re going in the right direction, but they will never show a full story — keep that in mind, especially when you have a full team under your wing!
Manage Agency Accounts in Zendo and Take Client Relationships to Next Level
Navigating an agency client relationship is tricky. You have to find the right balance between serving your client needs while delivering business results. It takes finesse, empathy, and great social skills to find the happy medium.
One thing to make it all easier is to use technology to at least help you with the administrative or repetitive tasks. If the chosen tool also comes with a Client Portal that can support your clientele, set up a solid communication channel and make them feel truly special, then all the better! Some of them — like Zendo — go the extra mile to support you in other ways: helping you sell and upsell your services, enriching your offer with subscriptions, and setting up automated workflows with Zapier integration.
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FAQ
How to Improve Agency Account Management?
The surest way of improving agency account management is to invest in a project management software or a Client Portal. No matter if you run a digital marketing service or a web development one, such tools can serve as a reliable source of truth, collecting all information about both clients and their projects. And best of all, clients access is also ensured, allowing them to log-in to their own portal, check on their orders, and chat with the team responsible for delivering results.
What are KPIs for Agency Account Management?
KPIs for agency account management usually include client retention, revenue growth from existing accounts, project profitability, NPS or client satisfaction, and how well timelines and scopes are managed. But don’t get lost too much into metrics — account and client management is all about maintaining strong relationships while keeping the business side healthy. Don’t let client reports cloud your judgement!
