Account People Are Responsible For Solving Problems With Their Clients

The one thing that I hear from every agency person who has gone to the corporate side is that they finally understand what clients do, how they spend their time and the priorities that take them away from agencies. And they all also say that their client side experience puts the issues that agency people have into complete perspective. (I actually hear the same thing from clients who go to agencies – before joining an agency they had no idea how complicated the relationship is).

As I have previously written, agencies don’t like to hire clients (and vice versa).  It is a terrible mistake because every agency could use the perspective which client-side experience can bring.

There are many consultants and consulting companies who have made a fine living by lecturing senior agency management on the issue of agency-client relations and how to get along better, but they never seem to actually resolve the problem.  The reason they cannot solve this issue is because disliking and distrust of clients are endemic to the business on both sides.

Clients resent agencies pushing for their work; clients don’t think agencies understand their business.  Clients think their agencies are too expensive, especially when it comes to production. But there are other areas as well.  Agencies can’t understand why they don’t get better direction; agencies aren’t allowed to know their clients’ business. Corporate procurement has squeezed agencies to the point where the relationship is constantly strained and account people are merely suppliers, not partners.

A lot of the enmity is internally generated on both sides of the business.  Dealing with each other can be frustrating.  Nevertheless, I put responsibility for handling this squarely in the hands of account people. Good account people should learn enough about their clients to not only know about the client’s business, but to understand the ins and outs of the client’s culture in order to put their business in perspective and explain to their agencies what has happened and why it occurred.

This means that account people need to be well enough trained nd familiar enough with their clients to know what will sell and not sell; by no means should any account person prevent good, on-strategy creative from being presented. And once bought by the client, their job is to keep it sold.  

Their job is to keep creative, media and planners enthusiastic and excited.

When I was a senior account person, I would not allow the account people to badmouth their clients to others in the agency. I told them that they could come in to my office and bitch and moan to me all they wanted, but when they discussed their client issues with others in the agency they only succeed in destroying enthusiasm for working on the account.  Some account people mistakenly believe that by speaking ill of their clients that they will strengthen and build their relationships with others in the agency – especially creative people.  Unfortunately, the opposite is true.

In today’s environment, agencies do not spend enough time at the client.  When ad agencies don’t spend enough social and getting-to-know-you time with their clients, they cannot learn the subtleties and nuances of their client’s jobs and their businesses.  Clients are partially to blame for this issue because their procurement people have cut agency compensation to the bone which discourages this kind of quality time. Nevertheless, learning the client’s business is the essential job of account people so that information can be translated back to the rest of the agency. 

Of course, there are some bad clients, but the only way that agencies can handle them is by trying to understand what makes them bad and attempting to deal with the issues in a positive way.  Mostly, I found that bad clients are clients agencies don’t spend enough time with.

Even good clients occasionally need to be hand-held.  It is part of the job.