WHAT DOES AN ACCOUNT DIRECTOR DO?
Published: Nov 07, 2023 - The Account Director manages relationships for sustained geographic and commercial growth, establishing and enhancing all key aspects including financials, culture, and quality control. Coordinates with major client contacts to refine processes and achieve strategic objectives, serving as the primary liaison for partnership direction. Oversees internal team development, ensuring high standards in creative and strategic outputs while actively engaging with management to address relationship and commercial challenges.
A Review of Professional Skills and Functions for Account Director
1. Account Director Duties
- Market Analysis: Regularly monitor sales trends, market dynamics and incorporate into existing account strategy and plan.
- Strategic Leadership: Lead account strategy and planning and seek opportunities for growth in the accounts.
- Deal Negotiation: Lead proposal development, negotiation, and commercial terms for large deals.
- Solution Integration: Bring together and create integrated opportunities with end-to-end solution delivery requirements.
- Best Practices Development: Develop and share best practices with teammates, facilitate internal discussions with key stakeholders, collaborate with other sales team members, contribute to a positive work environment and morale.
- Expertise Building: Develop and maintain outstanding product knowledge, build deep expertise in healthcare trends, enhance skills and abilities such as communication, presentation, negotiations, and teamwork.
- Sales Pipeline Management: Build and maintain a sales pipeline giving the foundation to exceed fiscal revenue targets.
- Territory Planning: Develop a territory plan with Smart Communications marketing and & business development groups.
- Sales Forecasting: Accurate forecasting using Salesforce.com.
- Account Management: Maintain Account plans for major opportunities and target accounts.
- Partnership Development: Build and maintain a set of productive partnerships.
- Team Management: Managing needs of team members to maximize learning, personal development, and productivity.
- Performance Management: Responsible for performance reviews, rotating staff, and providing compensation recommendations.
- Integrated Marketing Leadership: Lead cross-agency integrated marketing programs, by taking a leadership role in multi-agency briefs, working sessions with key partners, and overall campaign development.
- Financial Management: Responsible for account P&L, account growth, client satisfaction, and retention.
- Client Relations: Responsible for the development of client staff plans, statements of work, and compensation agreements.
- Competitive Analysis: Understanding business, industry, and competitive landscape.
- Client Acquisition: Identifying opportunities with existing clients and finding new clients that align with agency aspirations.
2. Account Director Details
- Performance Monitoring: Monitors the performance of projects and programs and supports key decisions and supporting operations processes through internal teams, clients, and suppliers.
- Client Compliance: Ensures that client mandates are successfully carried out within the timelines and scope of the contract.
- Information Dissemination: Provides clear and timely information to any internal resources involved in projects.
- Team Communication: Ensures clear, open, and respectful communication between teams.
- Conflict Resolution: Facilitates, when necessary, mutually beneficial resolutions to internal project challenges within and across various Cowan support teams.
- Commitment to Excellence: Committed to excellence, personal and professional growth, and continually expanding knowledge.
- Continuous Improvement: Looks for ways to do things better, based on a passion for the business and the client.
- Integrity and Accountability: Works with integrity on all projects and holds themself accountable for delivering on expectations.
- Feedback Utilization: Seeks feedback, listens, and acts on it.
- Industry Awareness: Stays current with industry news and the competitive environment.
- Culture Building: Assists in creating and building a collaborative culture that reinforces high levels of client/customer service, operational excellence, commitment, respect, and team spirit.
- Collaborative Work: Works collaboratively to ensure that work produced is consistently of the highest quality.
- Problem Solving: Constantly looks to solve problems that arise, identify efficiencies, and improve internal processes.
- Process Documentation: Ensures the account team documents, follows, updates, and maintains all processes.
- Process Standardization: Maintains processes to recognized industry standards and best practices.
- Business Development: Participate in new business opportunities, attend/participate in initial meetings, RFIs/RFPs, and pitches.
- Client Expansion: Promote Collinson services to the client actively focusing on opportunities for cross-selling and developing the client's work portfolio.
3. Account Director Responsibilities
- Relationship Building: Build strong relationships with clients, understand business areas, challenges, needs, and opportunities, whilst being able to lead and influence.
- Internal Collaboration: Develop positive, effective working relationships with key internal departments (Copy & Content, Campaign Delivery, Data & Tech / Marketing Automation team) and work together to implement campaigns and formulate plans.
- Strategic Alignment: Ensure alignment with the Collinson Intel Worldwide Team to deliver solutions that sync with worldwide priorities.
- Problem Solving: Proactively identify issues and work with peers to deliver strategies to overcome these, know when to engage with others for help and advice and who to involve.
- Data Analysis: Work with the Content Strategist to draw insights from results and post-campaign analysis to drive strategies and success for future campaigns.
- Financial Management: Budget and financial control to ensure projects run to agreed costs.
- Forecasting: Revenue and resource forecasting, delivery of profitable campaigns without write-offs.
- Technical Understanding: Develop understanding of Marketing Automation, including the approaches taken and techniques used by Collinson.
- Content Strategy: Understand content approach (including Content Bank), comms vehicles, automation tools and techniques, application of Data Science & Machine Learning.
- Leadership: Show consistent leadership, proactivity, tenacity, and drive to ensure deliver successfully, with tangible outputs and results.
- Business Acumen: Understand the full range of business capabilities, with the aim of being able to introduce innovation and take advantage of any new business opportunities that are identified.
- Team Support: Provide support to the wider team and Collinson as a whole.
- Team Management: Manage a direct team currently Account Executive.
- Cross-functional Leadership: Organize and influence a cross-functional team from other departments to ensure they deliver effectively against client goals.
- Role Modeling: Lead by example by demonstrating enthusiasm, proactivity, best practice, and critical thinking.
- Resource Management: Ensure resource capacity is in line with budgets and Scope of Work, flag appropriately with recommended solutions if issues are identified.
- Coaching: Coach and mentor direct report(s), take a keen interest in personal development, undertake regular appraisals, and implement objective setting.
- Onboarding: Take responsibility for the full onboarding of new team members (set intro meetings/inductions, provide context/knowledge of client business, ensure understanding & adherence to Collinson’s processes and procedures).
4. Account Director Accountabilities
- Relationship Management: Manage relationships with client senior managers and sponsors.
- Resource Allocation: Ensure team allocation aligns with the overall account delivery scope, escalate issues and impact to appropriate internal and client stakeholders.
- Performance Metrics Understanding: Establish a clear understanding of account KPIs.
- Strategic Planning: Contribute to the account planning process.
- Plan Execution: Manage the execution of account plans.
- Client Satisfaction: Responsible for client satisfaction by ensuring client needs are heard while actively engaging in solutions and forward-thinking strategies.
- Client Retention: Enables client retention by providing levels of service to actively maintain client business.
- Creative Problem Solving: Provides new and creative ways to approach solutions and is engaged at varying levels of the organization to facilitate those solutions.
- Process Adherence: Ensure team adherence to processes, identify opportunities for improvement.
- Issue Resolution: Partner with Client Partner to resolve issues with account-level considerations (quality, scope-creep, prioritization, budget, timeline, achievement of engagement objectives, risks to account retention).
- Team Coordination: Ensure commitment and delivery from cross-functional teams.
- Budget Management: Ensure costs are aligned to budgets/forecasts and manage through any cost overruns to get back to forecast.
- Financial Management: Ownership of forecasting and invoicing.
- Relationship Management: Manage relationships with client senior managers and sponsors.
- Sales Forecasting: Handle forecast, pipeline, and plan for achieving quarterly/annual quota.
- Sales Strategy: Drive Citrix’s solution portfolio into leading enterprise businesses.
- Team Communication: Provide regular communication with Sales and other teams to augment efforts and share support.
- Competitive Analysis: Maintain knowledge of competitors in accounts to strategically position Citrix solutions better.
5. Account Director Functions
- Relationship Management: Manage relationships in pursuit of long-term geographic and commercial growth
- Stakeholder Influence: Establish and positively influence all key relationship parameters: financial, cultural, QC
- Process Improvement: Work with key client contacts to improve and evolve working processes, helping deliver on client’s strategic objectives
- Client Communication: Be the senior point of contact for the client on the overall direction of the partnership
- Client Management & Consultancy: Perform client management & consultancy
- Client Engagement: Attend key client presentations, meetings, and social events
- Team Leadership: Lead and develop the team internally: skills, capabilities, succession planning, performance, and development levels
- Issue Resolution: Ensure issues raised by client are addressed promptly and effectively
- Internal Coordination: Engage the Superunion New York management team in regular dialogue around relationship and commercial issues, through the Business Review sessions
- Quality Assurance: Oversee creative/strategic development work to ensure presented work meets the highest possible standards. Challenge briefs and outputs constantly, as the internal champion for client work
- Financial Oversight: Work with Finance Director to monitor and improve commercial performance, lead and manage 3rd party engagements
- Resource Planning: Plan resource and staffing levels, to manage budget and ensure an accurate revenue forecast
- Debt Management: Contribute to efforts to resolve long-outstanding debts.
- Strategic Planning: Establish the full scope of opportunity and interpret client brief to develop approach
- Knowledge Management: Ensure the ongoing capture and codification of knowledge-based assets - case studies, news stories, images, content.
- Creative Partnership: Partner with the Creative Director for leadership and management of the team, particularly the Client Services members of the team.
- Community Building: Support and contribute to Client Services objectives and initiatives, work with other Client Directors to maintain a strong, collaborative, and supportive Client Services community.
- Talent Acquisition: Source and recruit Client Services talent for the team.