A good account manager should be your advocate. They are a representation of you to your partner and should be making sure that all of your needs have been met. They should understand fully understand your business challenges and be proactive about offering the right solutions for any problems you are experiencing. They should not be upselling you on every single item they have available, but rather finding the ideal solution to help you meet your goals.
Your account manager should be helping you build on a foundation of trust by providing personal touches and making you feel confident that they are really “in it for you.” Here are 6 things that you should look for in your account manager:
- Master Listening Skills
An account manager should listen and understand what your current projects are and help you make the end goal you have in mind a reality. They can only achieve that if they truly understand what success means to you – hence, “Master Listening Skills.”
- Project Management Skills
You need someone to hold your partner accountable and keep your project on track. Where you are not there to push your tasks, agenda, and needs, your account manager should be the on checking in on your projects and ensuring all deadlines are kept. They should be reaching out to you frequently so that you always know what is going on and where your project is at. They can help you track deadlines and offer solutions to any foreseeable roadblocks.
- Advanced Advocacy Skills
You need someone to stand up for you and ensure that your concerns are heard, your questions are answered, and your feedback is accounted for. They act as an extension of your team to facilitate communication when problems arise. When something goes wrong, business needs and communication demands can take you away from focusing on and solving the problem. Your Account Manager should drive communication with the key people at our company and facilitate communication with your company about the status of the issue.
- Reliability
Your account manager is your escalation point of contact for all your support issues. Having one person to call in a crisis frees you up to manage the technical problem on site. The account manager’s job is to makes sure the right resources are engaged to quickly solve your issues.
- Frequent Follow-Up
A good account manager sees your projects through to the very end. They follow up with you after every single project or major task to ensure that the results are what you are looking for. They take the time to review and manage your overall satisfaction with your solution. On top of that, they take your feedback to heart and use it to help your business succeed.
- An Integral Part of Your Team
After you’ve established trust and have been working with your account manager for a while, they should begin to understand the ins and outs of your company and be able to anticipate what kind of support you need or how you like to operate your interactions. This way, they can truly recommend the best fit for additional services to speed your solutions’ return on investment (ROI).
If you would like more tips about what your account manager should be providing you, contact us today! Or, if you feel like I’ve missed anything, please feel free to comment below. I’d love to hear your thoughts on what makes a good account manager for a solutions company.