One of the biggest issues (well probably the biggest issue) most agencies have is over servicing their clients. Justification for this is often because they fear losing the account if they don’t provide an excellent service. However what they don’t realise is that in the end the client just expects this is level of service all the time and it becomes very difficult to then start charging at a later date.
Much of the problem stems from expecting account teams to have the negotiation skills, courage, confidence or experience to look the client in the eye and say ‘no that’s not part of standard service, you will need to pay extra for it’.
Following on from coaching I currently do with leadership teams, I’m now running more and more workshops with Account Teams focusing on this topic of being a great account manager and also recognising upsell opportunities. We all know and understand that it’s easier to generate more business from existing clients than win new clients yet how many companies really focus on equipping their account teams to do this?
Its somthing I love to do and really feel at the end of the day ‘I have made a difference’ which is one of the drivers I have for doing what I do.
I received some great feedback for a past workshop I ran for one of my clients, Southerly Communications (which scored me on average 9.5/10). Here is some of the feedback I received:
“Rob is a pretty awesome coach. He can take simple everyday experiences and turn them into the most profound lessons.”
“I thought Rob was really good – he gave us a lot of real life examples, which helped him to explain different scenarios.”
“Rob seemed very experienced and had a lot of life skills that he could bring to the training. He was also easy to speak to and this made sharing our thoughts easier to do.”
“Should Southerly run or attend this training/event again? 10000% YES!”
“Rob is very engaging and credible. It’s always good to have an exercise or two, which we did, and to use practical examples.”
I don’t often ‘blow my own trumpet’ but thought I would share some feedback here!
So how do you and your team tackle this challenge? Let me know.