AE-SP

Want your agency to be profitable? It’s all up to your AEs.

Are you Confident They're Ready?

Our AE boot camp turns order takers into business builders.

We guarantee it.

Our AE boot camp turns order takers into business builders.

We guarantee it.

Dear Agency Owner –

Whether your shop is 5 people or 500 people, at some point you have to hand your clients (and the fate of your agency) to an account executive who is charged with:

Understanding your client’s business
Being seen as a business thinking partner
Earning the client’s trust and confidence
Translating the client’s needs/goals to your internal team
Managing the client’s budget so you deliver what you promised on time and on budget
Being the agency’s cheerleader – keeping the team motivated and encouraged
Growing your existing clients by at least 10% annually
Keeping their skills and knowledge fresh and sharp

Oh yeah….and while they are juggling all of that – they need to make your agency money.

There is no role inside your agency that has a greater influence on your company’s financial future than an AE. They can literally make or break you. Unfortunately, no college course teaches students how to do this job well. They come to your shop without a clue.

Fortunately – they can be taught. That’s what our live AE boot camps have been doing since the late 90s and we continue today. As active agency owners – we’ve developed and evolved the curriculum to be pragmatic, realistic and born from decades of agency experience.

We’ve taken that live workshop and developed this online course so those of you who live/work outside the US or those of you who can’t afford to have your AE out of the office for a couple days can now get them the training they need and you need them to have.

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"I don't know how you did it, but the two people who returned from your advertising agency account executive training are not the same two people I sent. They’re ready to take on the world. Both have delivered incredible results in the last few weeks, getting stalled clients off the dime and bringing new revenue into the agency. Thank you!”

~ Chuck Porter

Most AEs know how to take and fill the order. They do not know how to make you money and grow your business.

If your agency is like most, you practice the baptism by fire training program. I know how it goes because I’ve owned by agency for over 20 years and this is how it used to work in my shop. We’d wait too long to hire an AE and by the time we found one that was a decent hire – we were desperate. So they’d show up for the first day of work and our training consisted of “here’s your desk, here’s your email password. Oh, by the way, you have a client meeting in 45 minutes.”

And they were off to the races. And they never got properly trained.

Odds are, we didn’t set clear expectations and without a doubt, they were so busy doing the job that they never learned how to actually be good at the job. Being an account manager translated into being an order taker. Being an AE became about checking things off a To Do list, not growing your client’s business because you understood their annual goals and metrics.

Eventually the AE, because they don’t know another way to measure their success, becomes a people pleaser. They say “yes” to every client request, no matter how unreasonable or how unprofitable. And then they have to cajole your internal team to help them keep the promise they made. They’re running from fire to fire because no one taught them how to manage the client’s expectations.

Scope creep burns through profit and all too often -- you’re upside down on a job with no recourse but to finish the work for free. They struggle to push through the projects and even more so – to keep learning and growing.

And none of it is their fault. We never taught them anything different.

But it can be learned and it’s not too late. Helping your AEs understand the unique role they have in the agency and how pivotal they are to everyone’s success is the first step. They need to understand how the agency makes and loses money and their unique opportunity to influence that equation.

From there, they need new skills, new tools and a new way to measure their success. This online course will give them all of that and more.

Bottom line – with the right training, your AEs can grow your bottom line, grow your clients’ business and earn you even more opportunities. But you can’t expect them to just figure it on their own.

In our AE Bootcamp,

we’re going to teach them:

Expectations:

Account executives need to recognize their unique and challenging position in the agency. They play a pivotal role in your agency, from various perspectives — that of your clients, your internal teams and their boss -- you. We’ll look at how to manage expectations, even if they are opposing forces, because it’s their job to protect everyone’s best interests.

Agency Math

It’s pretty tough for an AE to be successful at their job if they don’t understand how the agency makes money, how they should view the clients and their money and how their role impacts profitability. Like it or not – they have a significant amount of influence on the agency’s profitability. So we’ll make sure they know how to move the needle in the right direction.

Tools of the Trade:

We’ll bridge the gap between the needs of the agency and the little to no training your AE got before they got tossed into the fray of being an AE. We will help them create processes to keep the entire agency organized, put them in a position to grow their book of business and manage the day-to-day craziness that is the controlled chaos of an agency.

Time Maximizing:

To increase an AE’s productivity, we will address how they can face and reduce all of the time sucks that keep them from being effective. We tackle the most common thieves of their productivity and teach them how to get rid of those time drains for good.

Converting marketing to business:

We know that no client is excited about buying marketing tactics. Unfortunately, that’s all most AEs studied in school. They need to learn how to evolve their conversations with clients from marketing tactics to business solutions that actually help them meet their organization’s key performance indicators. We will teach your account executives the metrics they’ll need to define, measure and create success.

Sharpening the saw:

No matter how good, smart or effective your AE is today, if they don’t have a learning mindset, they’ll be behind by next month. That’s how quickly our world is evolving. To be a great AE who advances through the ranks – they have to keep getting better. We will help them create a learning plan for life that protects your clients and agency from this critical team member getting stale.

What if you never had to go to another strategy session or oversee a client’s budget again?

Many agency owners are frustrated because they feel stuck. They know they are neglecting their own responsibilities (business development, mentoring the team, thought leadership efforts, etc.) because they’re so deep in the weeds of day-to-day work, they can’t get out.

They spend their days (and some nights) quagmired in client work, meetings, strategy sessions and wrestling with billing and budgets so much so that they can’t get to the critical work that is looming over their head that just won’t get done.

When I ask them why they’re in this position, their answer is always the same: “I’m the only one who can do it.”

If that’s you – it does not have to be. Your AEs can take all of that off your plate and free you up to do the work that really requires your owner’s position, experience and expertise.

If they know how.

Imagine a world where your account executives understand their role in your agency. They know how your clients are being evaluated and help them not only hit their numbers but get that promotion they’ve been angling for. They understand what your internal team needs from them and they know how to get the best work done in a profitable way.

One top of that, they are working to improve the systems and processes your agency has in place to position you for growth and new opportunity.

They not only continue to grow and learn, but they infuse that practice into your agency and become not only the student but the teacher as well.

I know that’s all possible. I see it happen every day in agencies where the owners invested in their account service team. If you have the time – you can create a curriculum and teach them everything you’ve learned in the business. Or you can enroll them in our AE Bootcamp.

Either way – it’s possible. You can make it happen. But doing the same thing and expecting different results is not only Albert Einstein’s definition of insanity, it’s our reality.

Aren’t you ready for a new reality?

P.S. In our Agency Edge Research study, we spoke to almost 1,000 agency employees about their attitudes and beliefs around working in an agency. Want to know the #1 reason why they choose to stay or look for another job? It’s whether or not they were offered educational opportunities and the chance to keep growing professionally.

This is an investment into your agency’s future success and the retention of your key staff. And best of all – it will make your agency more profitable and allow you to actually do your own job for a change!

Our AE boot camp turns order takers into business builders. We guarantee it.