Top five skills every good account manager must have

Let’s first answer the question of what is an Account Manager. They are the interface between the company and the client, building relationships and understanding the client. They need to balance the client’s needs, hit company targets, manage the project budget or retainer and also balance their service teams from multiple developers, designers, and copywriters. They aim to bridge the gap and assist both parties.

The Account Managers play a vital role between companies and clients and most of the time an unsatisfied client can be tied back to bad account management or client service.

Today we will look at 5 top skills every Account Manager needs to help them with their very important role.

Excellent EQ (Emotional Quotient)

As mentioned Account Managers work with people, they deal with clients, service providers and with their own in house service team. They need to be self-aware, be able to identify, assess and control their own emotions as well as that of other individual or groups. They need to be able to show empathy, treat people and situations sensitively and show understanding.

Expert juggling skills

Account Managers need to be able to balance a variety of daily tasks such as standups, emails, sprints, briefs, client meetings, phone calls, reporting, deadlines, and budgets. They need to be on top form at all times, making sure they don’t drop any balls. They need to do problem-solving most of the time and make quick decisions with every task at hand. Knowing how to balance will help them keep their sanity.

Attention to detail

With a fast paced day, their daily list of tasks and artwork and designs flying in and out of their office it is important to have attention to detail. Account Managers need to pick up on the little things and make sure nothing misses their eye. An example of this is that clients rely upon and trust Account Managers to have the best interest for their brand and make sure they assist in the process of nothing gets pushed to the public that might hurt the brand. The service team also rely on them to ensure things are filtered out as soon as possible to avoid frustrating too and front situations between the client and team unnecessarily.

Administrative skills

Account Managers need to keep track, report and communicate feedback on a daily basis. To keep on top of all the daily tasks as discussed earlier, good administrative skills will definitely assist in balancing and executive all of these tasks.

Persistence

Account Managers can often find themselves in difficult positions. Some of these situations can be in the case when the service team didn’t deliver as per the client’s expectations or even if they didn’t make their company targets. It is important for Account managers to stay focused, patient and determined to achieve great things in their role after many blows, rejection and hard times.

Account Managers are project managers, thinkers, and problem solvers and together with all these skills and a few more they can pull a project, client and team together to deliver a successful end product.

Do you have any more skills and traits you would like to add to the list of must haves? Leave them in the comment section, we are interested to see what you think will add to being a great Account Manager.