Breaking into any field can feel overwhelming when you lack experience but trying to progress past the glass ceiling of that mid-point in your career is proving to be an impossible task to client managers. Remote work means you are only involved in the conversations you are invited to, and many mid-career client managers have an army of senior colleagues above them who deal with most of the client contact. How can early and mid-career client managers get the experience they need? How can they prove themselves? How can they get ahead?
“The Best Ever Guide to Great Client Management” is a collection of concepts, insights, tips, tricks and strategies to help anyone—regardless of their current experience—develop the skills needed to become a competent and respected client partner. By embracing this journey as a personal development path and focusing on learning essential principles, you can fast-track your way from inexperience to expertise.
Here are five headlines that draw together a range of key words included in the book:
Learn the Art of Communication
The Creative industry is also known as the Communications industry. Skilled communication is the backbone of client management – and moving into a senior role. While technical skills and industry knowledge are important, they are not the only things clients value. In fact, the way you communicate is the basis of building trust and relationships.
The A-Z of communication spans many skills and methods to learn, such as:
- How well you question in order to create an effective brief, how inspiringly you bring briefs, ideas and concepts to life
- How well you question, listen and collaborate with others in order to build on ideas, arrive at shared thinking and a powerful strategy or creative solution. These skills are also fundamental to anticipating client’s needs and reducing risk – two more very important project principles.
- How you facilitate meetings, shape the debate and influence decisions in order to arrive at the most viable, relevant and successful outcome.
- This goes hand-in-hand with the opposite side of project management – dealing with conflict, managing expectations, confronting difficult conversations. Communication is fundamental to moving from transactional client management to bringing real value and expertise.
- How well you pitch, simplifying complex ideas, explaining creative ideas in a business-relevant strategic manner to persuade clients towards the agency’s recommended direction – not to mention how skilfully you negotiate the overall proposal, scope, timeline, budgets and resources to will take to deliver it.
- How well you stay in control of the project, coordinate effort and maintain momentum through succinct but accurate contact reports and keep everyone aligned through status reports and make data meaningful in project performance reports.
This myriad but significant communication principles help build trust and demonstrate reliability, which can often compensate for a lack of formal experience.
And we haven’t even moved on from Communication yet! Let’s keep going.
Action, Accountability and Adaptability
Don’t wait until you feel fully prepared or confident. One of the best ways to learn is simply by starting; by taking action even if that means making mistakes along the way. You can minimise errors by being adaptable to new ideas, remaining open-minded to advice and not taking criticism personally. When you’re inexperienced, being flexible and willing to learn as you go is more valuable than sticking rigidly to one way of doing things. Demonstrating that you are happy to be accountable for your decisions and actions not only builds your reputation but helps you learn from every encounter.
Leverage Your Positive Attitude and Manage Perceptions
“Your personal brand already exists; it’s your job to shape it to what you want it to be”
Even if you lack hands-on experience, demonstrating a positive attitude and managing perceptions about yourself can differentiate you from the crowd:
- Build your brand and your credibility by joining- in, being a team-player, and co-operating with others.
- Ask to be part of a brainstorm and be an enthusiastic contributor, bring ideas and imagination.
- In creative reviews, always have an opinion. Build your mental reference library so your opinion becomes more and more valuable.
- Be responsive to requests and manage upwards – let people know how you’re getting on with work they’ve delegated to you. They’ll really appreciate it.
- Know when to say Yes and when to say No. It’s good to be perceived as a person who says Yes more often than they say No – obviously without overloading yourself.
Relationships are built on trust and rapport. Bringing a positive attitude and displaying empathy towards others builds very strong emotional connections.
Master Time Management and Organisational Skills
Time management and organisational skills are invaluable in today’s overloaded, overwhelming world. The book dedicates articles and exercises to managing your time effectively, from setting clear goals to creating structured plans, knowing how to organize your workday and prioritize tasks is key to maintaining momentum.
While you may feel overwhelmed at first, developing these skills early will make managing client expectations and delivering on promises much easier.
Solve Problems and Make Decisions with Confidence
Projects are one long series of problems to be solved, so another valuable skill to master client manager is problem-solving. Even if you lack experience, you can still become known as someone who solves problems efficiently. The book suggests that approaching problems with a solution-oriented mindset, being willing to take risks, and learning how to manage conflict will give you a competitive edge.
The ability to take calculated risks and manage conflicts is something that can only improve with experience, so don’t shy away from opportunities to practice these skills.
Experience Is Gained Through Action
Learning how to become a great Client Partner is a personal journey of blending theoretical skills with your personality. Everyone does it slightly differently. The devil is in the detail and the best theories are inadequate when human idiosyncrasies are added to the mix.
“The Best Ever Guide to Great Client Management” serves as a powerful roadmap for anyone starting their career in the client service team.
Great Client Partners have a calm maturity about them that is based on the rock of experience on which they stand. By embracing the top tips, insights and lessons learned you can transform your inexperience into valuable experience, one client interaction at a time.
I am a Client Service Coach and Operational Excellence change-maker specialising in helping creative agencies unlock the value of their people to generate productivity, profitability and create a great working culture. Please contact me for a free 30 minute consultation: via the contact form, Linked in or email hello@joannaanthony.com.
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