The “Hiding To Nothing” Account Manager Role Must Focus On Delivery

Talk to management executives in any provider, and they will tell you that their crack team of account managers is the last set of people they’d want to see leave. They are the real deal clinchers, the subject-matter experts who possess the client-side finesse to deal with the toughest situations and the political impresarios who know how to pander to people with the most irrational egos and hidden agendas. They are the ultimate customer service executives who are expected to put their clients’ needs before anything else in their lives. Roll together a sales executive, a consultant, a politician, and a practitioner’s expert process knowledge, and you’ll come close to designing this particular animal.

Senior buyer executives pay a tremendous amount of attention to buy-side governance teams. Yet, their counterparts, the account managers, are an equally important part of the relationship. Charged with implementing and managing multi-million dollar complex global operations that represent their client’s strategic outsourcing initiatives, account managers face daunting challenges. Their unruly clients won’t hesitate to grandstand when things go wrong. One shared service leader was well known for summoning his service providers’ account managers for an angry face-to-face lambasting, which was then followed up with internal e-mails that ordered staff to freeze all future spending with the service provider until the service provider offered “extra” service credits. Service provider executive leaders want performance issues spun in a manner that would embarrass even a politician. Their cast of team members constantly demands development, training, and lots of personal attention. And overshadowing every account manager’s life is contractual language that allows any particularly unhappy client to jettison him or her from their account if they feel like it. HfS Research conducted a series of interviews with a variety of buyers and service providers to analyze what works well and what does not.