How to Hire Account Managers For Your Marketing Agency

Are you looking for practical tips on hiring account managers to grow your agency? Account managers are vital to client satisfaction and retention, and as an agency owner, you can’t do it all alone. When it comes to managing accounts, there’s a point when owners can’t handle it all.

Typically, owners can handle about 10–15 accounts with their other responsibilities, but a full-time account manager can handle about 25–30 accounts. And when you delegate account management, you can focus on growing your agency’s client base. But how do you hire the right account manager?

In this video, I share the Account Manager Advantage™ and how to make the right hire for your agency. We’ll dive into the compensation plan, writing the job description, determining how to recruit and hire, KPIs, training and onboarding, and even the psychological profile to ensure the right person for the role.

Watch the whole video below:

Outline of This Episode

• [0:36] When you need to hire an account manager
• [4:25] The Account Manager Advantage™
• [11:00] The Kolbe A™ Index and DiSC® Profile
• [13:33] Use a video-based application process

The Account Manager Advantage™

The process we follow when we are hiring account managers covers these six areas:

• Compensation: How much will you pay your account manager while maintaining profitability yet hiring capable employees? Usually, a $35,000–$55,000 base salary range can get you a great account manager. You can play with bonuses to give them an upside (retention bonuses, incentivizing obtaining case studies, etc.).
• Job description: Be sure that your expectations are clear. They need to know what a day in the life looks like. You need to make sure they know their KPIs and what they’ll be held accountable for.
• Recruiting, hiring, and training: The best place to recruit is from Indeed. LinkedIn can be a great source to laser-target candidates, but they tend to have higher salary expectations and are harder to get.
• Psychological profile: As you hire you need to look for a specific type of person. They need to like communicating, having tough conversations and need to be confident. We use the Kolbe A™ Index and the DiSC® Profile.
• KPIs for the role: What percentage of clients have they met with monthly? We want that to be close to every client. We are also looking at monthly, quarterly, and annual retention rates (shooting for 98%). What percentage of clients moved to become a case study or advocate? Those are our top three.
• Training and onboarding: Your account managers need to know the basics of internet marketing in your niche. They need to be familiar with the work in the niche, the types of jobs they run, average transaction value, high-ticket items, questions people ask, etc. You need to roleplay and practice with your account managers.

Personality Profile: The Kolbe A™ Index and DiSC® Profile

You want to give this test to every single person that comes into your organization. When you’re hiring, you must be clear on the type of psychological profile you’re looking for that’s the best fit for the role. We’ve found that you’re looking for:

• High Fact-Finding = They want to learn about SEO, data, PPC, Social Media, etc.
• High Follow-Through = Someone’s aptitude to be routine, carry things through the finish line, etc. Almost every time someone is low follow-through, they churn out quickly.

These people will stick with the role and get things done.

The other test we suggest is the DiSC® Profile. You want a balance between someone who is “influential” and high in “dominance” as well. If someone is only highly influential but low in dominance, they just want to be friends but can’t handle confrontation. You need someone that has the backbone to push back.

Use a video-based application process

If we post a job on Indeed, we get numerous applications. But it’s hard looking at a resume and knowing whether or not they’re worth a call. It’s also quite time-consuming. So why not send them through a service like VideoAsk?

You ask them questions and they record a video with the answers. It gives you the ability to see how they present themselves on video and how well they communicate. Those that make the effort to record videos are usually decent candidates.

This helped us shortcut our hiring process and obtain higher-quality talent. After they complete the video questions, we send them the two personality assessments. If all of that checks out, we have the first interview.

Resources & People Mentioned

• The Kolbe A™ Index
• DiSC® Profile
• The Client Retention Workbook

Connect With Josh Nelson

• Josh’s Coaching Page on Facebook
• The Agency Success Facebook Group
• www.SevenFigureAgency.com
• Seven Figure Agency on YouTube
• Josh on Twitter: @joshnelsonimc
• Josh on LinkedIn

Subscribe to The Seven Figure Agency
on Apple Podcasts, on Android, on Google Podcasts, RSS