Your Account Executive Is the Key to A Successful Sales Cycle. Here’s How to Get the Most Out of This Role.
by Jody Grunden, Partner, Summit CPA Group, A Division of Anders CPAs + Advisors
One of the biggest challenges for digital agencies is to communicate the ins and outs of their complex product to customers, throughout the sales cycle.
What’s the client’s biggest problem? Why is our agency the best fit to tackle it? Why do certain solutions have a higher price tag? How can we find a solution that gets the job done without breaking the bank?
When you sell complicated products, you need someone to explain its value in normal people's terms, so the client can trust the team they hire to do the work they themselves don’t do every day. That job largely falls on the shoulders of the account executive who acts as a bridge between the engineers’ highly technical skills and the clients’ real-world problems.
But finding the right account executive with a balance of technical knowledge and sales experience isn’t easy, as we’ve seen in our decades of working together with digital agencies. Then, once you hire your ideal candidate, you’ve got to fully integrate them into the team if you want to make the most of this key role.
I’ve seen the importance of the account executive from the outside. Then I got the inside take when I chatted with Danielle Hendricks of Pixo, an Illinois-based digital agency that creates custom websites, web apps, mobile apps – and really any software that can help businesses do their business better.
Here’s how to make the most of your account executive role.
Look beyond the tech industry.
A lot of companies think you need someone who shows up on day one with a thick industry portfolio. But that’s often a distraction from finding the right fit: just because someone comes to an interview with 20 possible connections, it doesn’t mean those connections will be a match for your agency or are even looking to start a new project right now.
In business, it doesn’t matter where you meet your connections; anyone from a janitor to the coach of your kid’s sports team could lead to a job down the road. Someone with a winding path of a background and no specific experience in tech could end up bringing amazing connections to your business tomorrow.
The real priority in hiring should be someone who knows sales: someone who is good at talking to people and solving problems. A person who likes to ask questions until the real story comes to light will start to detect patterns about what works and what doesn’t. They’ll be able to draw in clients when they see a connection – and screen out prospects who might not be the right fit.
As long as they’re comfortable coming to the team and asking for advice, the industry expertise won’t be far behind.
Get them up to speed.
Agencies are also resistant to sign someone outside the industry into this role because they worry it will take too long to get them up to speed. But regardless of someone’s background, they need to learn the specifics of the company, what makes it different, and what makes it tick.
In the first three to six months, you’ll want your new account exec to spend a good portion of their time shadowing sales calls – and then give them a chance to follow up and ask questions about what they heard.
In addition to that kind of training, they’ll also need to listen to people on both sides. Internally, they’ll want to get familiar with how your experts talk about the work they do. Then, externally, they’ll want to ask the average business person, “What tech do you use? What do you like about it? What do you hate about it?” A good account exec puts themselves in the clients’ shoes to see what the problems are – and then connects them to the solutions the engineers are developing.
Throughout the sales process, make sure they feel comfortable telling clients when they don’t have an exact answer and need to loop in one of the technical experts. That way the client gets the right answer the first time, and the account exec continues building up their expertise by having more chances to engage the rest of the team.
Give them the numbers to back up the budget.
Good or bad, the account exec is going to bring the client the news about the budget. Since they’ve been deeply involved in conversations about the client’s needs and wants, they’ll be an important resource when it comes time to decide whether to move ahead. Make sure they go into that meeting with all the data to back them up, especially in cases where the client’s budget is way smaller than the projected cost.
Reducing scope is never anyone’s favorite, but if it’s done by someone knowledgeable, the client can still get something that does the job, even if it’s not exactly what they were dreaming of. If your account executive can point to specific line-items on a spreadsheet that are driving up the cost, they’ll be better positioned to help the client decide which of their “wants” to let go of – and to ensure that their needs still get met.
When the client can see everything broken down, point by point, they know you aren’t just picking a magic number. This transparency not only builds trust, it gives you a leg up on your competitors too because you can say with confidence that anyone who gives a quote significantly lower than this is probably going to disappoint.
As the buffer between the engineers and the client, the account executive helps them meet in the middle. Even if they have to say, “I’m sorry we can’t do everything you asked for with your budget,” if they’ve been listening carefully to both sides, they still can find something to offer that makes sense to your team financially and checks the clients’ boxes.
Be real.
The account executive is the bridge between your services and the outside world. But they aren’t just selling technology: They’re selling a company, they’re selling solutions, and they’re selling the promise of a great relationship.
Your services may be virtual, but the human factor plays a huge part in running a successful business. Your account executive is one of the ways you can communicate the value you place on people, just by the way they show up – and follow up.
A successful account executive will make the role their own but part of their job is to communicate your values. If they can stand behind it, they can sell it.