Account managers - what do they do?

What is it exactly that account managers do at marketing agencies and what kind of qualifications do agencies look for when hiring one?

 

They manage accounts, the bread and butter of any business. Without someone to manage accounts, there would be no cash flow to pay bills, employees, etc.

 

I am what's called an "account manager" in my own business. It's not on the biggest scale, but given my background in marketing and sales experience I can explain what you want/need to know.

Basically, account manager is a very broad term for people that do sales in a business. There's a couple of types of account managers you could have. Usually, they are also defined and ranked in their titles.
For example, you could have Junior account managers, Senior account managers, Key account managers etc. You can think of this as kind of a pyramid system (without the benefits of a pyramid scheme to the ones on top).

If you're a higher ranked account manager, you probably are only supposed to go visit / talk to the top x (prolly max 10) accounts of your firm. Every smallers customer will be divided to Senior's & Juniors depending on their size. You are supposed to make sure your firm holds those 5-10 top accounts while supervising the Juniors & Seniors. This means you are supposed to watch over them and make sure they don't do anything stupid.

For example, if a Junior were to make an offer to a smaller account, and he makes a mistake which would lead to your company selling too cheap, you're supposed to intervene. Whenever the Junior does his job correctly, yours is to do nothing, basically (still, besides managing your own 5-10 accounts).


In the case where you wanted to know what any account manager actually does and what "managing an account" means :

- Visit your customers on regular occasions to keep connected to them.
- Be available to them whenever there's questions / problems / necessities / orders / ..
- Be informed and stay informed about your product
- Pass on knowhow to your customers when it's due
- Help them with whatever products you have & try to make sure their buying power increases further and further.
- Visit new prospects based on your status in your company (companies are generally ranked in turnover and then distributed to certain ranked managers)
- Close deals
- ..

 

I have actually wondered this for some time and you've cleared it up well. What's the difference between this and a "liason" ?