I'm putting together a crash course on account management fundamentals for junior folks (the future!) at ad agencies. I'd love to know: What's the most helpful thing someone could teach you or help you navigate right now?

I'm not doing this for the brownie points, I just wanna help make our industry a little less exhausting. Sometimes we end up with a bad manager, bad account, a bad agency and a little help goes a long way.

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I was literally just talking about doing this the other day. There aren’t any resources out there like this. I was fortunate enough to start my journey at a great agency with a great AD

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Oof, good call out AM1. What a twisted thing to do to a crash course.

It's a good reminder not to make it so prescriptive that everyone feels pressure to be exactly someone else.

The hope is to clarify what our role is, what it looks like when we're at our best at a junior level especially when no one is there to help you out. Hopefully that helps juniors decide if they wanna stay in AM, encourage them to find their own style, or maybe decide if they should switch.

This is so great! I'd include any industry jargon/acronyms, and possibly a view of the hierarchy and what they do - when I was just starting out, I always wondered what everyone else was working on, whether it was project specific or just that they were a strategic lead. I think it's also important to note some of their role here - they'll likely he monitoring and we all know it's tedious, but it's so important for and to the client, it'd be good to share a "big picture" of why their tasks matter.

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Yes an org chart, couldn't recall the term! I think it's completely reasonable to have them ask their manager, but this might be another term that may need explaining for them. They may not know something like that exists or what to call it and ask their manager for.

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Ive always struggled doing this. You can put the process on paper, but the challenging parts in navigating situations are so nuanced that require strong soft skills... Not something easy to train without experience.

Good luck though would love to see what you do!

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100%. I'm trying to work through that too and it might have to live outside a deck or "paper" because there's so much nuance in the daily situations we have to deal with. I'm hoping to get a sense of the early pain points and build from there.

I'll post any progress here! Feedback would be valuable.

Also, RECAPS!!! How do we refine our recap taking skills?! What are methods to make taking recaps less tedious

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Ah ok! That sounds like having good onboarding, studying all the materials you have about the project, taking good notes/questions in meetings, and frequent 1:1s with your manager so you have a place to ask all of your questions.

I might have to come back to you later on and ask for a specific example because that's important. Thanks!

I agree with the comment about the jargon. Just having a basic understanding of some of the terminology is a huge help for beginners.

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FINALLY!!!!

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There really is so much- what are our primary functions as AAEs? What is expected of us? What are external resources(books, podcasts, etc.) we can utilize? What are the right questions to be asking our higher ups? How do we manage our team’s organization when there’s so much disorganization by how fast everything moves? What are ways to stand out as an AAE? When beginning, how can AAEs get around all the high level jargon passed around by higher ups/clients? How do you deal with passive aggressive team members taking advantage of your freshness in the industry and keep yourself from feeling incompetent? What are some of the interesting sides of Account(Please highlight)? How can we stay motivated when feeling low due to lots of mistakes? How do you fight imposter syndrome? I can literally go on and on LOL, I feel like there’s literally nothing online for Pharma Ad Industry Account Management.

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@AAE 1 - I freakin love this! Thanks for taking the time to write it all out. Helps me figure out what's better on paper and what's more appropriate for a conversation. Like someone mentioned above, so much of how AM approaches a situation is nuanced but I do think there are fundamental things to remember and practice, then you build onto it with time.

I'm sorry you've already had to work with unkind people - if there's anything you wanna talk through in the meantime, feel free to DM me.

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Take your ego out of the equation. There’s enough ego to go around between the Client and the rest of the agency.

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How to meet get things done quickly while also doing QA - I always want to check everything throughly but never feel like I have the time to

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I’m referring to checking for errors on deliverables, wether they’re vendor created or we are creating them in-house. My managers have emphasized that one of the most important parts of my job is to be the final eye on quality/spelling errors/making sure all final assets are the ones that were approved by the client. I would like to take time with these items to assure that I’m not letting anything out the door with issues but it often feels like I have to move on to the next task so quickly that I don’t get a chance to check things as thoroughly as I would like. I know it’s something that I will improve on as I get more familiar with the deliverables, client preferences etc. but would love to hear advice on how to “slow down” as much as possible for those more tedious but important steps in the process without getting behind on the other moving projects.

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A big thing for me was timelines. As an entry level account coordinator, that was something I struggled with the most. From client deadlines, internal deadlines and creative deadlines, it’s hard to keep track of dates and timing.

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