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It pulls account people away from what they should be doing - truly understanding their client’s business and challenges, securing clear client direction/action, guiding the internal team in ensuring what is being delivered meets the clients needs and is set up for greatest success for client sell-thru, addressing miscellaneous client requests with limited disruption to the rest of the team, identifying opportunities to further the agency relationship, etc. Account people are naturally inclined to push timing, etc that best serves the client demand; PMs are an objective third party looking at timing & resources for what enables the agency to deliver the best work. It benefits everyone when you have both roles but it’s essential you have clear expectations and strong talent for each.
OP, you’re observation is completely fair. It stems from lack of mentorship and training. Some account people that view the role as just client service, which translates to a vendor-like relationship with the client. Others practice more of a business counselor-style, which is a better long-term position. But the reality is that most agencies’ account teams are made up of a mix so it becomes luck of the draw as to who those juniors fall under to be trained. Without agencies having defined philosophies and training curriculum to foster it, you get what we have today. But the solution isn’t to eradicate the possibility of account being able to do more of what they should be doing by overlaying PM responsibilities on top of it.
If Account people are spending time managing project timing and deliverables, then they aren’t spending time thinking strategically or proactively about the client’s business or facilitating a stronger working relationship.
It depends on size and complexity of the account and the agency. I have worked at places where we have had PM and also places where I had to play both. Difference was, the places with PM were working on multi-million dollar accounts with several workstreams and resources. Place where I had to play the role of both I was working on accounts/project based work that was only $1M or less. Account’s job is to manage the clients and sell in work. PM’s job is to manage internal stakeholders and execution/budgets.
Sorry and to answer your question, there really is no benefit to having Account handling both on big pieces of business apart from cost savings as you said. Ideal to have both and have account and PM partner closely.
Account people should be selling with a focus on getting incremental revenue and pushing strategic solutions - PMs are doers-ensuring the work is on time on budget- perhaps the question should be - why have producers and project managers?
The best PMs know how the work this made. Because of this it would be easier for a PM to also play the Account role than it would for Account to also PM.
I get the question bc when I started, most pm work was done by account. But I like the idea that the people managing timelines and deliverables are not account people, personally. They can focus on workflow and advocate for process while account can look at things from a client satisfaction perspective.
It doesn’t work.
Yes and it’s a different market now that demands everyone to be nimble. I’m not convinced there’s a justifiable reason why you have both resources in the age of the diminishing AOR engagements.