Jenny Plant: Great Sales & Great PM - Can One Person Do It All?

08/13/24 • 37 min

The Handbook: The Agency Operations Podcast

Part of the remit of an ops leader is to ensure they’ve got the right people, in the right place.

In many agencies, account managers handle sales, client relationships, AND project management. However, this hybrid role often leads to trade-offs.

Everyone’s got their own strengths and preferences – and these responsibilities seemingly require very different personality types.

A great sales person might struggle with rigorous project management, resulting in issues like over-servicing. While an exceptional project manager might struggle with developing a sales pipeline, leading to stress, missed targets, and a shallow pipeline.

So, should these roles be separated?

We'll explore this with our guest, Jenny Plant. With over 20 years of experience in agency account management, Jenny founded her consultancy, Account Management Skills, to share sales training skills with account managers.

Jenny will share:

The pros and cons of separating account and project managers
What value agencies seek in their account managers
How sales training can improve client relationships, retention and business growth

Jenny's website: https://accountmanagementskills.com/
Jenny's podcast: https://accountmanagementskills.com/podcast
Follow Jenny on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jennyplant/
Follow Harv on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/harvnagra/

Stay up to date with regular ops insights. Subscribe to The Handbook: The Operations Newsletter.
This podcast is brought to you by Scoro, where you can manage your projects, resources and finances in a single system.

Part of the remit of an ops leader is to ensure they’ve got the right people, in the right place.

In many agencies, account managers handle sales, client relationships, AND project management. However, this hybrid role often leads to trade-offs.

Everyone’s got their own strengths and preferences – and these responsibilities seemingly require very different personality types.

So, should these roles be separated?

Jenny will share:

The pros and cons of separating account and project managers
What value agencies seek in their account managers
How sales training can improve client relationships, retention and business growth

Previous Episode

Julia Vastrik: How to strengthen company culture in the WFH era

We’re in the age of remote and hybrid working, and our physical distance from one another is having a huge impact on company culture.
Previously, grabbing lunch or a drink after work was easy. But now, even small talk needs to be consciously brought into our scheduled Slack calls to avoid things becoming too transactional.
This new way of working can lead to serious challenges like feeling disconnected from colleagues and the company mission, lacking motivation, and experiencing loneliness.
So what’s the way forward?
In this episode, we speak with Julia Vastrik, an agile coach and team facilitator, about how we can strengthen company culture in a remote/hybrid workplace.
Julia offers loads of great advice, which we’ve summarized for easy reference:

Building Trust and Relationships

We’re a much more effective team when we like the people we work with.

Get to know people through small talk
Use ice breakers, team rituals
Virtual lunches, coffees
Encourage silliness for personalities to shine
Learning together e.g. book clubs, communities around certain topics like AI
For big meetings, use breakout rooms
Organize face-to-face activities - both for work and fun

Communication

A lot of information is lost in written communication.

Use a good balance of synchronous and asynchronous communication
Have explicit agreements on communication and how to run meetings
With written communication, the giver needs to be overly friendly (emojis, kind greetings), the receiver overly accepting that they may perceive the tone wrong
Use audio and video to prevent misinterpretation

Productivity and Collaboration

Set clear goals for teams and individuals
Create working agreements e.g. working hours, punctuality, documentation, ways of working, etc
Co-create - brainstorm solutions and make decisions together to boost a feeling of belonging

Continuous Improvement

Little changes sum up to bigger improvements over time.

Retrospectives, post-mortems & team discussions
Experiment
We’re never in an ideal state - there’s always room for improvement

Psychological Safety

Feeling safe to be not perfect, to make mistakes, to be a human.

Mistakes happen and they are a learning opportunity
Have leaders model this behavior

Other Resources:

The book Julia recommends to read is called The Culture Map, by Erin Meyer.

The virtual ‘body doubling’ clubs Harv mentioned are flow.club and flown.com.

Follow Julia on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/julia-vastrik/

Follow Harv on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/harvnagra/

Stay up to date with regular ops insights. Subscribe to The Handbook: The Operations Newsletter.

This podcast is brought to you by Scoro, where you can manage your projects, resources and finances in a single system.

Next Episode

Freia Muehlenbein: How to pitch to WIN

Winning pitches is tough.
Ghosting has become a common challenge, and even when you win, clients may be commissioning smaller pieces of the project rather than the full program.

But that’s only part of the struggle - crafting pitch decks takes a lot of time and energy. Surely there’s a better way than packing slides with your best creative ideas.

In this episode we tackle these challenges and introduce a strategic approach to pitching. The focus shifts from pitching tactics to showcasing value and ROI.

Joining us is Freia Muehlenbein, an agency growth consultant and owner of Be Reyt Consultancy. With over 15 years of experience in agency operations, Freia is an expert in the sales and pitch process, known for closing large deals.

Freia shares practical advice on:

Developing a strong qualification process to truly understand your client's needs
The concept of a war room and how it helps in crafting effective strategies
Why prioritizing financials and ROI is more important than focusing on tactics

Follow Freia on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/freiamuehlenbein/

Follow Harv on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/harvnagra/

Sign up for Harv's webinar with Agency Hackers on productivity hacks taking place Thursday 19th September 2024: https://bit.ly/thehandbook24

Stay up to date with regular ops insights. Subscribe to The Handbook: The Operations Newsletter.

This podcast is brought to you by Scoro, where you can manage your projects, resources and finances in a single system.

The Handbook: The Agency Operations Podcast - Jenny Plant: Great Sales & Great PM - Can One Person Do It All?

Transcript

Harv00:00:31.992

Hi all, welcome back to the show. Ops people, we have to be unicorns, masters of all trades. But should others in our teams be expected to be as well? In the agency space, it's quite common to have account managers, which you expect to be great salespeople, great client relationship managers, and expect them to be excellent project managers. In my experience, this hybrid role often comes with a trade off. People in that role might gravitate towards as