Account Manager - Day in the Life as an Account Manager

In this video you're gonna learn what the day-to-day life is like as an account manager. We're gonna be talking about what they do on a daily basis, how they look for different opportunities, and what are the skills you actually need to do well in this role? And you wanna make sure you watch this video until the end, because I'm gonna be pulling my direct experience working in sales, in Silicon Valley.

What's going on? Everybody is Patrick Dang here, so before we get started and make sure to give this video a like, subscribe and turn on notifications. And if you wanna check out my sales masterclass, sales legacy, check the link in the description to learn more, and we also have a free, one hour train, to see if it's the right fit for you.

So with that said, let's go ahead and get started. Now the first thing we had to cover is, you know, really defining what an account manager is, so the definition that we are going to use for this video, is it's a performance-based sales role that retains and increases revenue of current customers, which includes renewals, upselling, and cross selling. And to put it more in layman's term, an account manager is essentially a sales type of role, where you're only dealing with customers who have already signed a deal with your company, and all you're doing is taking care of them, making sure that they keep renewing the products and services that they already bought, and finding opportunities for you to sell more products and services to them as well, to grow the account, right?

So that is what an account manager is. When it comes to the day-to-day of an account manager, the first core responsibility an account manager has, is actually just to keep your customers happy. So the day-to-day of account manager, typically they're gonna come in around, let's say eight o'clock, or nine o'clock, and they're gonna check their email, right?

And they're gonna see, you know, if there's any issues that their current customers have, because the reason why account manager is so valuable, is because once you already sign a big customer, let's say you sign a Starbucks, right? And they're a multi-million dollar client. Well, you definitely don't wanna lose them, because the longer you can keep Starbucks a customer of your company, that's gonna be millions of dollars every year in revenue for your business.

So that's why there has to be a dedicated person in charge of that account to make sure they're happy with whatever they bought. So an account manager, obviously they're always gonna be checking their email and notifications because they wanna see if customers, you know, have any issues with their products and services, or if they need help with something, or maybe they need more support. So they always have to be on call during their work hours, right?

And essentially, it's your job to keep the customers happy, meaning if a customer has an issue, or let's say they bought a software and it's not working properly, well they're gonna go to the account manager, and be like, hey, we're trying to do this thing, but it's not working, can you help us out? And then you're gonna have to schedule a meeting with them, bring any IT people involved, and try to figure out the solution, and make sure that they're happy so that they continue to keep renewing with your company. And so, as an account manager, it's not as if you're just kind of working by yourself with an account, you're working with many different people internally, right?

So if it's gonna be a very technical call about integrations and how things software connects with another software, well, in those situations, you're gonna have to bring like a solutions engineer, or someone very technical, or even just an engineer to come in and help fix, and solve the issue. So an account manager themselves, they don't have to be super technical, they don't have to know how to code, code, but they need to understand the basic knowledge from a high level perspective of how things work, so that they can communicate the value, and communicate those issues with the internal engineering team. Now an account manager's role is also to identify when customers may churn.

So churn is a concept where, you know, when a person signs up for a product or service, right? Especially if it's a subscription product or service, well, there's a percentage of people that are gonna drop off within a month and within a year. Right, so an account manager has to say, okay, let's say, we know that 40% of the people who buy our products and services, after one year, they go to a competitor.

Well, how do I decrease that 40% to 20%, so that we keep more of that revenue? Well, an account manager, that's your job, right? Every day they got to think about, okay, what do I need to do?

What do I need to communicate? So that these customers are happy and they don't churn, and they don't leave our company? And that's, you know, building that relationship with them, solving all of their issues, being in regular contact, so that if they have any issues, they're gonna tell the account manager right away.

So it's a very relationship based type of role. So one good thing that you might find about being an account manager, is that you're not really talking to people cold. You're only working with existing customers, which some people really prefer, right?

So you don't have to talk to strangers, you don't really have to cold call people, these are people that are already spending money with you, and so it's just building that relationship, building that trust and continuing the relationship, to move that forward and growing that account. Now the next day to day core responsibility of an account manager is to generate more revenue for their company, right? And so if you think about it, an account manager is usually assigned a certain number of accounts, right?

So you might have one account manager, and they may be in charge of 30 different accounts in America, for example, right? And all they have to do is keep these 30 companies happy, and find opportunities to increase the revenue for these companies, or increase the revenue you bring in from these companies, which is growing the account. And how you do that, is you do things like upselling and cross-selling.

So upselling is basically selling another company more of the same thing, or like more seats. So like if they have a subscription for 10 people, you might wanna upgrade that to 20 people, if they hire more people, right? Or you might wanna sell them more features, right?

More advanced features that are only unlocked when they pay more, so an account manager would be responsible for doing that for that company. An account manager will also be in charge of cross selling, meaning if a company bought, you know, a certain product in a recruiting software, well, the account manager might be able to sell them a certain product in sales software. It's not quite directly related, it's kind of like cross selling into a different department, but because the account manager already has that relationship, they're a lot more, it's easier for them to do that cross sell, versus from anybody else because they have the relationship, it's easy to transition and get in the room with the right decision makers.

And as an account manager, it's not like you can just sit around, waiting for people to come to you, and they're gonna be like, Patrick, I'm ready to buy all these things, can you help us put in the order? Right, some cases that may actually happen, but I think more often than not, you're gonna have to go out and look for these revenue generating opportunities, and you have to look at the signals. And where do you find these signals as an account manager is, they're gonna give you a computer, and they're gonna give you a database of how these companies are using a specific product or service, so you have to identify these signals, and say, okay, when these companies reach a certain threshold, I'm going to send them an email, book a meeting with them, and I'm gonna sell them more things, because I know that typically, when people reach this threshold, they're ready to upgrade into the next features.

So let me go ahead and give you an example of this. If I was an account manager working at this company, called Frame. io, which is a software for creative people, for video editing and photo editing.

Well, essentially, if you find that people in your territory are using this team account, meaning each person costs $25 per month. And you know that there's a certain limit that they have, for example, let's say they have active storage of 500 gigabytes, right? If they're reaching this limit of 500 gigabytes, and they're ready to upgrade to the custom enterprise level of the software, well, an account manager has a opportunity to generate a meeting with this already customer, and get them into the enterprise, which may cost more than $25, maybe it was gonna cost $50 a month or whatever it is, right, there's many different ways you can upsell people.

So for example, for this team plan, right? If it's $25 per month, per user, and you can only have 15 people, well what happens when the company needs more than 15 seats? What if they need 50 seats?

They're gonna have to contact sales and deal with somebody, right? And so if you are an account manager, and it's set up in this way where, you know, everybody who reaches 15 seats, automatically send them an email and try to get a meeting booked with an account manager, to see what their issues are, and challenges are, and see if they wanna buy more seats. Well, that's a very easy way for an account manager to find more opportunities, because all they have to do is see where companies are hitting their limitations, and what's the likelihood that they're willing to upgrade to the next thing, and so every time that happens, they're gonna send an email, or try to call them, and get them onto the enterprise plan.

So you can't just wait around and wait for deals to come to you, there are ways, depending on the company, depending on what product and service you're selling, it's gonna be different for everybody, but there are always ways for you to go out and look for revenue within your current customer base. Now, the key characteristics to succeed as an account manager day to day, is number one, you need to be a problem solver, right? Because every day is gonna be a little bit different, you're gonna need that ability to solve problems on the fly, you're gonna need the ability to, you know, look at a situation, analyze it, and figure out what's the best for both sides.

You gotta have the personality where you are genuinely trying to help other people, versus just trying to sell them and make a quick buck, right? Because that's not good for the long-term, and for an account manager, it's all about maintaining that longterm relationship, because that's where their real revenue is going to be generated for a company. You gotta be somewhat technical, especially in software and tech sales.

Again, you don't have to code, but you need to understand things from a high level to communicate with different people on your team, especially the engineers. And it's very important that you have high emotional intelligence, meaning you're very self-aware, You know when you're making mistakes, you know how to correct it, and you understand people very well, because at the end of the day, it's also still a performance-based role, and it's very similar to a sales role. And so you're gonna need those sales skills and persuasion skills, especially if you wanna cross sell and upsell your current customers.

And so with that said, that's gonna be the day-to-day life of an account manager. If you enjoyed this video, make sure to give it a like, subscribe, and turn on notifications, if you wanna see more videos like this, and if you're ready to start, and accelerate your sales career, make sure to check out my sales masterclass, sales legacy, that's gonna teach you everything you need to know when it comes to getting a career in sales, starting it up, generating leads, closing deals, you know, all of that, it's in sales legacy, so check the link in the description to check it out. And with that said, my name is Patrick Dang, and I'll see you guys in the next one.