Anna Karenina famously begins with Tolstoy’s observation that: “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” So too with account management: The firms that have the most effective approaches to account management are, by and large, those that adhere to a common set of principles. But when a firm’s relationship with a client starts to sour, any number of factors might be the culprit.
When we asked clients participating in our study to tell us what problems they’d experienced with account managers, there was a predictably broad spread of responses. The most common issue, however, seemed to be a sense that the account manager had failed to develop a full understanding of their needs as a business.
This speaks to the importance of empathy in any flourishing client/consultant relationship. Account management works best when it seeks to engender in the customer a sense that they are being listened to. Clients need to know that when their account puts forward solutions, it is out of a genuine sense that there is a need in the organisation that those solutions can address.
