Account executive is a role in advertising, marketing, information technology and fashion agencies involving intimate understanding of a client company’s goals and objectives. It involves a professional capability to provide effective advice toward creation of successful promotional activities and strategies for growth of the company. The account executive directly works with, and provides services to, one or more delegates of the client company.
In the marketing and advertising industries, account executives are typically responsible for client servicing and client acquisition. The account executive serves as the direct link between the advertising agency and the existing client, managing day-to-day affairs and ensuring customer satisfaction. The account executive is also responsible for bringing more clients into the agency to increase earnings. The account executive will typically have 1-2 assistants and reports to the respective account supervisor/manager and/or to the client service director/account director. This depends on the country and on the account(s) he is working for.
In IT organizations, an account executive is a senior management role, responsible for executing large (50 mln +) contracts. Control of the profit and loss is one of the main activities, together with customer alignment on a senior level. Usually an account executive has one or more account managers in his/her staff, to cover the various towers a large contract is mainly built of. The account managers directly or indirectly control the program and project managers performing the actual job.
For very large contracts (1 bln +), hundreds of people part of a larger sales and operations group could be involved in contract execution.
Account executives have many different duties and responsibilities that must fulfill, such as day to day liaising via a contact method which can include email and telephone calls. This job role includes many different responsibilities such as discovering
client’s business needs and proposing appropriate solutions, developing plans to target new customers, and retaining existing customers.
In conclusion, account executives are mainly responsible for the acquiring of new clients towards his/her client companies for revenue, maintaining customers for customer satisfaction, and track and make sure all activities occurring for each account is working smoothly and properly. Account executives are extremely organized, work well in a team, and are able to work well under pressure for circumstantial reasons.
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