Strategic Account Director

Nottingham, Nottinghamshire
twentysix
Description:

The Strategic Account Director at Hallam will be required to act as the senior point of contact across an assigned account group, dealing with senior marketing stakeholders within the clients’ businesses and acting as a consultative partner to build trusting, mutually beneficial and scalable partnerships. As a senior member of the CS team, they are responsible for continuous improvement of Hallam’s client experience and commercial success, contributing to enhancement in the quality and innovative delivery of work for clients and contributing to a collaborative and engaging CS team culture.

Purpose:

• Drive strategic growth and retention by developing and executing comprehensive account strategies to meet sales and performance goals
• Build and maintain strong client relationships, acting as the primary point of contact and ensuring high client satisfaction through excellent service delivery
• Lead cross-functional teams, managing and coaching account managers while orchestrating specialist teams to deliver high-quality digital campaigns and solutions
• Ensure commercial success by managing account profitability, filling revenue gaps, and contributing to the agency’s overall business objectives

Responsibilities:

Communication & Collaboration:

• Foster open communication and teamwork across departments
• Engage in regular check-ins and updates with team members, ensuring alignment on project goals and timelines
• Build strong relationships with clients and stakeholders, ensuring satisfaction and clarity on project deliverables

Strategic Planning and Growth

• Set the direction of the account group’s growth/retention strategy through the creation of annual Account Growth Plans to meet sales and retention targets
• Develop comprehensive digital strategies in collaboration with specialists
• Conduct category and competitor analysis and performance diagnostic reports to inform client strategies
• Oversee the planning process across the account group, ensuring proper workflow visibility on retainer accounts

Client Relationship Management

• Manage client relationships through the customer journey, from onboarding to offboarding, ensuring long-lasting, profitable partnerships
• Act as the client ambassador within the agency, championing their business goals and ensuring alignment with agency OKRs
• Serve as the primary point of contact for key accounts, ensuring expectations are met as per the squad accountabilities map
• Ensure the highest standards of client experience, driving process improvements where necessary
• Own and escalate client issues, complaints, or escalations to senior leadership when needed

Team Leadership and Development

• Manage and coach Strategic Account Managers, ensuring they deliver to high standards, providing guidance, mentorship, and performance feedback
• Support cross-functional digital teams, orchestrating their efforts to deliver high-quality work
• Mentor teams by sharing knowledge of industry trends, audience insights, and client business challenges
• Develop and implement team strategies that support both client objectives and agency goals

Consultation and Value Addition

• Maintain a broad knowledge of generalist marketing, providing consultative value to client-side marketing stakeholders
• Lead immersion sessions and create marketing budget plans with squad teams
• Negotiate contracts and fees with client stakeholders, ensuring both agency and client goals are met

Client Deliverables and Accountability

• Ensure the highest standards for client-facing materials (e.g. onboarding documentation, performance reports, QBRs, pitch decks), working closely with teams for timely delivery
• Take ownership of client briefs, ensuring they meet expectations and uphold high standards
• Accountable for the success of key financial and team data reporting to senior leadership

Revenue and Commercial Success

• Work closely with the CS team to fill revenue gaps and ensure commercial success
• Report key financial data and lead team reporting efforts to senior CS leadership
• Drive continuous improvement of the client experience and internal processes, contributing to agency-wide initiatives

Requirements:

• Be a trusted client advisor – knowledgeable and passionate about client’s businesses, and where and how marketing contributes to their success
• Strong communication and collaboration skills
• Ability to work in a fast-paced, dynamic environment
• Understanding of digital marketing trends and best practices
• A spirit of collaboration – can lead and inspire the team, the wider agency, clients, and other external partners
• Shows radical candour, understands when to give praise, motivational feedback and constructive criticism
• Has a sense of ownership – unafraid to take charge when necessary, be decisive and then build support for those decisions. Prepared to share credit and shoulder difficulties
• Have a mentor mindset – focused on the personal and professional development of the squad, CS and wider agency team to optimise their combined performance
• Commercially astute – takes ownership over commercial success of a client for Hallam and Hallam for our clients

About Hallam:

We’re not just some self-obsessed agency promising table tennis and unlimited snacks in exchange for your soul. And that’s why we’ll always show up with something to say, not just something to sell. We share a mission to deliver outstanding work with purpose. We’re here to do business in a better way: to work hard to do the right things, not only for our clients but our people and the world around us. Work should exist to make life better and we are a great place to work. Hallam has been chosen by its employees as one of the best places to work, and in the top 40 marketing employers in the UK. You’ll join a team of more than 50 talented digital geeks who love everything from board game nights to agency trips out to a post-work tipple(s).

What’s it like working at Hallam?

You’ll get to work for a progressive agency that is driven by its people and values, not just profit. We’ll provide you with everything you need for your role with us, including the latest Apple equipment (or equivalent) and set you off on your personalised onboarding program where you’ll get to know us; your manager, team and the wider departments as well as how we do things around here through our proven operations and processes.

Our Perks:

• Unlimited remote and flexible working policy
• 33 days holiday (25 plus the extra 8 bank holidays to take whenever you want)
• Option of early finish Fridays
• Your birthday day off, whenever you choose to celebrate!
• Bi-annual, seasonal recharge days
• Other annual leave perks including, quarterly long weekends, additional holidays after longevity of service and the option to buy further holiday days
• Sabbatical opportunities after 5 years service
• Enhanced parental and reproductive health policies, supporting every stage of family planning including access to menstrual and menopause leave
• Enhanced policies to support with leave for medical reasons, caring for dependents, compassionate or bereavement reasons
• Training, learning and development opportunities, both individual and company-wide
• A revered employee engagement programme including frequent surveys and retros. Your opportunity to have your voice heard and genuinely make a difference to your place of work
• 2 days per month of ‘Thrive Time’. This is your personal development time you can spend on anything you want. Want to focus on innovation? Volunteer for a charity? Enrol for a qualification? We’ll give you the time to do this
• Regular company and team socials, events and celebrations

Based on our 3 principles: Work from anywhere, Freedom to choose and Cultural Unity. We believe everyone has the right to work from wherever they want. This choice will always lay with the employee and not the employer. We hire the best and trust you to manage and deliver your own work. Whether you are 100% remote, hybrid or come into one of our offices every day, every Hallamer is an equally important part of our culture.

Benefits:

We’re also proud to offer plenty of employee benefits:

• Company bonus scheme
• Competitive pension scheme
• Monthly wellbeing allowance
• Access to paid for therapy and counselling services
• Payroll giving opportunities for charitable donations
• Travel to work schemes and electric vehicle salary sacrifice scheme
• Know someone who would fit right in at Hallam? We also have a new employee referral incentive
• Compensation: £45-55k DOE

We highly encourage applicants from under-represented ethnic groups and LGBTQ+ communities. Throughout the recruitment process, we will strive to make interviews as diverse and gender-balanced as possible for impartiality. As long as you’re qualified, you’ll receive equal consideration for employment regardless of race, religion, colour, gender or disability.