Duarte’s Senior Account Managers (SAM) are responsible for building deep, lasting, transformative relationships with our agency clients, who partner with Duarte to communicate with empathy and tell stories that resonate. 

As a SAM you will own relationships with client stakeholders and your assigned project manager(s) across the relationship lifecycle. You will: 

• Set the strategy for our partnership with your one client or portfolio of clients. You will align and inspire your project management and creative teams with that strategy. 
• Help your client stakeholders see, understand, and frame their communication challenges and recognize the value of solving those challenges.   
• Match those customer needs to appropriate Duarte solutions from across our company. 
• Present and fine-tune those solutions in partnership with our customers to close deals, in keeping with our business and team needs. 
• Provide relationship oversight and champion each project’s success, through completion. 
• Follow up with customers as they apply our solutions and evolve to their next new needs and challenges. 

Measurement 

This role assumes an average monthly billability rate of 50%, but that’s far from the only metric against which performance will be measured.  We’ll also consider:  

• Your portfolio’s or named account’s revenue to forecast and budgeted profit margin  
• Qualitative metrics (to be defined) such as: 
• Team wellbeing, delight, employee engagement 
• Team performance and professional development 
• Client satisfaction with the Duarte experience 
• Data quality and business protection completion 
• Leadership acumen and support for strategic progress 

Essential Duties & Responsibilities 

Strategy, Planning, and Forecasting 

• Determine Duarte’s strategy for maintaining transformational relationships with your client(s), with engagements that are ideal for our clients, our people, and our business.   
• Understand and be able to articulate Duarte’s business strategy, so you can ladder your strategy up to it. 
• Research, understand, and document your client(s)’ own business strategy and relevant communication needs, to inform your client strategy.  
• Document your client strategy and communicate it clearly to align and motivate your team and leadership. Lead internal quarterly business reviews (QBRs). 
• Map our relationships within each client; know who we know and who we should know – then ensure your client strategy includes concrete actions to nurture those relationships.  
• Maintain a twice-yearly 12-month forecast of your team’s revenue and the mix of project types/creative needs.  

Advising, designing solutions, and selling 

• Actively listen to clients. Predict and tease out relevant needs. Execute proactive sales plays/account-based-marketing (ABM) campaigns, architect ideal solutions, and persuade clients to engage us as transformational partners. 
• Effectively match needs with appropriate Duarte value propositions and solutions, based on your deep knowledge of the Duarte Method and our team’s capabilities, as well as surrounding context. Be an advisor and partner as you pitch and sell. Meet your forecasted revenue target. 
• Estimate projects accurately. Write compelling, clear, and factually correct proposals and statements of work (SOWs). Collaborate with your team’s Project Management personnel to ensure SOWs have feasible timing, resourcing requirements, and deliverables. 
• Manage contracts and negotiations, working with legal and VP of Operations to ensure we mitigate our risk and protect our business. Understand your client(s)’ MSA and the implications of its terms. 
• Maintain accurate and timely data about client relationships in Salesforce; use resulting insights to fuel strategic planning.  

Stewardship of business and people 

• Understand and monitor your team’s monthly P&L for performance to revenue and profitability targets. Understand what factors you can and can’t control, and make daily decisions that lead to target P&L performance.  
• Live Duarte’s values (BLIS) in daily decisions. Balance team well-being, client delight, and financial objectives. Monitor your team’s workload and billability.  
• See patterns and connect dots; identify IP opportunities that Duarte can use to solve customer needs across all our services and products. 
• Lead and contribute to internal task forces that advance our business, team health, and operations efficiency.   
• Contribute your energy and strengths to functional team meetings and trainings, as well as to Duarte’s internal culture-building events. 

Management of Creative Production for Large Events 

• Oversee the creative production process for large-scale events, ensuring all elements align with the client’s vision and objectives. 
• Collaborate with event producers to execute on-site production of event visuals. 
• Develop and manage event budgets, timelines, and production schedules. 
• Coordinate with creative teams to produce event materials, such as presentations, videos, and interactive experiences. 
• Ensure all creative deliverables meet quality standards and are delivered on time. 
• Troubleshoot and resolve any issues that arise during the event planning and execution phases. 
• Maintain strong relationships with event stakeholders, including clients, vendors, and internal teams. 
• Stay updated on industry trends and best practices in event production to continuously improve our processes and offerings. 

Project sponsorship and management 

• Transfer project knowledge effectively to your team’s project management personnel. Ensure everyone on all sides begins each project aligned on deliverables, budget, timeline, and client objectives/expectations. 
• Be knowledgeable about projects in flight, and ready to help solve problems, escalate issues, wrangle clients, and re-scope projects as needed – prioritizing demands and operating with coolness under pressure.  Engage in projects at key milestones and moments, to promote the deep, transformational relationships your strategy requires. 
• In our organization structure, our SAMs serve as project managers for roughly 15% to 20% of their time. (They do this, for example, when there are more concurrent client projects running at a time than the team’s PM can manage alone; when the team is down a PM due to attrition or onboarding or being on loan to another team, and so on.) Therefore, it’s important our SAMs can reliably complete the detail-oriented, thorough work of a project manager. This will include tasks such as: 
• Scheduling and facilitating client meetings 
• Documenting and communicating clear next steps, actions, tasks 
• Monitoring project progress to timeline and budget, managing shifts as they occur, and ensuring all team members are aligned on expectations, risks, etc. 
• More detailed PM duties will be shared in the interview process. 

Other duties as assigned 

Personnel Management 

In this role, you will not have any formal direct reports. However, as the de facto leader of the account’s dedicated team, you are in a position to influence, inspire, and direct the activities of several people across functions. 

• Your team will have at least one assigned project manager, sometimes more based on volume, who will manage your client projects from beginning to end. 
• Your team will have at least one design leader and dedicated or designated designers (an art director and a creative director, plus a designer, for example). 
• Your team will call on shared services creative team members, such as writers, strategists, multimedia experts, and speaker coaches, and “borrow” project managers and designers from other client teams.  

All these individuals will need to understand and be inspired by your account vision. You will support and enable them as they execute that vision, project by project. 

Support 

In addition to the team members listed in the section above, you will also receive support from: 

• Duarte’s Resource Manager, for identifying and securing the right resources to enable engagement success and client growth. 
• Our Operations and Finance teams, for visibility into your team’s P&L and other financial metrics, use of Salesforce and OpenAir, contract and legal negotiations, and other functional expertise.   
• Our HR team, for your and your team’s training and development, performance management guidance, psychometrics support, and other leadership needs. 
• Our Head of Client Services and our EVP of Customers, for help designing account strategies, capturing insights from customer feedback, and executing account-based marketing plays. 

To perform this job successfully, an individual must be able to perform each essential duty satisfactorily. The requirements listed below are representative of the knowledge, skill, and/or ability required. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions. 

• 5+ years’ experience in managing client relationships and client success, and in selling services to meet forecasted targets of $2M+ annually. Experience doing this within a creative agency setting (such as brand, communications, design, or marketing services) is preferred but not required.  
• Track record of nurturing long-term client or stakeholder relationships. 
• P&L management experience is ideal but not required 
• Experience with matching customer needs to appropriate solutions and value propositions, architecting solutions, and writing compelling pitches and proposals. 
• Experience with aligning and inspiring project team members on both the agency and client (or team and internal customer) sides. 
• Experience managing at least one direct report is preferred. 
• Project management certification is welcomed but not required. 
• Experience and comfort with customer relationship management software such as Salesforce for data capture, planning, analysis, and reporting. 
• Experience and comfort using the Microsoft Office suite of software and collaboration tools such as OpenAir, Netsuite, Microsoft Planner, Microsoft Teams, Zoom, and Google Workplace. 

Language Skills 

Ability to read and interpret documents such as contracts, operating and maintenance instructions, and procedure manuals. Ability to write routine reports and correspondence. Ability to speak effectively before groups of customers or employees of organization. 

Reasoning Ability 

Ability to solve practical problems and deal with a variety of concrete variables in situations changing frequently. Ability to interpret a variety of instructions furnished in written, oral, diagram, or schedule form. 

Physical Demands
The physical demands described here are representative of those that must be met by an employee to successfully perform the essential functions of this job. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions. While performing the duties of this job, the employee is regularly required to sit; use hands to finger, handle, or feel and talk or hear. The employee is frequently required to reach with hands and arms. Specific vision abilities required by this job include close vision. 

Employees new to Duarte typically come in at the start of the pay range. Duarte focuses on providing a simple and transparent pay structure which is based on a variety of factors, including location, experience and job-related skills.

Base pay is part of a total compensation package that includes monthly stipends for health, wellness and tech spending, and benefits (including 100% subsidized medical coverage, dental and vision for employees).

Base pay range (National Average) per year:  $83,191 -$105,309