Questions to Ask Account Managers

The questions

Open any question to see why it works.

1. 1

   How many other accounts are you carrying right now?

   This is the single best predictor of your response times. Ask for the number and the size range, because being one of six accounts and being one of forty are different products sold under the same job title.

2. 2

   Where does my account sit in your book: near the top or near the bottom?

   Smaller clients get the newest managers and the least attention, and most people will answer this honestly if you ask without menace. If you are at the bottom, you now know to be specific about what you need rather than assuming it is being watched.

3. 3

   Who else works on this account, and what does each of them actually do?

   The account manager is often a routing layer between you and the people doing the work. Getting the names of the analyst, the engineer or the strategist tells you who to ask for when something technical comes up.

4. 4

   What can you approve yourself, and what has to go to someone above you?

   An account manager who cannot approve a credit, a rush job or a small scope change is a message queue with a phone number. Knowing the limit in advance tells you when to stop negotiating with them and ask for their manager.

5. 5

   How do you prefer to be reached, and what is a normal response time from you?

   Get both the channel and the working hours, and notice whether they name an actual interval or say as soon as possible. A stated number is something you can point at later without it becoming an argument about tone.

6. 6

   Who covers your accounts when you are on leave or off sick?

   Coverage is usually theoretical until it is needed. Ask for the name and whether that person has ever been briefed on your account, because the honest answer is often no and it is much easier to fix in advance.

7. 7

   What does a normal month of contact look like between us?

   Expectations diverge quietly here. If they picture a quarterly review and you picture a weekly call, neither of you will notice until you feel neglected and they feel micromanaged.

8. 8

   How long have you had this account, and who had it before you?

   Turnover in the seat is the thing that costs you most, because each new manager restarts the education. Frequent handovers also tell you something about how the company treats the role.

9. 9

   What is the first thing you would want to understand about our business?

   A good answer is about how you make money or how you are judged internally. A weak answer is a list of their own product features, which means you are getting an order taker rather than someone who will spot a problem before you do.

10. 10

    How are you measured on your side: renewal, growth in spend, satisfaction scores?

    Their compensation explains most of their behaviour in advance. Someone carrying a quota on a new product line will bring you that product line, and knowing it is not cynical, it just tells you how to read the recommendation.

11. 11

    What have you learned from other clients like us that we should copy?

    Part of what you are paying for is pattern recognition across their whole book. If the answer is vague or entirely about your own account, they are handling your admin rather than bringing you anything you could not have worked out alone.

12. 12

    Where have you seen this go wrong for clients at our stage?

    Willingness to describe failure is the fastest credibility test available in the meeting. It also hands you a specific list of things to watch in the first three months, which is the period when most of it goes wrong.

13. 13

    What do you need from us in order to do your job well?

    Reversing the direction gets an unusually candid answer. A large share of account problems start on the client side, normally slow approvals or three people sending contradictory instructions, and this is where you find out if you are that client.

14. 14

    When something goes badly wrong, what does escalation actually look like?

    You want a name, a trigger and a timeframe. An answer of I would let you know is not an escalation path, and the moment you need one is the worst possible moment to be inventing it.

15. 15

    What does the reporting look like, and can I see a real example?

    Ask for a redacted report from a live account rather than a template. The gap between what the sales team showed you and what the account team actually sends every month is often substantial.

16. 16

    What is not included that clients usually assume is?

    This is a direct request for the change order list. Every vendor has three or four items customers reliably expect for free, and hearing them now is cheaper than discovering them on an invoice.

17. 17

    How does pricing usually move at renewal, and when does that conversation start?

    An uplift arriving four weeks before expiry leaves you no time to compare alternatives. Ask for the typical increase and the month they normally open the discussion, then put that month in your own calendar.

18. 18

    If we ever wanted to leave, what would that involve in practice?

    Notice periods, data export formats and anything that only lives inside their system. Ask this while you are happy, because asking while you are angry turns a logistics question into a threat.

19. 19

    What do clients complain about most when working with your company?

    An honest answer here buys them more credibility than any case study, and it tends to be accurate because they hear it weekly. Nothing comes to mind usually means they have not been in the role very long.

20. 20

    Six months from now, what would make you say this account has gone well?

    This surfaces their private definition of success. If it is only that you renewed, you know the shape of the relationship, and you can decide whether that is enough for what you are paying.