Personality Traits of an Account Manager

We’ve all heard it before: left brain and right brain. The right side is the creative side, and the left side is the more analytical side. Most right brain people are intuitive, and most left-brained people are logical.

Leonard Sommer and his brother run a boutique ad agency in Germany, and were interested to know what made marketing professionals in Germany. They created a brain study that would determine whether someone was right brain or left brain.

Their test was done on 980 marketing professionals in Germany, and it was determined that 43% of German marketers are left-brained, and only 24% are right-brained. 33% of the participants had equal influence on decision-making from both sides of the brain.

The test has been used by one million people in the U.S., and found that 36% of users were left-brained, 30% right-brained, and 34% showed equal balance between both hemispheres.

When we think about the personality traits you would find most valuable in a marketing account manager, what comes to mind? Are they analytical or creative? Left brain or right brain?

Left Brain Characteristics

68% of the Account Managers at TechWyse scored more left brain

ANALYTICAL

Account managers are constantly analyzing the data from digital marketing campaigns. Whether it’s diving into Google Analytics determine the funnel customers take to complete a conversion on your website, reviewing impression share lost to budget on AdWords, or finding the necessary data to complete a competitive analysis, we are always using the analytical part of our brain.

LANGUAGE

I think we can all agree on the importance of communication skills in an account manager. Account managers not only need to be able to communicate effectively with the clients, but also with other members of the team. Our job is to take the convoluted data from your website and marketing campaigns, and relay that information to clients, sometimes with no experience in the digital space. Additionally, we need to complete detailed reports, communicate via email and on the phone everyday with our clients and team members to ensure the health of our clients accounts.

STRATEGY

My favourite part of being an account manager is coming up with strategies for all the different businesses I work with. TechWyse account managers are fortunate enough that each of us has a variety of industries we get to work with. Our role is to understand your industry, your goals and expectations. From there, we create a marketing strategy that aligns your objectives with our digital marketing expertise.

DETAILS

Have you ever been in a presentation, and in front of the room, realize there is a spelling mistake? It happens! Something as small as a decimal point in a report can be the difference between a great converting campaign and poorly converting campaign. These small details can call into question how much attention you are paying to a client’s account. When you are looking at data day-to-day, sometimes your mind plays tricks on you. Account managers can’t afford to make these types of mistakes -- we have to be extremely detailed orientated.

Other traits of the Left Brain include:

• Math

• Numbers

• Reasoning

• Facts

• Rationality

• Logic

Right Brain Characteristics

22% of the Account Managers at TechWyse scored more right brain

INTUITION

Intuition is a key component that makes up the role of an account manager -- this is our greatest superpower! Account managers anticipate problems, we don’t just react to them. We have great intuition allowing us to provide solutions as soon as there are any signs that a strategy might not be working in our favour. We trust our gut.

CURIOSITY

Curiosity is a definite must for any account manager. The digital space is forever changing and becoming more competitive. A successful account manager never settles for what they already know; they take the initiative to develop their skills. It seems like Google has a new algorithm every week, and if we aren’t learning, we are not relevant. Account managers know our knowledge and abilities can always be improved, so we are constantly under construction in order to remain relevant and competitive online.

READING EMOTIONS

“Keep the client happy.” It’s typically the first thing that pops into someone’s mind when you tell them you’re an account manager. Unfortunately, account management isn’t all fancy dinners and sporting events (#WeTheNorth). There is more to keeping the client, and that includes being able to connect with them on a personal level. The most successful account managers know their clients -- their families’ names, their pets, their favourite sports team, and what they did on the weekend. A great account manager connects with their client on an emotional level, and gains their trust. This results in the most successful partnerships.

SEEING THE BIGGER PICTURE

What’s your endgame? What are we trying to accomplish? Focusing on the details, day to day, month to month will only take you so far. Our job is to see the bigger picture. Often, business owners only focus on how one month performed compared to the previous month. This is not how an account manager thinks. We’re looking at the last quarter, or year over year data to determine the successful of our strategies and online campaigns.

“So your traffic decreased, but users are more engaged on your website, and your blog was shared over 100 times!”  Seeing the bigger picture means looking at your campaigns and strategy from all angles, not just plus and minuses.

Other traits of the right brain include:

• Face recognition
• Music
• Colour
• Estimates and comparisons
• Visual imagery and making sense of what we see
• Interpreting context and a person’s tone

What about the rest of the account management team? Well, 10% of the TechWyse account managers, including myself, scored 50/50 on the brain quiz.

Professor Stephen Wilson of University College London told Live Science in an interview, "Brain asymmetry is essential for proper brain function,”

"It allows the two sides of the brain to become specialized, increasing its processing capacity and avoiding situations of conflict where both sides of the brain try to take charge."

We had the entire staff at TechWyse take a test to see if they were more left or right brain. Do you think we had more left brain or right brain team members?

The great thing about working with so many different brains is the collaboration. The lefties are always helping out the righties, and vice versa! In the end, I don’t think it matters whether your account manager is more left brain or right brain. It’s the combination of all the best traits of the brain that make a successful AM.

Interested in knowing what side of the brain you use more of? Take the brain quiz!

See how the rest of our departments scored on the brain quiz!