For medium to large consultancy organisations, its useful to implement a client management structure which has multiple relationship points. This ensures redundancy and consistency in account management, and reduces single points of failure and potential rogue behaviour.

This is the concept of grouping teams of account managers together so that they support each other and complement each other’s skills. For example, a unit might have two account pods, with a Client Director heading up a number of Client Managers and Partners. The benefits of this are

• Helps the branch or General Manager have fewer reports better succession planning
• Improved communication and knowledge management
• Divide the revenue and workload evenly
• Creates a team with a variety of strengths
• Provides mentoring for juniors and for seniors to be Branch managers
• Can be broken out into more squads as growth occurs
• Gets rid of ownership problems eg “these are my customer” and single point of failure
• Reduced rogue behaviours because of counterbalances.

The key elements to a multi relationship structure are

• An appointed team with a team ethos. No-one “owns” the account, they manage aspects on behalf of the company
• A commitment to continually share information between the members of the team
• A primary client manager who is responsible for transactions and growth
• A secondary client manager who performs back up duties when the primary is unavailable
• A senior client account representative (Account Director) who takes a big picture strategic and high-level relationship point of view
• A RACI detailing the responsibilities of the three team members and how they interact
• A delegation of authority matrix to ensure financial scope of the roles
• A senior Manager GM Director level who has overall accountability

The responsibilities of each of the three main roles is as follows

Primary Responsbilities

• Responding to Requests
• Regular account Meeting
• Account Reporting
• Account Planning
• Account Growth
• Commercial administration
• Commercial monitoring
• Rates Management
• Build Relationships
• Client Issue Resolution
• Quality Delivery
• Client Satisfaction

Secondary Responsibilities

• As above for when the primary is absent

Senior Responsibilities

• Strategic input to the account
• Counterbalance and challenge the Primary.
• Internal escalation to Director level in the event of dispute
• Client Issue Escalation
• Build Senior Relationships