By: Kim Blaylock / VP, Account Service

A new year always offers a chance to start fresh. A time to tackle projects you’ve always wanted to do, but never got around to or made time for. In this spirit, I was determined to get an official &Barr Account Service training series off the ground in 2019. I’m happy to report I’ve crossed that resolution off my list – the &Barr Account Service Success Series has already successfully kicked off with two training tracks. The first track is built to enhance account service skills and occurs every two weeks. The second track focuses on client and agency organic growth and is held once per month.

The purpose of the training is two-fold:
1) to foster professional and communications skills that lead to career growth and 2) to identify growth areas for both our clients and our agency, and to offer solutions and services that address those needs.

The “skills” track features training in topics like research, strategy, great creative, public speaking, presentations, negotiations, financials, and business etiquette. The “organic growth” track focuses on meatier subjects that include developing more successful client/agency relationships, identifying how to find and present organic growth ideas to clients, and learning how to deliver more overall value to clients. 

In the kick-off session skills session entitled “Account Service Superstars,” I counseled our account service team of nine on how to become “experience leaders.” As most contact (client-to-agency and agency-to-client) is filtered through the lens of Account Service, it follows that we are responsible for the experience both clients and our internal agency colleagues have. To that end, our account service team needs to be entrenched in our clients’ businesses, focused on driving results and ROI, facilitators of great creative, team leaders, and idea-generators. 

I do believe &Barr is the only Orlando agency offering in-house account service training multiple times per month. It’s an investment our company is happy to make. Not only does it help grow and enrich our team members in their chosen careers, it also means we’ll offer better service and ongoing strategic ideas that help grow our clients’ businesses and brands.