Account executive

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The job role account executive covers various descriptions depending on the specific industry covering mainly sales and marketing roles.

Business to Business sales

An Account Executive is an outside sales position where key business to business accounts are common.

• Account Executive – Outside sales position. This is a business to business sales position responsible for cultivating and maintaining key business relationships. Account Executives are able to make high level decisions without consulting the VP or President of sales. An Account Executive seeks out purchasing decision makers and develops working relationships with them. They design and deliver presentations highlighting the products and services of their company. They negotiate contract terms with clients and close sales. They offer technical and or sales training where appropriate.
• Account Associate/Representative – Sales support. This person is a customer service representative contact.
• Account Manager – Inside sales position. An Account manager manages existing customers.
• Vice president of sales - Leads a team of Account Managers
• President of sales

IT organizations

In IT organizations, an account executives is a senior management role, responsible for executing large (50 mln +) contracts. Control of the profit and loss is one of the main activities, together with customer alignment on a senior level. Usually an account executive has one or more account managers in his/her staff, to cover the various towers a large contract is mainly built of. The account managers directly or indirectly control the program and project managers performing the actual job.

For very large contracts (1 bln +), 600 + people could be involved in contract execution.

Contract life cycle

In an ideal situation, at the end of a contract life cycle, the account executive and part of the staff will be involved in new contract negotiations. This could be for the same account or for a new customer. Once the contract is signed, the account executive and staff will be directly up to speed. However, practice shows this situation will only be achieved one out of five times on average.

Marketing and advertising industries

In the marketing and advertising industries, account executives are typically responsible for client servicing and client acquisition. The account executive serves as the direct link between the advertising agency and the existing client, managing day-to-day affairs and ensuring customer satisfaction. The word "executive" in this instance means to "execute" - that is he/she is mostly responsible for more practical parts of the advertising jobs (i.e. media placement, distributions, contract negotiation, etc.). The account executive is also tasked with bringing more clients into the agency to increase revenue. The account executive will typically have 1-2 assistants and reports to the respective account supervisor/manager^[1] and/or to the client service director/account director. This depends on the country and on the account (s)he is working for. In Spain for example, an account executive could probably develop very important campaigns on his/her own.^{[citation needed]}

References

1. ^ http://www.prospects.ac.uk/advertising_account_executive_job_description.htm

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