The Art of Account Management: Sohini Mitra on Why Trust Is Key to Building a Strong Relationship

Sohini Mitra is SVP, director of client services at Jack Health, global brand experience agency Jack Morton’s healthcare specialty practice, where she is driving client services and expansion plans for the agency’s most prominent healthcare clients. With more than 20 years of experience, Sohini began her journey executing trade shows, congresses, meetings and events for an association management company, before moving in house to work in heavily regulated spaces such as telecommunications and nuclear energy. In 2011, Sohini finally joined the agency world, and she hasn’t looked back since!

LBB> How did you first get involved in account management and what appealed to you about it? 

Sohini> My career initially started off in public relations, but from going to live events, I started helping the account teams on executing the events, and just fell in love with working with clients and creating experiences from scratch. I transitioned onto the account team working in industries such as juvenile products, healthcare, and even unfinished furniture. I loved the notion that I would be a part of something that started with an idea and ended with an actual product really made me feel like I was part of an ecosystem where all contributions mattered.

LBB> What is it about your personality, skills and experience that has made account management such a great fit? 

Sohini> I think like many account folks, I am a type A personality. I’m all about problem solving, understanding the urgency of situations, and basically trying to build a better mousetrap all the time. Over the last few decades, I have learned to prioritise my responsibilities which was difficult in the beginning and honestly, made me a bit of a workaholic. But learning from my early years has really helped me when developing talent within my teams and being able to help guide healthy careers for the next generation.

LBB> What piece of advice would you give to someone just starting their career in account management? 

Sohini> I would say be a sponge. Ask a lot of questions, even if you think they are silly. Ask to shadow team members and if given the opportunity, sit in on client meetings. Just observing how people interact will go a long way in understanding human behaviour. This will help you become a “client whisperer” as you progress.

LBB> Thinking back to some of your most challenging experiences you’ve had in your career, what do you think tends to lie at the heart of the more tense or difficult client-agency relationships? 

Sohini> I think it’s important for your clients to know that your job is to make them look good to their team. We are a support system. When your client is successful, that means you are successful. It’s not about showing off your knowledge or being a know it all, it’s about educating and working collaboratively to exceed expectations.

LBB> And what are the keys to building a productive and healthy relationship?

Sohini> Authenticity is the first thing that pops into my mind. You can’t fake caring about the programme or client. It’s easy for people to see that. You need to be your true authentic self and that will help build trust. Trust is key to building any strong and long-lasting relationship. Your client needs to know they can depend on you and your organisation. This will take time. Sometimes you can achieve this quickly, but I always like to remind myself that slow and steady wins the race. 

LBB> What’s your view on disagreement and emotion - is there a place for it and if not, why not? If so, why - and what does productive disagreement look like? 

Sohini> There is most definitely room for disagreement. How boring would it be if someone just talks and someone else just nods and agrees. We all bring different things to the table. Our life experiences shape us, so I think bringing different perspectives is necessary to achieve a successful outcome. I also think the word “emotion” gets a bad rap. We are human. We are made up of emotions. Every day you probably run a gamut of emotions from happiness to sadness, to amusement and excitement. Why is it a bad thing to have those present when having discussions with a client? For me, productive disagreement is a respectful way of having passionate conversation. Always remember to listen to what the other person is saying and process it before having a rebuttal. Be sure the language you are using is friendly and not attacking. And if you find yourself in a situation that you feel is getting too heated, it’s fine to take a step back and ask for clarification. 

LBB> Historically, account management has been characterised as the mediator in an adversarial client and creative relationship - what do you make of that characterization, is there any nugget of truth in that or is it wildly inaccurate? 

Sohini> I think there’s a nugget of truth somewhere in there from how it has been in the past. What it boils down to is that typically, account teams were the ones having daily interactions with the clients and building deep relationships with them, so sometimes when creative had a particular approach or angle to something that the client wasn’t 100% on, it could cause a little tension. That’s when the account team would go into “client whisperer” mode and help resolve the situation – which goes back to the strong client/account relationship and the trust factor. However, these days, we tend to include discipline leads on core teams, so the clients are interacting more often with team members from various disciplines, including creative, who they might not have had much exposure to in the past. So, let’s put this characterisation to bed. We are all on the same team and all have the same goals, so why not work as a unified front? 

LBB> These days, agencies do so much beyond traditional campaigns and as account management you’re pulling together creative, experience, data, e-commerce, social and more - and that complexity can often be mirrored on the client stakeholder side too? What’s the key to navigating (and helping the client navigate) that complexity? 

Sohini> Open and honest communication is where it all starts. You need to communicate and sometimes over communicate (depending on the situation) what is going on. Being organised is also very important so you can attack all these different work streams and know what your client is going to ask, even before they ask it. Having trackers for the status of different elements and having collaborative work environments also helps. With all the different technologies available these days, it’s much easier to make sure everyone is working with the latest data sets to minimise errors.

LBB> What recent projects are you proudest of and why? What was challenging about these projects from an account management perspective and how did you address those challenges? What was so satisfying about working on these projects? 

Sohini> We recently completed a live event that was years in the making. Because of pandemic-related delays throughout the project, the team had changed a few times and the goals and objectives of the event were also in flux due to the changing global landscape, so there were a lot of variables that were out of our control. However, despite these complications, the account team had their finger on the pulse and made sure to communicate and educate as we lived through it all. We made sure we had a strong “core” team that was up to speed on the big picture and then supplemented with specialised task forces that helped to execute. It was amazing to watch it all come together and see how pleased the clients were to see their hard work come to life. The reviews of the event were great, and the clients were happy with the ROI. It doesn’t get much better than that!  

We also delivered another event earlier this year where we’ve had some changes on the account team due to life events. I think sometimes it’s easy to forget that people have lives outside of work, but things like weddings, babies, retirements all happen, so it’s important that we have the ability to plan for those changes and that we put those contingency plans in place. It’s always difficult when a team member who has historic knowledge of the account or a long-standing relationship with the client needs to step away, so I find that cross training within the account team and having multiple contacts available to jump in for clients is a necessity. 

I think for many of us in this world, seeing the full lifecycle of a project sparks our joy, gives us fulfilment, and teaches us how to continue to improve – which only makes the next project even better.