A strategic review is an excellent way to keep the whole agency up to date with the agency’s strategies for account growth
In the fast pace of agency life where reacting to client needs takes priority, it’s quite common to de-prioritise important internal projects such as agency house promotion, post-campaign analysis and strategic reviews.
What is a strategic account review?
A strategic account review is a complete overview of the account in the form of a report or presentation.
It is an internal confidential document used by the agency team and contains all the information the agency knows about the client’s business, the work the agency has done for the client, an overview of how the relationship is going as well as strategies for account growth.
It is usually generated by a member of the account handling team and is kept refreshed and up to date with new facts that emerge.
Why have a strategic account review?
There are different potential benefits of having a strategic account review. Here are a few:
- It serves as an excellent all encompassing handover document for anyone joining the agency so they don’t need to waste time getting up to speed with all the account information and can hit the ground running
- It enables any member of the agency team to keep themselves up to date with what’s happening on any account i.e. they can access this information independently which reduces the need to spend time in meetings
- From the account team’s perspective they can present it internally to the agency team and therefore it can be an opportunity to show the rest of the agency how much they understand their client and that they are looking at the account from a strategic as well as a tactical perspective – and practice their presentation skills at the same time!
What elements are contained within the strategic review?
The broad categories you would include in the review are as follows:
- Account facts
- Client overview and financial goals
- Brand strategic objectives / market overview
- Agency strategic approach
- Agency resource plan and scope of work
- Agency current status
- Relationship challenges/opportunities, goals and actions
- Year’s growth plan and new business opportunities
- Actions
Keeping the strategic review updated
The reason this document is so important is that it ultimately saves time. When so many agency personnel work across lots of different brands it’s easy to lose track of different forms of account information; strategy, client contacts, relationship history etc.
Putting all this information into one concise document serves as your ‘agency bible’.
So do you already have a similar system for keeping track of your accounts? How do you ensure you keep the wider agency team updated on account information?
