Role
Account Director*
* It’s been helpfully pointed out that this may be a higher level position than the average Account Director in a PR agency. Basically, head up the loving and looking after of our clients, and in time shape and mould that function, and reap the financial and real-world rewards as they grow. If you’re as good as we want you to be then you’ll be a board director, a company director, take on other areas too, end up running the joint. I’m getting carried away (maybe), but the point is this isn’t just ‘you get the word director in the job title’. This is: you behave like a director, think and act like a director, make good shizzle happen.
(plus any fancy words you want to add e.g. Digital Account Director; Social Media Account Director)
Rewards
- A rewarding combination of Salary and our juicy Annual Profit Share Scheme will be negotiated
- Indicative salary range is £35,000 – £42,000
- Assuming we’re all performing and flying along the bonus will be thousands of pounds but not tens of thousands
Background
NixonMcInnes has acquired an enviable client base of top brands, and would like to find a capable, experienced Account Director to join the team to nurture and develop the relationships within these client organisations to ensure that we deliver the most value we possibly can.
Purpose
To grow our business by growing the relationships we have with our clients, and consistently delivering incredible business value to those clients.
To focus on profitability through to delivery (as opposed to sell it and run).
This new director will be a peer to the two founding directors, Will McInnes and Tom Nixon and will join a talented, young management team mainly grown from within.
The role will be focused on clients, but with a flexible remit to help shape and develop the business. It’s an exciting opportunity to be a part of a successful business that still has a huge amount of potential.
Experience & credentials
- Management experience in an agency or professional services firm: especially PR, or digital media; marketing, management consultancy, strategy or similar.
- We are particularly interested in candidates who have worked at director level, however this is not an essential requirement.
- Experience of managing top brand clients for professional services where individual clients may have an annual value of >£150K, as well as proven track record growing such relationships from an initial smaller ‘in’
- Experience delivering high quality consultancy, speaking, training and reports
- Demonstrable experience of making improvements to how an agency business performs.
- Managing and developing people.
- Expertise in at least one practical discipline related to the services that we deliver for clients. This might include PR, brand; design; content; strategy; marketing.
- Professional or graduate qualifications would be interesting but not required
- Excellent industry contacts.
Responsibilities – high-level
- Aggressively expanding our client relationships by ensuring that clients rate the quality of the relationship with us and the business value they derive from our work together as greater than that of any other agency they work with
- Taking full responsibility for the relationships between our company and our clients’- the buck stops here, with you
- Ensuring that the client expectations set at the sales stage are exceeded.
- Contributing to strategic company decisions.
- Helping to recruit, manage and develop other members of the team.
Responsibilities – in detail
Understanding client needs:
- Understand an individual clients needs – at all levels from business to project.
- With the client build an annual strategic plan that identifies new opportunities and projects, and required service/maintenance activities.
- Understand the environment the client operates in – by understanding their industry trends, competition, market, financial situation, operations, culture, IT infrastructure, business challenges. and so on.
- Support the Sales team with the development and submission of pitches, and closing sales.
- Work as a consultant to help the client understand their needs and issues and lead them proactively towards finding solutions.
Resources:
- Ensure the resources required for the execution of the client’s strategic plan are made available.
- Help the client find the resources they need either within NM or elsewhere.
Relationships:
- Build a strong and trusting relationship with the most appropriate client contact.
- Ensure strong and strategic relationships are maintained and developed between the client team and the NM team.
- Facilitate the creation of networks of people both within and between multiple clients.
- Create a context for successful relationships between NM and the account, including creating and implementing project escalation processes and procedures.
Intelligence:
- Ensure clients have an accurate and up-to-date picture of the services that NM provides.
- Keep the internal NM team informed of the client’s strategic and tactical direction.
- Prepare accurate forecasts for renewal business and input into the sales forecasting process.
- Give input to Marketing, and input into marketing campaigns.
- Give input to product and service development within NM based on what clients need.
- Ensure that all necessary information about the client and the relationship is available and up-to-date.
- Report progress in achieving results with clients to the Board/Sales Director.
Developing NixonMcInnes:
- Support and coach other people working with clients.
- Contribute to the broader development and growth of NM.
Characteristics
- Organised; likeable; optimistic; robust; assertive; diplomatic; ambitious, streetwise.
- Excellent commercial awareness.
- A passion for the web and social media.
- People-oriented and approachable.
- Willing to challenge and change the business.
- Able to lead a cross-functional team, and to convince and carry the team and client when necessary
- Ability to Get Things Done.
- Highly organised.
- Commitment to our highly open, transparent and democratic company culture.
- Ability to step back and look at the big picture.
- Ability to balance short- and long-term results.
- Sense of humour and fun to be with.
Company info
Nixon McInnes is a digital agency specialising in social media. We are based in central Brighton, 200 metres from Brighton Pier. Founded in 2000 we are now a team of 17 and widely recognised as leaders in our field.
We help our clients to understand the changing world online and then craft the campaigns, websites, tools and ways of working that enable them to harness social media to improve the way they communicate with the world.
The work we do truly blurs the lines between online marketing, online PR, business strategy and web design and build.
Our clients include Channel 4, BMW, O2, Fat Face, MORE TH>N, First Capital Connect; Neilson Active Holidays; Harley Medical Group; Stannah; Southampton University and Cisco.
Company culture
We have a refreshing and unique company culture based on a number of guiding democratic principles:
- Freedom: To work the hours that suit you (very flexible working policy – way more than flexitime and duvet days); wear what you want; change and improve things.
- Transparency: Open book accounting so everyone knows what everyone else earns and how much profit is made; open communication and distaste for secrets.
- Participation: Flat company hierarchy; voting on key company decisions; regular guest seat at company board meetings.
- Personal development: Regular one-to-one catch-ups with a director; a training budget; books and subscriptions; conferences; personal development planning; a chance to shape your career within a successful, growing company with a wide range of promotion opportunities.
- Rewards: excellent salary; performance and company profit-related bonuses. 24 days holiday per year plus bank holidays and a company vote on additional holiday at Christmas. We like a nice team lunch on the company regularly too.
- Fun: Life’s too short to focus only on money.
Application process
You wanna apply? Cool! To apply, please email Will McInnes with your CV (first name and then our domain name above).
Successful applicants will have an initial brief telephone chat with Will, and then a series of informal and formal meetings with the directors and co-workers at NixonMcInnes. At later stages we will introduce a few small real-world tests or scenarios to give you a chance to prove your abilities and strut your stuff.
For short-listed candidates we will then also be using a personality test because a previous (wonderful, and insightful) team day indicated we had a bias towards some particular personality types and we are looking to create a more diverse team in every sense.
Every applicant will be contacted with feedback.
I hope you see the thoroughness demonstrates our commitment to quality. Bonjour.
