What is CAM Community?
Picture this: you wake up to an email from what we’ll euphemistically call a ‘challenging’ client, demanding a Zoom call RIGHT NOW. Does it derail your morning?
If you’re an agency owner, and you answered ‘yes,’ that means your Client Account Manager (while lovely and hard working, we’re sure!) probably doesn’t have enough training to stay cool and collected to handle all the things that client management might throw their way.
If you’re a Client Account Manager (CAM) yourself, and you answered ‘yes,’ that probably means you don’t have enough tools in your toolkit to have confidence in your own ability to weather the many storms that client management can bring.
In either case, you’re not alone. And by that we mean literally—you’re not alone. Our new (and revolutionary!) CAM Community connects you to comprehensive training and systems, and to a supportive community of experienced fellow Account Managers.
Never heard of CAM training? Here’s how our community and training can take your agency and/or your career to the next level.
So … There’s Training For Client Account Managers?
So maybe you’ve got a fancy degree, perhaps in marketing or public relationships, where you took lots of courses from esteemed professors in all sorts of traditional topics. But … client management? Isn’t that something that just flows naturally from all the marketing work you’ll do for clients?
Short answer: not at all.
Long answer: at the end of the day, Client Account Management is the most critical aspect of your digital marketing agency, and it’s too important to ignore. If you don’t have happy clients, then you won’t have an agency for long! And far from ‘coming naturally,’ Client Account Management requires a unique skill set of its own.
Not only do you have to be up-to-date on all the best practices in digital marketing. You've also got to be able to translate those efficiently and effectively to people who may not understand or appreciate them, while also managing projects, writing reports, invoicing, running meetings, staying on top of daily communication (keep it friendly and professional!), and answering whatever questions might come your way. All while also supporting and directing a team of people, including possible ‘outside’ sub-contractors.
Oh, and don’t forget that your clients think that juggling all these balls is easy (if they even think about everything you’re doing on the backend at all). And so you’ve got to be able to do it all with a smile.
And that ‘with a smile’ bit is really key. Yes, you need to be able to offer your clients professional customer service. But we’re also talking about you here.
Working as a remote CAM offers so many wonderful opportunities (just listen to all the benefits our CAM Jill enjoys from her career here).
But if you’re always stressed, always worried about keeping up, and always dreading your next client call … then that starts to dull the shine off those wonderful opportunities, no?
In other words, having the skills to crush Client Account Management is ultimately the difference between a good life and career, and a great one.
And for all your agency owners out there, it’s the difference between a good CAM for your team, and a great one (we consider highly trained CAMs to be unicorns!).
That’s why we’re so proud of our CAM Training. It’s a crash course we provide to both independent Client Account Managers, as well as to agencies who would like to train their people. A 12-week intensive program, it includes a customized Coaching Plan that’s mapped out on your first call, including OKRs and metrics for success tracking. You’ll also get bi-weekly 1:1 coaching sessions, along with our 7-module training and full access to our CAM Library (a comprehensive library with real examples of SOPs, plus lots more tools and tips).
And that’s all on top of instant and unlimited access to our 50+ standard operating procedures, scripts, and templates that you can start using right away. Whew!
We designed this training to teach both hard and soft skills, so that Client Account Managers can have more confidence when speaking to clients. By the end of this course, CAMs can think for themselves, build processes and systems, and share results with clients in a meaningful way. In other words, it’s all the lifelong skills that Client Account Managers need to be truly successful.
“Having great training for our WHOLE team actually increased the overall knowledge for and skill set for everyone in multiple roles,” says Lydia, an agency owner who took advantage of the program. “We are very appreciative.”
And A Community for Client Account Managers?
Our CAM Training is a totally unique and new offering from DOT & Co, … but that’s ok, because we’re totally unique, too!
So, not to brag, but we leveled up the Client Account Management game when we founded DOT & Co. We’re the world’s first Client Account Management agency for digital marketing agencies.
Most of our team started their career as digital marketers themselves. But our founders, Taylor McMaster and Katie Fairweather, discovered they excelled at and enjoyed the client management side of their work the most.
The result? An agency of unicorn-status remote Client Account Managers was born, all committed to full-service client account management.
All our Client-facing Account Managers must go through our CAM Training before they start working with our clients. And this training has always been such a great resource, and one that we’ve shared with other agencies looking to upskill their teams.
But along the way, we realized that it wasn’t just our training and skill sets that drove our success, or our carefully constructed SOPs and templates, or our knack for client gifting.
Because what was our most important resource? Each other.
And from that simple fact, CAM Community was born! This is a monthly membership for Client Account Managers, both those in agencies and those out there hustling on their own. On top of everything you get with CAM Training, with CAM Community you get, well, a community, too!
That means that on top of the training and bi-weekly calls, you’ll also get access to our exclusive community of experienced Client Account Managers, including unlimited Slack support. Got a question? Or two? Or six? We’ve got answers, and we’re just a Slack chat away.
Yes, it’s a little new. But DOT & Co. is a little new, too. And we love helping other Client Account Managers have just as much success as we’ve enjoyed.
Why Ongoing Training Is Important For Client Account Managers
We probably don’t need to tell you this, but digital marketing moves fast. Keeping up with industry trends can be a job in itself—and ongoing training can help keep you abreast of any industry changes.
But regular training benefits Client Account Managers in lots more ways. Personal and professional development isn’t ‘one and done.’ It’s an ongoing process, as you work to gain new knowledge and skills to help you excel with this client and prepare for the next.
Regular training can enhance your (already awesome!) skills. It can also help improve your productivity, as you learn how to manage your time and prioritize your tasks better, so that you’re continually streamlining your personal processes.
All this can help lead to happier clients, of course. But it can help with your confidence and self-esteem … in other words, it can lead to a happier you, too!
Ready to uplevel your Account Management career? Enroll in CAM Community today! Any questions we didn’t answer? Reach out!