Creative Agency Account Manager Podcast

Welcome to episode 166.

This conversation is going to be particularly interesting for you if you’re an agency owner struggling with spreadsheets, disconnected systems and lack of visibility over pricing, profitability or resourcing.

It’s a story about how one agency owner solved their own operational problem, turned that internal solution into a platform, and is now helping other agencies solve the same challenges.

I’m joined by Anna Appleton-Clayton, Managing Director of We Create Digital and CEO of Rofinery. With over 15 years of agency experience, she understands both the day-to-day pressures and the bigger challenges agencies face as they grow. She’s taken that firsthand experience and built Rofinery to reflect how agencies actually operate - focusing on practical and intuitive features that work in the real world, not just in theory.

Alfie Wenegieme is the Founder of Profit Sprout Consultancy, COO of Rofinery and a chartered accountant with over 18 years’ experience helping agencies unlock profitability and commercial success. Alfie helps agencies of all sizes from small to medium size independent firms to global players to strengthen financial management, build robust commercial operations, and elevate commercial capability across teams through training.

We talk about:
- why so many agencies are still running on gut feel
- why time tracking still matters
- where profit can quietly leak out of the business
- which clients are actually worth more focus
- and how AI is changing client expectations around speed, cost and value.

You can find out more about Rofinery here: https://rofinery.com/
You can connect with Anna and Alfie here:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/anna-appleton-claydon/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/alfie-wenegieme/
https://www.linkedin.com/company/rofinery/

If you’d like more insights on agency account management, client retention and growth, go to the Account Management Skills website and sign up for my newsletter. https://www.accountmanagementskills.com

Welcome to episode 165.

This episode will be particularly useful to you if you’re an agency owner or account manager who wants to move your client conversation away from execution and further upstream into strategy, ideas and innovation.

My guest is Phil Blackmore, the Co-Founder of Create Health, an Ideas Lab for pharma and life sciences brands. He helps clients solve communication and innovation challenges through ideas, thinking and senior experience, combining strategic human insight with AI-enabled ways of working. The business has evolved towards more upstream, ideas-led engagements, including structured ideas days designed to unlock fresh thinking, align teams and create new opportunities for activation. Phil is also a Co-Founder of The Health House, a support network for independent healthcare agencies and is currently writing a book on optimism.

Phil shares how he’s moved his agency upstream by focusing on ideas, strategic thinking and innovation workshops - the kind of value clients can’t easily replicate in-house or with AI.

We also discuss how these ideas labs help deepen client relationships, open up new opportunities and reposition the agency from supplier to strategic partner.
Phil’s ideas lab is a brilliant example of creating a space for clients to think differently, solve bigger business challenges, and reposition the agency in the client’s mind as more of a strategic partner that understands their business challenges as well as an agency that executes projects well.

You can connect with Phil Blackmore here:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/pblackmore/
https://createhealth.com/

Links mentioned in our chat:
10 Commandment:
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/pblackmore_communication-insight-empathy-activity-7331213480416432129--F5W?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop&rcm=ACoAAAq4nv0BHgXCU2xyFAjDt3MBp1XCFLXeoeI

What If?
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCyBabRfl-Ek1TRYUy5VnPHQ

Most agency owners and leaders I speak to have a question they've been carrying around for months. Maybe it's about a client they can't quite work out what to do with. Maybe it's about a team member that should be growing accounts but isn't. Maybe it's about a hiring decision or a team change they've been putting off.

I’m offering a 90-minute owner-level Account Growth Strategy Session. It’s you and I focussed on your agency challenge together drawing on my hands-on experience working with client facing teams for years. You’ll have a written diagnosis afterwards, and a clear next step.

You can find it at:
http://accountmanagementskills.com/account-growth-strategy
and there's a 20-minute intro call you can book if you want to talk it through first.

Welcome to episode 164. This episode is going to be particularly useful if you’re thinking about how agencies can stay profitable and relevant as AI reshapes the way work is delivered and valued.

Brian Kessman, Founder and Principal Consultant at Lodestar Agency Consulting, joins me to talk about why the traditional agency model is under so much pressure, what it really means to move from selling hours to selling solutions and outcomes, and how agencies can start packaging their expertise in a more scalable way.

Lodestar helps CEOs and CFOs of independent agencies, multinational networks, and holding companies redesign their value models - the commercial system that connects how they define, package, deliver, and price their expertise using solutions and outcomes, not hours and headcount.

Brian and I also talk about pricing, procurement, productised offers, and why so much strategic value is often being given away without agencies even realising it.
There’s a lot in this conversation for agency owners and client-facing teams alike.

You can connect with Brian here:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/briankessman/
https://www.lodestaragencyconsulting.com/
https://www.lodestaragencyconsulting.com/agency-model-map

VoxComm's Redesigning the Agency Value Model: https://voxcomm.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/Redesigning-the-agency-value-model.pdf
IPA Pricing Playbook: https://ipa.co.uk/knowledge/publications-reports/the-ipa-pricing-playbook/

And, if you’d like to stay updated with changes in the agency world as they relate to account management, client retention and growth, or speak to me about training options for your team, head over to https://www.accountmanagementskills.com

Welcome to episode 163.

If you’ve been thinking about how the agency business model is evolving, and what clients are looking for from their agency partners now, this conversation might spark some ideas about how to work with clients differently.

I'm talking to President and Founder of Broadview Labs, Neil Follett. Broadview Labs is a creative agency focused on life sciences, currently powering the hybrid studio for a leading US Pharma agency. Neil is a serial entrepreneur who has build and sold a creative agency as well as an events business. He thrives on creating business that create value for clients and provide dynamic environments within which individuals can flourish. And he helps people and brands meet their full potential.

In this episode, Neil shares his journey of creating an embedded agency structure for one client. He talks to me about how the opportunity came about, how it works in practice and how to move beyond being seen simply as a resource.

We also touch on AI and where it may genuinely add value, rather than simply helping agencies do the same work quicker.

You can contact and connect with Neil here:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/neilfollett/
https://www.broadviewlabs.ca

If you’d like to be kept updated with changes in the agency world as they relate to the account management role, or speak to me about client retention and growth training options, go to my website at https://www.accountmanagementskills.com

Welcome to episode 162. If your agency is experimenting with AI, buying new tools and still feeling like not much has really changed operationally, you're not actually imagining it. That is exactly what this episode gets into.

I'm chatting with Emily Hatton, a Business Operations Consultant and the founder of AI in Agencies, where she helps agencies turn AI from scattered experiments into structured, profitable ways of working. After years supporting service businesses with operations, capacity planning and profitability, Emily saw a growing gap: agencies were adopting AI tools quickly, but their operating models hadn’t caught up. Today, she works with agency founders and leadership teams to integrate AI into workflows, resourcing, pricing and delivery — helping teams save time, improve margins and get more value from the tools they already pay for. Her work focuses on practical implementation, not hype, and on helping agencies build sustainable AI capability inside their teams.

In this conversation, Emily and I talk about why AI adoption so often becomes a bit chaotic inside the agency. Different teams using different tools, no real ownership and not enough measurement of whether any of it is actually saving time or improving the work.

We also get into why the smarter starting point is actually to look at your processes and workflows, not the latest tool that you can get, but how to get more from the actual tools you're already using, your tech stack.

And finally, we talk about governance, client trust, pricing pressure, and what agencies need to sort out now if they want to stay commercially relevant.

If AI in your agency currently feels a little bit messy, a bit exciting, but also a bit overwhelming all at the same time, then this one is for you.

You can contact and connect with Emily here:
www.linkedin.com/in/emily-hatton
https://aiinagencies.com/

How AI-ready is your account management team? Find out in 3 minutes with our free quiz - and discover where your biggest growth opportunities lie:
https://www.accountmanagementskills.com/ai-readiness-quiz