Client Manager Job Description, Skills, and Salary
Get to know about the duties, responsibilities, qualifications, and skills requirements of a client manager. You can use our job description template in this article to produce your own. We also provide you with information about the salary you can earn as a client manager.
Who is a Client Manager?
A client manager is a customer service specialist who attends to clients’ requirements and acts as a point of contact between them and the company. They are also known as customer relationship managers.
Their responsibilities include managing client relationships, ensuring clients are happy with their products or services, and retaining clients over the long term.
They also determine which consumers would benefit most from using specific services or goods and then match these offerings with customers’ needs.
Working in marketing, advertising, sales, or public relations, they oversee accounts and guarantee that customers’ needs are satisfied. Before clients sign on, they usually assist the sales staff in prospecting for new business and establishing relationships with them.
Client Manager Job Description
Below are the client manager job description examples you can use to develop your resume or write a job description for your employee. Employers can also use it to sieve out job seekers when choosing candidates for interviews.
The duties and responsibilities of a client manager include the following:
- Establish new client relationships, boost client confidence, and offer project direction.
- Analyze information on client segment-specific profitability, sales patterns, and customer retention rates.
- Keep an eye on the competition to ensure the company’s offerings stand out in the market.
- Ensure that any conditions that the client and the business have agreed upon is included in the contract.
- Respond to client inquiries and requests as soon as possible.
- Respond to any concerns or issues that customers may have.
- Inform customers of any changes to their account status.
- Generate reports on the client’s account activity.
- Make innovative business propositions for clients.
- Offer training as necessary, and arrange regular meetings with each employee to discuss their progress toward objectives.
- Specify the terms of the contract to the client.
- Ensure that the CRM system has complete records of every client interaction.
- Upsell customers on more products or services.
- Contract extensions with clients control personnel hiring and training in the division.
- Follow up on any leads the sales team has to sign a new customer.
- Prepare and manage budgets to achieve defined goals and targets.
- Create goals and plans for keeping customers together with other company departments.
- Supervise employers and direct employees’ work to ensure they meet established standards and objectives.
- Study company competitors and figure out how to stay one step ahead to bring in and keep new clients.
Qualifications
Client managers possess the following credentials:
- A bachelor’s degree in business, marketing, or a closely related discipline.
- 3 to 5 years of experience in account management, sales, or customer service.
- Great multitasking and time management abilities.
- A history of developing ties and rapport with clients.
- CRM software expertise, preferably with Salesforce.
- Excellent communication, presentation, and bargaining skills
- Computer literacy.
- Outstanding discrete, polite, and professional manner.
- General business knowledge.
- Proficient in Microsoft Office and ability to learn new software and technologies.
Essential Skills
Every client manager requires the following essential skills:
- Relationship building:
In your capacity as a client manager, you must sustain relationships with clients and other corporate representatives. Some examples of achieving this include developing trust, maintaining open lines of communication, and providing excellent customer service. You may also be responsible for fostering relationships with other client managers and business representatives.
- Time management
Time management abilities are essential for this role because there will always be deadlines for everything that has to be done. A lot of effort must be put forth to ensure that all tasks are finished by the deadline. Prioritizing tasks to ensure that nothing is missed and estimating can help relieve some pressure.
- Decision-making
Clients who need help making decisions about their finances, job paths, or other elements of their lives commonly consult professionals. Client managers can help their customers make informed decisions by providing them with the information they need and prodding them with questions that urge them to weigh their options. You may help your clients make decisions by providing them with resources they can utilize to investigate their options independently.
- Business Analysis
The financial information of a company and how it affects its operations must be understood by client management. As a client manager, you may need to look at your customer’s financial information to determine whether they have enough income to continue paying for your services. You employ commercial principles when creating reports on your client’s performance after working with them.
- Customer Support
Strong customer service skills are essential for client managers since they help you understand your client’s demands and provide the best experience possible. An optimistic mindset, patience, active listening, empathy, and patience are examples of customer service qualities. These skills can be applied to problem-solving or client queries.
- Detail-oriented
Detail-oriented behavior is essential for client managers. They might be in charge of numerous customer accounts; therefore, before committing to a contract, they must confirm the details of each one. They should also confirm the specifics with the client to ensure there are no errors on either end of the agreement.
- Organizational Skills
Being organized means having the ability to keep track of a lot of responsibilities. In your role as a client manager, you might regularly need to transition between customers or oversee several projects at once. You can remain on top of all your obligations and guarantee that you provide each client with a high-quality service by having strong organizational skills. When scheduling client meetings, it’s also essential to plan so that you may arrive prepared and ready to discuss their needs.
- Leadership
These professionals usually supervise a team of assistants and intern client managers. With the help of your leadership abilities, you may guide and lead your team in achieving company objectives. You may motivate your team and encourage development by using your leadership abilities.
- Creativity
Client managers ought to be able to devise novel strategies when necessary. This could entail reaching sales goals or increasing customer satisfaction levels. They must also be able to handle consumer problems in a way that pleases both sides.
- Industry expertise
The ability to answer client issues and answer questions about the product and the industry reveals to clients that you are an authoritative source of information.
- Evaluation of the client’s needs
To succeed in this role, you must understand your client’s needs and how to address those demands. To determine what a consumer truly wants from you, you must be able to ask questions, pay attention to responses, and observe behavior.
Using this information, you can provide them with solutions to help them accomplish their goals. For instance, you might advise an advertising campaign if a client asks for training on effective marketing methods and says they want to boost sales.
- Project management skills
The ability to manage the many activities and projects that your employer may assign you makes project management skills essential for client managers. You’ll likely need to do several duties if your employer wants you to manage a marketing campaign, including creating the campaign’s framework, assigning responsibilities to team members, and evaluating its efficacy when it’s finished. Strong project management skills will help you stay on track and enable you to fulfill all of your objectives.
- Communication Ability
Because one of your responsibilities as a client manager is to develop client relationships on behalf of a company, people must rely on you. If they don’t trust the CRM, their relationship with the company might suffer. Along with other tasks, they also keep track of all communications between the client and the business.
- Problem-solving
Client managers can act quickly and think through issues as they arise, so it is up to them to assess the situation and find a workable solution. They are typically responsible for using their imagination to generate novel ideas for how a company can better serve its clients. They must be open-minded and able to work independently without supervision.
- Skill in Negotiation
As a client manager, you might have to bargain with clients about project budgets and schedules. If a client wants to add unnecessary features to their website, you can haggle with them to eliminate them in exchange for a lesser fee.
- Financial Management
Financial management skills, such as creating budgets, monitoring spending, and performing data analysis, are essential for client managers. Client managers in finance departments should pay special attention to this as they usually supervise the budgeting process for their division or company. You can lower risk and benefit your organization by using sound financial judgment and making well-informed decisions.
How to Become a Client Manager
Follow these steps to become a client manager:
- Step 1: Consider a degree
If you want to work as a client manager, you must consider earning a degree. Even though a degree is not necessary for employment, there are still many benefits since some firms accept applicants without formal education.
You can major in business, marketing, or a closely related field like communications or computer science to gain the knowledge and skills necessary for a client management position. Studying statistics, research methods, data analysis, and other relevant topics might be extremely helpful.
While pursuing your degree, consider enrolling in additional courses to help you build the skills needed for this career.
- Step 2: Take project management, sales, negotiating, and public relations courses
By enrolling in these courses, you may put what you learn in class into practice by practicing it in real-world circumstances.
With a graduate degree, you can separate from the crowd. This can be very useful if you have no prior experience.
Additionally, it demonstrates your dedication to succeed in this industry. Studying for a qualification shows that you are willing to invest time and effort. You can expand your career options later on by learning new things through a university education.
- Step 3: Choose a specialty
As you seek to become a client manager, pick a specialization that fits your interests and skills. While choosing the position with the biggest compensation or most prominent title could be alluring, carefully considering which industry best suits your personality is crucial. If you are naturally extroverted and enjoy connecting with people, sales can be a wonderful career choice for you. Account management might be a better fit if you love working independently and in an environment with few distractions.
Specializations can increase your pay, but they can also lead to more rewarding work experiences that will expand your skill set and pave the way for upcoming business advancements.
- Step 3: Work in sales or customer service to gain experience interacting with customers.
While earning your bachelor’s, you can get experience by working in sales or customer service. Working as an account representative for a company that provides services to other businesses is especially advantageous since it allows you the chance to build client-management skills.
For example, if you work in the technology industry, you may interact with individuals who are interested in learning more about the field and help them select a program to get started. Getting this kind of expertise can help you improve your capacity to communicate with clients and find solutions to their difficulties.
- Step 4: Network
Although networking with individuals in the client relationship management sector is the main objective, it’s equally essential to network with those in similar industries and enterprises. By networking, you can keep up with current affairs, learn about trends and new developments, and ensure you have access to diverse knowledge and skills.
You can broaden your network through several different avenues, including conferences, events, alumni networks, community groups, clubs, and volunteer activities inside and outside your employment, such as working at a nearby charity.
- Step 5: Create a resume.
The first step in the hiring process is to have a strong resume. Candidates should ensure that their resumes contain all relevant training, expertise, and qualifications required for the client services manager role they are applying for.
- Step 6: Apply for Client Manager Positions
You can start applying for a new job once your resume is ready. A successful job search involves searching job boards for relevant postings, consulting your professional network, and contacting companies you are interested in working for directly.
Where to Work as a Client Manager
Client managers work in various places, including company offices, law offices, government agencies, and financial institutions. They frequently collaborate with other managers and support personnel in teams. To obtain data or conduct research, they might collaborate with independent experts, such as private investigators.
Although they frequently work longer to fulfill deadlines or attend client meetings on the weekends or after work hours, they usually put in a 40-hour work week. Numerous clients’ expectations must be balanced, and deadlines must be met, placing significant stress on client managers. They must also be capable of quick problem-solving and critical thinking.
Client Manager Salary Scale
The size and industry of the organization, degree of education, number of years of experience, additional talents, and years of experience all affect the pay for client managers. Additionally, they could be compensated with commissions and extra payments.
Client Managers earn between $58,220 and $77,246 per year as salary. However, the annual average pay for a client manager in the US is $66,339.