The art of juggling - successfully managing multiple Clients at once

Gone are the good old days where Account handlers were predominantly tasked with looking after just the one Client. Indeed, with ever decreasing Agency budgets across the industry as procurement teams seek out the best bang for the Client buck and with lesser comparative head counts than even as recently as 10 years ago, there's never been more pressure on us all to juggle, and juggle well.

Clients, like our life partners, never like to hear about our other projects. As far as they're concerned, we have eyes only for them - and fair enough. The best suits are skilled at making each Client feel like they are always their top priority. Doing so however is easier said than done especially when requests, queries and briefs can fly at us thick and fast, especially towards the end of the year.

With that in mind, here are some tips for supporting multiple Clients and staying on top of each of their needs regardless of their scale.

Make the most of your mornings

Yes, it can be tricky juggling several high-priority Clients. But taking some time each morning to build a personal schedule of what we need to accomplish that day, ensures we’ll be less likely to forget anything and enables us to begin the day with a stronger sense of clarity, purpose and ambition.

Whether we need five minutes or 30 minutes devoted to organisation, taking time to get our house in order each morning could save us a ton of time later in the day.

Divide the day into Client specific chunks

It’s virtually impossible to plan our day down to the minute, but we should always try to figure out a way to allocate certain amounts of time to various Clients throughout each one. This allows us to focus on one project, one campaign, and/or one deliverable at a time. Working on Client plans in chunks, helps us be better at avoiding distractions and managing our overall workload. Effectively delegating tasks to any direct reports, should we be fortunate enough to have them, also ensures the needs of our multiple Clients are ultimately met without them needing to chase us for an update. It's always better to be ahead of the game rather than chasing it.

Dedicate set times every week to connecting with each Client

Similar to the above, it's important that we set aside a time each week to sit down across a table with each Client to discuss the progress of an ongoing project, campaign development or general WIP. These should be recurring, immovable sessions we can solely dedicate to each key Client. Having these in place allows all stakeholders to plan ahead of them and it reassures each Client that they will have face to face time with us each and every week to address with us directly any queries or concerns they might have. It's also a periodic opportunity to get a gauge on upcoming pipeline possibilities which are always more easily captured in person.

Get out of from behind your desk

It can be easy to think we know someone because we talk to them via email every day, but we must always try to physically meet up with them now and then. People do business with people after all, so speaking to them in person allows us to gain a much better idea of what’s going on with their business and serves as another opportunity for ultimately strengthening our relationship with them.

Clean out your inbox each day

At the end of the day, it’s important we spend some time scanning through our inbox and revisiting any items we've earlier flagged as requiring our attention.

If you can follow through with it in the long term, create an organising system for all of your emails, one folder per Client. Doing so will save you time in the long run even if it does feel a little OCD when you're doing it!

Set up an Instant Messenger

One handy tip, depending on how you like to operate is setting each of your Clients contacts up on Skype, WhatsApp or a similar instant messaging tool. Doing so will not only gives our Clients the impression we're always reachable (if we're comfortable doing so), it also gives us another method of communicating with them about feedback or other outstanding items that require more urgent attention - so it can work both ways. Further to this, instant messages, by their very nature, do not necessitate as many formalities allowing us to respond quickly and with just a few simple swipes of our thumbs.

Break up big pieces of work

The famous saying suggests the easiest way to eat an elephant is one bite at a time. The same goes for any large work tasks we're presented with. If we need to spend 5 hours on a task for one Client but can’t see where we can find 5 consecutive hours to dedicate to it, one method we could try is to allocate just one hour a day to the task for 5 days in a row. Doing so not only allows us to stay focused on the ensuring the quality of our end product is at it's optimum (by pausing and revisiting our progress) it also enables us to work across any other projects in need of our attention.

When the going gets tough, manage expectations

Sometimes every one of us can be snowed under and other times it can be completely 'dead'. That’s just the the nature of the beast. There can be occasions when working across multiple projects for different Clients where we'll be placed into an unfortunate position where we simply need to manage expectations. Transparency is the best policy in instances like these where we simply can not physically accommodate every single request. In instances like this we should endeavour to prioritise tasks systematically and ensure we clearly communicate when we'll deliver anything that is outstanding. Delegating to your team and/or being proactive and clear about tight or difficult deadlines as soon as we identify them is a better approach than stalling or springing a delay on our Clients at the last minute. Most of the time you’ll find the Clients whose expectations you need to manage will be completely fine about slight delays as long as you're up front about in advance.

Live and die by the calendar

Whether we're with Microsoft, Gmail or another provider, the likelihood is we'll all have calendar software installed and synced across our various devices. Checking our calendars regularly, blocking out time for each Client and letting our tools do their thing is perhaps the most important tip for staying on top of multiple concurrent projects.

Realistically manage Client comms

In our hyper-connected world, it’s sometimes difficult to always give our Clients our undivided attention. It’s even harder to resist the urge to respond to everything and everyone within seconds. If we constantly respond right away, we condition our colleagues and Clients to expect that from us all the time which can be a slippery slope.

Check your emails at specific times throughout a day, maybe once every hour or so. The rest of the time, put the phone on silent, close your email tab, even throw some headphones on and focus on the Client meeting you're prepping for or the tasks in front of you.

When it all comes down to it, managing multiple Clients, and making each feel content, valued, heard, respected and recognised takes a balanced mixture of organisation, prioritisation and flexibility. Every situation and every Client presents their own set of unique challenges. But if we set a structured foundation, keep organised, communicate well and aren’t afraid to stick to our guns when we need to from time to time, we can make an impact for our Agencies and our Clients alike - every one of them.