My main focus when I work with creative agencies is improving profitability. There's no magic switch, it's a number of things that all need to be right at the same time, pricing, resourcing, scope, team structure, the list goes on.
One of the biggest, and most overlooked, is how much your account managers are relaying client instructions versus actually managing them. It's not a topic that comes up in most agency ops conversations. Nobody puts account manager judgment on a profit improvement plan next to utilisation rates. But it's often the real driver behind the numbers everyone else is looking at.
The two types
The message-taker
Receives client instructions and passes them straight to the creative team, more or less verbatim. Client says "make the logo bigger," it goes in the brief as "make the logo bigger." Client says "we want it to feel more premium," that phrase gets forwarded with zero interrogation of what it actually means.
The strategic advisor
Receives the same instruction and asks what problem it's actually trying to solve. They push back. They translate a vague or reactive request into something the creative team can use, and they catch the feedback that could impact the work before it ever reaches a designer's desk.
This shows up most clearly at the brief stage. A client brief is written from the client's point of view, in the client's language, often focused on outputs rather than the actual problem. A creative brief needs to translate that into something the team can act on. What's the objective, who's it for, what does success look like. An AM who just forwards the client's document isn't briefing the team, they're passing on someone else's paperwork.
Where it hits the margin
Uncosted rounds of amends are one of the fastest ways I see margin disappear on an account. Nobody signed off on round four. Nobody flagged that round three should have triggered an additional quote. It builds up slowly, and usually only shows up once someone finally pulls the numbers.
Some of the fix is simple. Getting the client to consolidate their feedback into one clean round instead of five scattered ones can save hours on its own. But the bigger lever is judgment. The ability to actually assess incoming client feedback, not just relay it, and push back when it's going to delay the work.
Why this takes experience
Pushing back on a client is both a confidence and a skill, and both are built through experience, from having handled enough client feedback to know what's worth pushing back on. Nobody has that in year one, and that's fine, the mistake is treating it as optional rather than as a skill juniors need to be taught.
Senior AMs need to model this out loud, in front of junior ones. This feedback risks the work, here's how we go back on it. Junior AMs need to understand early that pushing back isn't a breach of client service, it's part of the job.
Get this right and the AM earns respect from both sides. The client trusts them more, not less, because pushback shows they're invested in the outcome, not just keeping them happy. The internal team trusts them because they know that AM is protecting the integrity of the work, not just passing along whatever the client last said.
What to fix
Make consolidated feedback and brief interrogation the default.
Every client brief and every round of feedback should pass through a standard set of questions before it reaches creative. What's the objective, who's it for, what's changed, what does success look like. Don't leave it to chance or one AM's initiative.
Give pushback a clear standard.
Every piece of client feedback should get a quick gut-check before it's actioned. Does this move us toward the objective, or away from it? Write down real examples of feedback worth pushing back on versus feedback worth just actioning, so the judgment call isn't reinvented every time.
Build junior AMs' confidence deliberately.
Pair them on live pushback conversations. Debrief afterwards. Treat "how did you handle that feedback" as a real part of development.
Cost every uncosted round, and cap them in the SOW.
Two or three included revision rounds, clearly stated up front, gives the AM something concrete to point to. Anything beyond that gets a visible cost attached, even if you choose to absorb it.
Review margin by account, not just by quarter.
Waiting for the P&L to flag a problem means the damage is already done. A monthly or even fortnightly look at hours against scope catches the bleed early.
Reward the save, not just the sale.
If the only things celebrated internally are new business and upsells, protecting margin on an existing account will always feel like a thankless job. Make it visible when someone stops a bad brief or avoids a costly change.
No single fix
There's no single lever that fixes agency profitability, but account management's ability to filter, question, and occasionally push back on client feedback is one of the most underrated ones, largely because it's invisible when it's working. Nobody notices the disaster that didn't happen or the round of amends that got shut down before it ate into the budget.
That's exactly why it gets overlooked when agencies go looking for where their margin went. It's also why it's worth building on purpose rather than hoping the right person happens to be on the account. Treat it as a skill and it can be taught, and it compounds. An agency full of AMs who know how to push back doesn't just protect margin on one account, it changes how clients treat the agency as a whole.
The client service team is critical to agency success. It's often treated as the support function sitting between sales and delivery, when it's actually one of the biggest levers on profitability, retention and the quality of the work itself.
