Account Director

Purpose of the job

The Account Director is responsible for the development and nurturing of Luxury accounts. This role is essential in strengthening relationships with the client and identifying growth opportunities for the business as well as ensuring solutions are developed and delivered on time and against operational and financial business targets.

The Account Director will take full responsibility for the strategic and operational management of the accounts under their responsibility and managing the performance of their team, ensuring all work is completed in line with the SLA.

The Account Director will also have to expand and develop brand new clients leveraging their personal network and credentials they have in the industry.

This individual also needs to be a strong leader who can focus on the vision and strategies of the accounts, balance daily support needs with long-term strategy and successfully combine vision and reality into effective plans.

We are seeking someone with an in-depth experience of working with luxury clients to drive the Client Services team and deliver ongoing solutions to resolve Client challenges.

The focus will be expanding gifts/POSM but they will active cooperate with the Account Manager based in Paris who is already working on Print products.

The ideal candidate will have strong experience with a proven track record in developing clients in the luxury environment, nurturing relationships, converting opportunities, and team management.

Key responsibilities

• Play a leading role in the delivery of client satisfaction, including client liaison, management of internal resource departments and management of external suppliers.
• Delivering operational excellence.
• Manage the personal development of your team members through, appraisals, one‐to‐one meetings, mentoring and training.
• Take ownership of and resolve issues, quality concerns or corrective actions.
• Developing effective growth strategies and managing the opportunities for these Clients.
• With the Global Client engagement lead; build client development plans for each year.
• Achieve and excel growth targets.
• Manage overall financial performance of the account, risk analysis and remedy.
• Identifying risks to the account and putting in place strategies to manage these risks.
• Contracts review and renewal.
• Develop strong relationships with senior key decision makers.
• Regular MI reporting and production of account relationship plans.

Knowledge, Skills + Experience

• Extensive client service management experience, ideally with time spent working on the client site or sites.
• Extensive people management experience including performance management and team leadership.
• Proven track record of operational management for luxury client services departments
• Significant experience in developing and maintaining client relationships.
• Able to present account planning and strategy for retention, growth and added value.
• Demonstrable track record of successful luxury client and contract management.
• Can anticipate internal and/or external business issues and develop risk mitigation strategies.
• Proven experience in managing department financials.
• Have in‐depth knowledge of Performance Improvement philosophy and implementation.
• Significant experience of managing work in a fast-paced luxury environment.
• Strong experience of dealing with large P&L budgets.
• Excellent interpersonal skills, able to develop positive relationships at all levels, with all types of people up to Board level.
• Excellent communication skills in English and French– verbal, written, presentation – with clarity of expression.
• Demonstrable people management skills.
• Passion for quality.
• Possesses an extensive personal network to leverage for generating new business. .
• Acknowledged on core categories such as Gift/Posm.
• Knowledge on core additional supply chain to use.