A Day in the Life… Agency Growth Account Executive

Emily Wilk

Each day is different; yet the same. Each client has unique needs; yet I have the same solutions. Each meeting varies in length; yet the same content is covered. What does a day in the life look like for me?

I’m Emily- a 2017 U of I grad. I graduated with my degree in Advertising, a minor in Communications and a certificate in Media Sales. 

Since I’ve graduated, I’ve been on many different paths, all ending with the same goal: working in sales. Back in 2019, I was lucky enough to be offered a job at Sprout Social as a Growth Account Executive. 

Initially, I was hired to work with around 500 of our current customers (at the time we had about 20,000 customers). So, it was a small subset of our huge customer list. I worked with customers who had small businesses, big corporations, major product lines, or ran their own agencies. My goal was to not only upkeep these current customers but also to upsell them with new products in our portfolio. 

Since then, our customer base has grown (25K+ customers), our sales team has tripled in size, our products have evolved tremendously, and most importantly, the career opportunities have continued to present themselves. 

I now work with our agency customers around the world. To us, an agency is defined as any organization that manages the social media/digital work for another business or product that is not their own. I’ve learned a ton about the ways that these agencies work with their clients, run their own business, create client rosters, demonstrate ROI and more. My job is to help them achieve their goals using tools that they don’t yet have.

In order to do this, I first have to build a relationship with my customers. I explain to them that I’m their strategic growth partner, and then we hop on what we call a “discovery call.” The discovery call essentially allows for the agency to talk about themselves, highlight their key clients and objectives, and explain to me their business models.

From here, we walk through the different ways that they’re using our tool: Sprout Social. We discuss different use cases for the system (i.e. client research, reporting, and more), and ultimately uncover new needs for upgraded products.

The approach is pretty consultative- we review how they’re currently using the tool, and ultimately, what they can be doing better within our systems, even if it may cost them a bit more. From there, we walk through different pricing options, get in front of the right decision makers, and get them to sign the paperwork and add more to benefit their agencies! 

At the end of the day, my goal is the same: getting clients to spend more with us. What’s fun for me is that every single conversation that I have is different, yet I’m using the same tools and systems to help each of these agencies get even better.