In talking with agency owners, we hear about the divide between sales and service teams because the agency is structured with very little strategic overlap between the roles. Owners want to know how to create a more cohesive team that works with prospects and clients more seamlessly.
It’s common to create a divide where the service team feels like support staff, and then everyone wonders why that team doesn’t see itself as a key part of the agency growth.
Bringing service or account management into the growth team requires treating retention, account rounding, and referrals as growth work, and inviting your senior-level folks to participate in prospect strategy development and meetings. Then, you need to build the role, expectations, and pay around all of that.
Work through four key steps to raise up your service team.
1. Start by looking at what you've trained your service team to do
Most agencies define service as reactive. When something breaks, the team responds, and we even measure them that way, counting email response time as their value. When that's the definition, of course, the team sees itself as support.
The account management team only gets to prove its worth when something goes wrong, and it gets almost no credit for the business that renews because everyone did their jobs well.
In our book, The Salesperson’s Guide to Growing a Business, we make the case that service deserves pillar status in the agency, standing right alongside sales. But they only earn that status when you introduce strategy into the role and stop treating it as the place clients go when they have a complaint.
2. Reframe your thinking: Service is already doing growth work
Retention, rounding out accounts, and referrals are all growth areas, and your service team touches all three regularly, which puts them closer to your growth than almost anyone else on the payroll.
We call this perspective of the service team “reselling,” because in a healthy sales organization, everyone is selling something. Producers sell prospects on becoming clients, and service resells existing clients on why they should remain a client.
When you explain this philosophy to your team and build the agency around it, the whole "support staff versus strategy" question mostly answers itself. Instead of supporting the growth strategy, they’re actively running a big piece of it.
3. Elevating your service team beyond the handoff
The fastest way to make service feel like an afterthought is to hand them an account only after the sale is closed and the promises have already been made. They inherit commitments they never heard and a client they've never met, and then they’re asked to protect the relationship. Seems silly when you hear it, doesn’t it?
Make your service team an integral part of your sales process.
- Include them in the strategic planning while the account strategy is still being built.
- Have them participate in later-stage sales conversations so they're helping make the promises.
- Give them the same sales language and process that your producers use.
When you have a defined sales process for your salespeople, you can train your account managers on the same process so everyone is on the same page. We put the service teams in our Goose community through MORE System sales training so they can recognize a client's next problem or opportunity, and manage it or hand it to the right person with confidence.
4. Pay your service team like growth matters
You can say service is part of your growth strategy all day long, but your compensation plan is what tells the team what you truly reward. In most agencies, producers are paid well for renewals, while the service team gets a heavier workload and a “Thank you, next.” And then everyone acts surprised when your account managers start to resent new business.
Fix the alignment by adjusting producers’ comp down on renewals and increasing new business to encourage hunting. With the difference, you now have room to share with your service team ownership of the outcomes they influence. Ideas to consider:
- A retention bonus tied to the book they keep
- An account-rounding bonus when they add a line of coverage or grow revenue with an existing client
- A referral bonus when a warm introduction closes
A team bonus pool tied to profitability above target can pull everyone in the same direction. Connect the pay to the growth behaviors you say you want.
Give them a role they can see themselves in
Your team needs to see themselves as active participants in how the agency grows. Define what the account managers own — retention, rounding, and referrals —and hold them to it the same way you hold producers accountable for new business.
Then invest in service team development the way you invest in your producers', through training, coaching, and the peer groups, such as the ones we run in Goose, so they can grow into the strategic role you're asking them to fill.
Frequently asked questions
What's the difference between a service team and a growth-focused service team?
A traditional service team measures success by how quickly it responds when something breaks. A growth-focused service team participates in account strategy, owns retention, account rounding, and referrals, and treats every renewal as a chance to resell the client on staying. The daily work can look similar, but the definition of success and the results it produces are very different.
Should service team members be involved in the sales process?
Yes. When service understands your sales process and joins the later-stage conversations, they know exactly what was promised and can protect and grow the relationship from day one. It's why we put service teams through the same MORE System sales training as producers, so they can spot and surface opportunities without being asked to close them.
How should you compensate a service team for growth?
Tie their pay to the outcomes they influence: retention bonuses for the book they keep, account rounding bonuses when they expand revenue on an existing client, and referral bonuses when an introduction closes. A team bonus pool tied to profitability can reinforce a shared growth culture. The goal is to reward the behaviors that drive retention and expansion without turning service into a sales quota.
Content originally published by Q4intelligence
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