Guide
Your account manager quit. Here's what to do in the next 30 days.
Your account manager just gave notice. You probably have two weeks, maybe less, and a book of clients who are about to lose the person they talk to every week.
Clients rarely leave because an account manager leaves. They leave because of what happens next: slower replies, dropped details, a new contact who doesn't know their history. The next 30 days decide which one you get.
Before they leave: collect the book
Whatever the reason for the exit, most departing AMs will help if you ask clearly and early. In their notice period, get:
An account list with the basics. Monthly revenue, contract or renewal date, main contacts, and who else at the client matters.
Open items for every account. What's in flight, what was promised, what's late, and what the client is waiting to hear back on.
A candid health read. Ask them straight: which clients are happy, which are quiet, and which are unhappy. They know things that aren't in your CRM.
Access and history. Shared inboxes, CRM notes, meeting recordings, and recent email threads. Make sure nothing lives only in their personal inbox.
If you only get one thing, get the health read. It tells you where to spend the next two weeks.
Days 1–3: tell clients before they notice
Clients should hear it from you, not from an out-of-office reply. Keep the message short, confident, and focused on what's staying the same.
A simple version:
Hi [Name], I wanted to let you know personally that [AM] is moving on from [Agency] at the end of the month. Your account and your team aren't changing, and nothing about the work in progress is slowing down. [Coverage name] will be your point of contact starting [date], and I'll join our next call to make the introduction. If anything's on your mind in the meantime, reply here and I'll handle it.
Two things matter here. Name who's covering, with a date. And frame the change as continuity, not disruption. "You now have dedicated senior coverage" reads very differently from "we're figuring it out."
Week 1: call your biggest accounts first
Rank the book by revenue and risk. Then call the top accounts, starting with the largest and the ones the departing AM flagged as shaky.
On each call:
- Acknowledge the change directly.
- Ask how things are going and what they'd change. Then listen.
- Confirm the next two or three things you'll deliver, with dates.
- Hit those dates.
A client who gets a thoughtful call from a senior person in the first week usually ends up more confident in the agency than before, not less.
Weeks 2–4: decide how you'll cover the gap
A proper account manager search takes two to three months. You need a plan for the time in between. The usual options:
The founder covers it. Fast and the clients know you. The cost is everything else you were supposed to be doing: new business, hiring, running the agency. It works for a few weeks. It rarely works for three months.
Promote or stretch someone internal. Good if you have a strong coordinator who's ready. Risky if you're putting a junior person in front of a client spending $30k a month.
Split the book across the team. Keeps things moving, but nobody owns anything, and the accounts drift.
Bring in interim coverage. A senior fractional account manager takes the book for the length of the search, keeps the cadence running, and hands everything over cleanly to your new hire. This is the gap-coverage work I do at Tenure.
Whatever you choose, make one person clearly accountable for every priority account. Shared ownership is how accounts go quiet.
While you hire: don't rush it
The biggest risk after an AM leaves isn't losing a client in month one. It's making a rushed hire to stop the pain and ending up doing this again in a year.
If your accounts are covered, you can take the time to hire the right person. Use the gap to write down what the role actually needs: which accounts, what cadence, what a good QBR looks like at your agency. Then hire against that.
Set up the next hire to succeed
When your new account manager starts, they should inherit a system, not a pile of email threads:
- An account list with health, renewal dates, and open items.
- A regular check-in and QBR schedule for each priority account.
- Notes on each client's history, stakeholders, and what they care about.
- A warm introduction to each client, made by whoever covered the gap.
That handover is the difference between a new AM who's effective in month one and one who spends a quarter catching up.
If you're in this spot right now
Book a 20-minute call. Tell me what the book looks like and when your AM's last day is. I'll tell you honestly whether interim coverage makes sense, how fast I can start, and what I'd do first. You'll also get a free one-page Account Risk Read on your top accounts.
Related
An AM just left, or you’re still running every account yourself.
Bring a rough picture of your top accounts to a 20-minute call. You’ll get a free one-page Account Risk Read either way.
Tarik Bob
Nearly a decade in account management, most recently running the largest accounts at a marketing agency serving law firms and other professional-services clients. Now I do the same work as a fractional AM for growing agencies.