About the Role

We are looking for a Client Success Manager to be our face with clients and be the lynchpin between client needs and ‘back of house’ project management and execution teams. As Nendo’s Client Success Manager, you’ll be responsible for the overall satisfaction & advancement of our most important stakeholder relationships. You will ensure their needs and expectations are articulated. We often “write our own briefs” and join us as we help our clients define and redefine their challenges and opportunities. Then, you’ll coordinate how Nendo will work as a team to satisfy and exceed those needs and expectations.

All the while communicating progress proactively (internally and externally) and addressing issues to co-create solutions to help us stay on target. You don’t need to be an expert in digital, but experience with digital is an advantage. You do need to be an expert, with a track record of winning clients over, managing a portfolio of clients and stakeholders, ensuring expectations are met and learning as you go.

Nendo is growing fast, you will work closely with our leadership team to take the pipeline of relationships and opportunities to see clients succeed and Nendo win. As a core part of the leadership team, you’ll grow and develop a team over time

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You’ll Be

• People-focused:
  ‍You’re empathetic and are able to simultaneously centre your client and team needs (even when they’re at odds). You have a knack for finding a way to make them both work. You know how to be accommodating, when required and aren’t afraid to push back on a client if need be. You strike the balance by focusing on people first.
• Communicative:
  ‍You know how to earn and retain your client’s trust. Nendo’s goodwill can open doors but it takes proactive communication to keep it. Over your career, you’ve learnt how to get your teammates inspired and involved. You consistently communicate early and often. Even anticipating hitches, delays or setbacks. You can rally a team to show a work-in-progress and proactively seek and receive feedback.
• Calculated:
  ‍You can put down a set of scenarios (best case, worst case) with contingency plans with digital steps, milestones, deliverables and dates. You see more than just a logo, you spot the relationships, internal power structures and can fluently navigate your way through, on Nendo’s behalf.
• Problem Identifier & Solver:
  ‍You have the innate and honed ability to hear problems, frame and reframe them and discover and collaborate with creative teammates to solve them.
• Purposeful:
  You are capable of moving an initiative, project, meeting and/or moment from ambiguity to tangible ways forward. “Waiting on someone else” can be a crutch and you know better than to wait. You have a high bias for initiative and action, and whenever there’s a true period of waiting, are creative in ways to ensure that when it is time for action, you’ve been preparing.
• Curious:
  ‍You are a lifelong learner. Be it reading, listening, learning, asking questions and teaching yourself new tips and tricks. You are constantly asking questions that push you, your thinking and your clients to new places in this digital world.
• A Planner:
  ‍Nothing is more important than the process of continuous planning, review and coordination. You know how to lead internal meetings, assess priorities and coordinate successful delivery.
• Coordinated:
  Be they your phone calls, meetings and client interactions, and a good memory is seldom enough. For client success to be a team sport, documentation is critical. In our line of work, a passing phrase from a client may end up being a new project and solution from Nendo. You listen to hear, to understand and are able to be the eyes and ears of those who weren’t in the room.
• Observant:
  ‍You’re never scrambling to remember who said what and are observant enough to keep tabs on small details about your contacts and the client.
• Passionate:
  ‍You hold a deep desire to understand not just relationships, psychology and the language of business, but have some desire for the digital world. A transformation in the business world is taking place and clients will learn to trust your opinion. Nendo will equip you with what we know, but for it to stick, it takes passion and desire of your own. Digital products and services are transforming the marketplace, industries and the continent/world at large.
• ‍Detail-Oriented:
  ‍You have a strong and uncompromising command of language; Swahili is a nice-to-have, English is a must-have. Be it the Oxford Comma or the semicolon, you know what to use, where and when. You proofread your emails and understand how business communications gets done. You can spot inconsistencies and things others might miss.

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You’ll Have

• At least 4 years of relevant experience. That can be from branding, marketing and communications or digital services, specifically. We’re eager to see your experience from high-stakes projects and clients. That may be from brands that are listed among the top 10 highest advertising spenders in the country, as an example.
• Follow-through: You keep your word. The email is sent before it is expected, the document is attached as you’d said, the call came through at the minute it was scheduled. Your ability to get teams in line and shape is a signature that has distinguished you over peers.
• Empathy: To relay your message, have people adjust priorities and get work done you need to have them see & understand you and what you know. You have this as a key skill and utilise it for clients, audiences and fellow Nendo teammates.
• An understanding of the branding, marketing, communications world. Be it from a client perspective or an agency perspective, you’ll have a grasp of the world and its terms and lingo. Bonus points if you have digital experience.
• Worn multiple hats on teams. From leading the client relationship to managing the project through and sending project and client updates. You’ve proposed and led field visits with clients. You have running brainstorms, conducting research with audiences and so on. You’ve combined this experience into client facing and a ‘back of house’ project management skillset.
• Logged time presenting ideas. If you’ve made your own slide presentations, that’s great. Standing in front of a board, client team, pitch committee or your peers, you can put the words (and perhaps pictures) to keep or win business.
• Crossed i’s and dotted t’s. Winning business is not enough. Even when it is won, there’s the process of fulfilling the paperwork, scoping, negotiating, contracting and onboarding. Nendo is at times creating projects that neither client nor agency has ever seen or scoped before. You can keep the momentum going with the client and Nendo after the sale is done.
• Helped clients win victories internally. You learn what’s important to them. What their place is in the universe of people in and around them and you help them win, making yourself indispensable. Whether that is creating a deck or coaching them on how to win over their boss or C-Suite. EO, or writing messaging that passes through the hoops for Corporate Affairs or Legal to approve.
• Established & maintained relationships of your own. You bring your own reputation and contacts of people you’ve provided service for across your career.
• Managed the competing priorities, schedules and deliverables of a brand, marketing, communications firm. The endless balance between client needs and internal capacity to ensure clients are satisfied and the team isn’t overstretched.
• Contributed to cross-functional working groups and teams. Clients bring diverse groups together - agencies, execution partners, internal stakeholders, suppliers and more. You can contribute in such scenarios and keep clients’ interests when others are involved. Examples could be speaking up when a room has professionals spanning Events, Experiential Marketing, another Digital Agency, Below-the-Line agencies, among others
• Bonus: Experience navigating social media crises and reputational challenges. Learnings from “the trenches” be it on the client-side, agency-side or as a consultant in a marketing/ social media/ corporate affairs/ public relations firm.
• Your own stories to tell: Clients continually feel reassured if you can show them this isn’t your first rodeo or that their problems are shared. This can mean you study history and industry long enough to know history repeats itself, or have your own experiences you can draw on.
• A high “B.S. radar” (Google it if you don’t know what this means). You have been known to have a sixth sense of people and situations. Whether this is sensing tension on the client-side or dissatisfaction with an answer or response. You can read the room and make adjustments to follow the energy of the room and anticipate challenges. Be they from internal or external threats.
• Proficiently composing internal and client correspondence (briefs, conference calls, emails, presentations etc.) with appropriate professionalism and skill.
• Integrity. It is one of the easiest things to say and is on every CV. It matters to Nendo. Culture matters a lot to us. Winning the right way matters a lot to us and it should to you, too. Be candid, be open, be honest and be straightforward.
• The ability to share knowledge and ideas to “level up” those around you. This role requires you to set the context and purpose behind the work to your team andNendo. Passing on the knowledge and what you learnt is key.

Bonus Points

• A Facilitator: You’ve run workshops before, calling the client into a room for a road mapping session on a new brief or project. Creating a template with the client for the unique opportunity. You can document a meeting, brief a designer on what artefact will outlive the meeting. In every meeting, you’re in you help things move from ambiguity to clarity.
• Entrepreneurial: You are capable of thinking up concepts and ideas on behalf of clients - be they in or out of our scope. You are committed enough to prototyping or experimenting and exploring.
• Adaptive: You see gaps and patterns in the market that can earn clients an extra return and have some understanding of business outcomes.