Agency owners frequently ask me for advice on agency structure and roles, including how to change team structure as they grow. The right approach is unique to your agency, but there’s a universal factor—all agency roles fit into one of six core role categories.
Once you understand the foundational roles, everything about running your agency gets easier. You can create the right jobs, hire the right people, communicate internally and externally, and manage your team for better results. Ultimately, knowing—and acting on—my six-category framework will help you make your agency more valuable.
Today, let’s review my six categories—including definitions, common job titles, and a preview of billable targets. By the end of this article, you’ll have a clearer view into potential blind spots, so you can start making improvements. If you get stuck—or you want an expert opinion to confirm you’re on the right track—let’s talk.
Agency owners often wear multiple roles simultaneously—especially in smaller firms. There isn’t an “Agency Owner” role.
In a series of future articles, I’ll review how to customize billable targets, how to combine multiple roles without creating new problems, and where agency owners should focus to see the strongest ROI on time. Don’t miss out—subscribe to my newsletter to get updates when the followups go live.
My Six-Role Framework: What are the six Agency Role categories?
Every agency position fits into at least one of these six categories:
- Specialist
- Delivery Leader
- Account Leader
- Strategist
- Growth
- Firm Leader
What does each category mean? Read on for definitions—and a preview of billable targets.
What’s the definition of each role?
Some people at your agency may wear several hats, as they perform more than one role at once. My definitions assume a single focus, but I recognize that some employees may wear 2–3 hats; if that applies to your agency, you’ll mix-and-match the responsibilities.
Specialist (e.g., designer, developer, copywriter, analyst)
Specialist is about practicing their highly billable “craft.” As a subject matter expert (SME), they’re an expert in one or more areas, and their ideal day has them doing that thing (their craft) all day long.
Although unique to each agency (and the services the agency provides to clients), typical specialist job titles include Designer, Developer, Copywriter, Analyst, Specialist, and QA Technician.
Strategists (below) are a special type of SME that’s highly client-facing. Creative Directors, Art Directors, and Technical Directors are each SMEs who have billable-reducing managerial (and sometimes Sales Support) responsibilities.
Because Account Leaders and Delivery Leaders are ideally shielding Specialists from client interruptions, your specialists are ideally billing 75–85% of their time (that is, 30–32 hours a week). I often see variations:
- A specialist who also handles account or delivery leadership will be lower, perhaps 60–70% billable. And a purely back-end specialist (for instance, a developer or production designer who never talks to clients) could be 85–90% (32–36 hours a week), but that’s rare.
- If a specialist is also a team lead (a senior team member who mentors and sometimes oversees other specialists without being a pure manager), they’ll have a somewhat lower billable target (since their job is to optimize others’ billable time).
Delivery Leader (e.g., PM, project coordinator, resource manager)
Delivery Leader is about completing work smoothly and profitably. They get things done, primarily focused on the internal team.
Typical Delivery Leader job titles include Project Manager, Project Coordinator, Producer, Traffic Manager, Resource Manager, and Director of PM. Some Delivery Leaders tend to do some non-billable Firm Leader work, too, around operations—especially if they’re serving as a Resource Manager. Be sure to find the right level of PM expertise.
“Project” is a misnomer; PMs can work on retainers and other recurring revenue, too. And at many agencies—especially smaller firms—Delivery Leaders are client-facing, too.
I recommend a Delivery Leader minimum billable target of 50% (that is, 20+ hours a week). They’ll spend their non-billable time on building internal processes, creating documentation, supporting sales estimates and proposals, and dealing with the overhead of “switching costs” as they shift between billable work.
Account Leader (e.g., AM, account director, account coordinator)
Account Management (AM) is about keeping clients happy (and, typically, upselling them more work). This includes a focus on client retention, as well as onboarding new clients. They are the voice of the client within the agency, ensuring the client’s needs are understood and addressed—while balancing the agency’s interests.
Typical Account Leader job titles include Account Manager, Account Director, Account Coordinator, and Account Specialist (although at some agencies, a “Project Manager” is more Account Leader than Delivery Leader). Sometimes an Account Director fits this category—but more often, it’s a veiled “salesperson” title (and appears in Growth, below).
I recommend an Account Leader minimum billable target of 50%+ (that is, 20+ hours a week). They’ll spend the rest of their time on non-billable relationship-building, upsells, and (at some agencies) outright sales. For more on sales, see the Growth category below.
Strategist (e.g., strategist, director of strategy)
Strategist is about directing your agency to meet the client’s goals, by spending a client’s budget on the highest-ROI activities. They’re technically an SME (in the sense that they’d ideally do strategy—their “craft”—all day long). But since that necessarily requires client contact, think of strategists as a mix of Specialist and Account Leader.
Typical Client Strategist job titles include Strategist, Director of Strategy, and VP of Strategy. Be sure to “insulate” strategists from day-to-day client contact (via the Account Leaders and Delivery Leaders), since clients love talking to good strategists. That’s fine if it meets the agency’s needs… but not when the strategist needs to be heads-down (especially if they need to be heads-down on a different client). Strategists typically started in a Specialist role before pursuing strategy. See my advice on promoting strategists from within.
Depending on how you’ve structured their role, a Strategist’s billable target will be somewhere between an Account Leader and a pure Specialist—typically billing 60–75% (24–30 hours a week). Their non-billable time includes sales support, self-marketing support, and training other team members (including specialists, account leaders, and salespeople) on relevant trends. If the “strategist” is actually a salesperson, they’re technically within the non-billable Growth category (below).
Growth (e.g., marketing, sales, partnerships)
Growth is about generating leads, working and closing sales opportunities, and building partnerships—various types of “business-building” work to bring in the billables that other team members ultimately deliver. They’re your internal self-marketers, salespeople, and (at some agencies) partnership managers.
At agencies, typical Growth job titles include Director of Marketing, Marketing Manager, Business Development Representative, Account Executive, VP of Growth, VP of Sales, and Partnerships Manager.
Your Growth people are typically 0% billable, although smaller agencies tend to have an otherwise-billable person lead self-marketing (or vice versa, pulling a billable person into doing self-marketing). At many agencies, the “Director of Marketing” is at least partially client-billable. And sometimes Account Leaders have a sales quota, too.
Here’s more on Cost of Marketing and Cost of Sales at agencies.
Firm Leader (e.g., operations, agency leadership)
Firm Leader is about making the agency run smoothly—on both a short-term basis (operations) and a long-term basis (agency leadership). Firm Leaders make life easier for your billable team members, ensure you stay profitable, and ensure clients pay on time.
Typical Firm Leader job titles include Chief Operating Officer (COO), Director of Operations, Director of People, Operations Manager, Finance Manager, Office Manager, and Executive Assistant. As you grow, agency owners tend to expand their Firm Leader-related role, around business strategy for the agency itself.
Your agency’s Firm Leaders are typically 0% billable, although I’ll sometimes see 5-10% billable if a Firm Leader is helping the delivery team with Quality Assurance (QA). Related, a Resource Manager will be at least partially-billable when they coordinate people for billable work.
Leadership-wise, it helps to have an independent #2. Their title might be President, COO, Managing Director, or General Manager. Need to hire someone as your right-hand person? See my articles on the topic.
What else should we consider about Agency Roles?
In future articles, I’ll review why there isn’t an “Agency Owner” role category, how to customize the Billable Hours target for each role, and how to successfully split or combine roles to meet your agency’s needs. Don’t miss the updates—subscribe to my newsletter to hear when they go live.
In the meantime:
- Start by doing an “inventory” of the roles at your agency. Who’s doing what? Are there any roles where it’s unclear who’s in charge? How many people are doing more than one role? Is anyone doing more than 2–3 roles?
- Think about how you might split or shift roles, especially where you notice current gaps. For instance, if you like client strategy but don’t like being the client’s day-to-day contact, you’ll need to recruit someone to handle AM. If the person doing PM isn’t detail-oriented, you’ll want to shift that to someone who is (whether a current team member or a future hire).
- Review how your team structure needs to change as you grow. The structure that worked a year ago likely won’t work a year from now… and it may not be working today. Understanding the six roles will help you see what needs to shift, to help you make the agency serve you.
If you get stuck—or you want an expert opinion to confirm you’re on the right track—contact me for help. I have a range of options to fit most budgets.
Question: How is your agency currently handling the six role categories (Specialist, Delivery Leader, Account Leader, Strategist, Growth, and Firm Leader)—and what needs to shift to meet your future goals?
