The work was changing. So was the job of the account manager.
Rare already had capable account managers. The opportunity wasn’t to teach them how to service clients better.
It was to strengthen the part of the role that becomes more valuable as agency work changes: commercial judgement, confidence, negotiation and the ability to continually create more value across the client relationship.
AI was accelerating that change. Tasks that once took hours could increasingly be done faster and cheaper. That put more pressure on agencies to be clear about where their real value sat, and on the people closest to the client to know how to articulate it.
The Challenge
Account managers sit in a difficult position. They’re responsible for protecting the relationship while also protecting the value of the work.
Those two responsibilities can pull in different directions. When a client pushes back on scope or price, keeping the relationship comfortable can feel easier than holding the commercial line.
But pricing was only part of the challenge. If technology makes execution faster, being good at managing the process is no longer enough on its own. Strong account managers need to keep creating value across the relationship: ask better questions, spot opportunities, understand the client’s business and help shape the problem before everyone rushes to produce the answer.
Rare wanted to invest in that craft deliberately.
The Insight
AI can make output cheaper, but it can’t decide what matters. That makes human judgement more valuable, not less.
When the mechanics of producing work become faster, more of the value shifts to knowing what should be done, why it matters, how to make it better and how to have the commercial conversation around it.
The same principle applied to pricing. An agency that talks primarily in hours teaches the client to evaluate hours. But clients ultimately care about what the thinking and work help them achieve.
So the opportunity wasn’t simply to teach negotiation tactics. It was to help the team think differently about the value they brought to the relationship.
Hum’s Role
Hum developed a tailored session for Rare’s account management team as part of the Art and Craft of Account Management programme.
The material drew on real agency and client experience rather than generic sales training, focusing on the situations account managers actually encounter: scope pressure, price conversations, negotiation, identifying opportunities across the account and using AI intelligently within the role.
The session included commercial-confidence and value-based-pricing work, practical negotiation approaches and a Suit’s AI Playbook the team could continue using afterwards.
The aim was simple: help good account managers become more commercially valuable ones.
The Work
A central theme was helping the team continually create more value across the client relationship.
That meant building confidence to have better commercial conversations without turning the relationship adversarial, helping people articulate value rather than apologise for price, and encouraging the team to look for where stronger thinking could genuinely help the client.
AI formed part of the same conversation. Not as a threat to the account-management role, but as a tool capable of removing lower-value effort and creating more room for judgement, thinking and client value.
The training was built around Rare and the realities of its team. It wasn’t an off-the-shelf workshop with the logo changed on the first slide.
The Outcome
The most useful proof came quickly.
Within days of the session, Rare’s Managing Director, Simon Stewart, was already seeing the language and thinking from the training appearing in conversations across the team.
In Their Words
“Damo brought so much to the session and the results have been clear and immediate! Can’t wait for the next one!”
Simon StewartManaging Director, Rare
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