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should I Start as an account manager if I want to build my career in Marketing

I'm a fresh grad and I want to build my career in Marketing, Pure Marketing and I was offered a position in an advertising and marketing agency as an account manager, search for customers, try to convince them ti use our services and then do the basic account manager communication and stuff, which means there are some sales duties among my responsibility, is this position is the best way to start my career in Marketing? If not can you please inform me a little about that?

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Question added by Deleted user
Date Posted: 2012/11/25

To sell or not to sell - that is the question.
There are a couple of facets to this approach as a career kick-start and as someone who as recruited a gamut of people from all backgrounds I can confidently tell you that any experience in sales is priceless.
If you can become good at influencing people's decisions - which is what sales / client servicing / business development is really all about, you will become very successful.
And marketing is about getting inside the consumer's head.
So starting your marketing career as an account manager will teach you the basic skill-set you will find invaluable.

Mohammed Mehdawi
by Mohammed Mehdawi , Marketing Officer , Best AL-yousifi Electronics ( Panasonic )

hi with all my respect , sales will teach to convince the customer to buy , but if you have 100k potential customers, you might also need research and analysis skills to find why they do what they do , for a start sales skills it's very good since your will learn how to approach the customers and more , in some points in your career you're going to see marketing is much bigger than selling Products or Services to the customers, you must have the skills for reading the chart , or to hear what your customers trying to tell you, then design your strategy based on your insight, develop your services or products to fits their needs , pricing as customers average incomes ..etc mohammed

start with jobs that helps you to learn how to beat 400 meters in less than 50 seconds.
the 15 miles run will do you no good to start with.
looks for what you really like (statistics and research vs.
creative and art, TV Marketing or Media selling marketing..
However, lots of companies offer the hard jobs to fresh peoples as they need the energy and it could well be in that range.
saying that; you might get stuck for the rest of your working life in job pays the bill but not the one that fit the dream..! the answer is, what do you really like..!?

to be a good marketer you should begin on the direct sales to get an experience in how you can deal , to know well how your potential client think after this you will find many ways to be marketer first you should get the market reactions

Hossam Abbas
by Hossam Abbas , General Manager , Bingo Global

Marketing is about communication with "mass", you will be amazed how different it is to communicate with one person rather than communicating with a group, you still need some basic creative and maneuvering techniques, but not the same as you usually use in sales, marketing doesn't have the luxury of time and instant response as sales, marketing is about measurement not about evaluation as sales, marketing is about listening not about talking like sales.
Though marketing evolution came from sales, but that evolution continued rapidly until it became a total separate science and art.
The main experience you will gain out of that job is to know how part of the communication process "advertising" goes, but marketing is much more deeper profession, you will be missing main skills needed to be a professional marketeer like pricing strategies, product development life cycles, distribution challenges ...etc, how,when, why and where for each of the same are your real marketing experience.
The best approach to a great marketing career from my personal point of view is to go through a marketing research position, this will give you a great exposure.

JULIE ANN BLANZA
by JULIE ANN BLANZA , Front Desk Receptionist , ManorHall International School

Start form the basic so that You can prove your abilities and and to gain more knowledge about the work until you reach the time that you need to be promoted

Luc Zo Randrimanantena
by Luc Zo Randrimanantena , CIVIL ENGINEER , SNC LAVALIN

Yes we can start somehow it is better to start from the below level so we have a better understanding of the team thinking and acting

Tony Mutiso
by Tony Mutiso , Project Management Engineer , Associated Civil Engineering and Construction

Well not necessarily because marketing may involve more than just the accounting aspect. One could even start as a sales person and scale the ladder to a marketing manager.

jasmina malnar
by jasmina malnar , Head of Marketing and Indirect Procurement , Hrvatski telekom

If you are only starting your career in marketing, you are in the right place starting in an agency - working in an agency will help you a lot when / if you move to the client side, and going from client to agency is not something I would recommend (I did that, and although the experience I gained working in the agency was priceless, I was just too old to be acct director in this day and age, so I speak from experience).

To make new business development part of your duties is not what accts usually do, especially so early in their career, but any experience you get now when you are young and stakes are not high is valuable - even if it serves for you to realize you are good or not so good at something.

To wrap up, yes, absolutely, give it a go, try everything, learn as much as you can and have fun!

Bappa Ghosh
by Bappa Ghosh , State Project Manager (Social Inclusion and Social Development) , West Bengal State Rural Livelihoods Mission

Necessarily not, more is to emphasis on ethics.

Cobus De Beer
by Cobus De Beer , Spécialiste De L'investigation Numérique , BIDVEST POTEA COIN

NO, ALTOUGH ACCOUNTING PLAYS AN INTERRUGL ROLE

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