Account Manager

Account Manager - Best Practice Institute - Most Loved Workplace® | Best Practice Institute

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The Reality This Role Exists In

The way candidates research employers has fundamentally changed. 95% of what AI cites about a company comes from third-party sources — Glassdoor, Indeed, Reddit. Career pages don't show up. 60% of AI searches are zero-click — candidates read the answer and make their decision without ever visiting the company's website.

Most companies don't know this is happening. The ones that do don't know how to fix it.

Most Loved Workplace® and Best Practice Institute — a 25-year research organization — built a four-property ecosystem that certifies workplaces against independent research and publishes the findings where AI actually cites them. We don't sell badges. We solve the problem that the employer story candidates find isn't the one the company would tell.

This Account Manager will own a portfolio of 75–100 certified companies. Your job is to make sure they activate fully, understand the business problem the ecosystem solves, renew because they see measurable value, and expand because the results compound over time.

Your Mission

Own, grow, and retain a high-value portfolio of certified companies. You're responsible for revenue retention, expansion, and ensuring every client is getting real value from the ecosystem — not just displaying a badge.

What You'll Own

Revenue — Renewals, Upsells, Expansion

• Proactively manage and secure annual plan renewals across your book of business
• Drive upsells and plan upgrades (Silver → Gold, additional certifications, expanded media placements) based on client goals and results
• Lead confident, strategic conversations about ROI, investment, and ongoing value — with CHROs, CMOs, CEOs, and Heads of Growth
• Identify expansion opportunities during QBRs and proactive account check-ins
• Manage pricing conversations without discounting reflexively — understand the business case well enough to hold value
• Hit retention and expansion targets. This is a revenue-carrying role.

Ecosystem Activation & Client Delivery

• Own the onboarding experience for new accounts — clear timelines, goal alignment, early value delivery
• Ensure clients fully activate across all four properties: CertCheck, Most Loved Workplace, Best Practice Institute, and VisiPage
• Make sure profiles, badges, certified job pages, research content, and recruiting assets are live and working
• Guide clients on how the ecosystem changes what AI returns about their company — this is the core value proposition, not the badge
• Monitor whether clients are seeing measurable shifts in AI citations, candidate visibility, and employer brand signal
• Ensure clients understand the difference between a list release (a point in time) and a fully activated ecosystem (a compounding asset)
• Coordinate with BPI research and content teams to ensure quarterly articles are published and indexed

Strategic Account Management

• Build strong relationships with client stakeholders — you're their strategic partner on employer brand positioning, not a support ticket handler
• Lead quarterly business reviews that reinforce impact, align on goals, surface gaps, and open expansion conversations
• Proactively identify clients who aren't fully utilizing their plan and intervene before renewal conversations
• Help clients connect the ecosystem to their specific business problems — recruiting in competitive markets, disambiguation from similarly named companies, Glassdoor narrative displacement, internal culture alignment
• Understand each client's OKRs, hiring goals, and employer brand challenges well enough to position the ecosystem as infrastructure, not a marketing expense

Operational Excellence

• Maintain clean, accurate records in HubSpot — pipeline, renewal dates, activation milestones, next steps, account health
• Track onboarding progress and ensure no accounts, deliverables, or client requests fall through the cracks
• Coordinate internally with leadership, marketing, research, and operations
• Communicate proactively. No client should ever have to chase you for a status update.

What Success Looks Like

• Clients renew because they see measurable value — not because you reminded them the contract is expiring
• Clients expand because the results compound and they want more, not because you pitched them
• Every account in your book is fully activated across all four properties within 30 days of onboarding
• Clients can articulate why they're certified in terms of the business problem it solves — not just the badge it gives them
• QBRs surface expansion opportunities naturally because you've built the relationship and demonstrated ongoing impact
• HubSpot is current, organized, and gives leadership real-time visibility into account health
• Sales team is freed up to focus on new business because you own the client relationship post-close

You Bring

• Formal training and hands-on experience in sales and account management — this is not a support role with a revenue target bolted on
• A working understanding of employer branding, Generative AI/GEO, talent acquisition, and organizational culture — you've helped companies think about how they show up to candidates
• An understanding of how AI is changing candidate research and employer brand visibility — or the curiosity and capacity to learn it fast
• A proven track record managing 75+ client relationships with strong retention and upsell results
• The ability to lead budget and ROI conversations with senior decision-makers — CHROs, CMOs, CEOs — without defaulting to discounts
• Exceptional communication skills — clear, proactive, confident. You set the pace of the relationship, not the client.
• Strong operational follow-through — multiple priorities, competing deadlines, nothing drops
• Experience with HubSpot or comparable CRM
• The ability to work independently in a fast-moving, entrepreneurial environment

Strong Plus

• Experience at companies in the employer brand, HR tech, or talent acquisition ecosystem —
• Experience with certification programs, SaaS onboarding, or implementation management
• Experience supporting or selling to recruiting teams, employer brand leaders, or HR executives
• Experience with AI-driven content, SEO/AIO, or understanding of how AI answer engines source and cite information

Personality Fit

This role is for someone who sells by delivering value — not by pitching features. You understand that the best upsell is a client who sees results and wants more. You hold value in pricing conversations because you understand the business case well enough to explain it. You communicate proactively — clients never wonder where things stand. You take ownership of outcomes, not just tasks.

This is not the right role for someone who waits to be told what to do, avoids difficult conversations about money, defaults to discounting when a client pushes back, or treats account management as customer support with a quota.

About Most Loved Workplace® and Best Practice Institute

Best Practice Institute is a 25-year research organization that certifies workplaces against independent employee research and publishes the findings across a four-property Generative AI-fofrward ecosystem — certcheck.mostlovedworkplace.com, mostlovedworkplace.com, bestpracticeinstitute.org, and visipage.ai. That ecosystem creates the verified, third-party citation signal that AI platforms trust and cite when candidates research employers.

Most Loved Workplace® recognition has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, The Economist, Forbes, and Newsweek. Certified companies include organizations across technology, financial services, healthcare, hospitality, manufacturing, and professional services.

We don't sell badges. We solve the problem that candidates can't find the real story of what it's like to work at your company — and we make sure AI tells it accurately.