Growing the accounts you already have sounds simple enough — until you realise most people have no idea where to actually start. Here are the strategies that genuinely move the needle.

This question was answered by Michael Tsapazi, industry leader with deep experience in agency account growth, and Katie Feder, mental health expert, with Andy Wright hosting the conversation as part of this Asking For A Friend session on Never Not Creative.

Look for the gaps in every brief

Mike's first piece of advice is to stop treating a brief as a fixed boundary and start treating it as a starting point. When you understand a client's business well enough, you can spot what they haven't asked for but genuinely need. A $20,000 project becomes a $25,000 project not through upselling, but through genuinely helping a client see what they're missing. Clients, as Mike puts it, often don't know what they don't know.

Get yourself physically inside the client's world

One of the most practical and underused strategies Mike raises is simply asking to work from a client's office. Even half a day a week changes everything. When you're present, you're the person they turn to when something comes up. Andy backs this up with his own experience of an account manager who spent two days a week inside a major bank, and the results were remarkable. Proximity builds trust, reduces friction, and keeps the work flowing.

Share results and help your clients look good

Mike is clear that measuring and sharing outcomes isn't just good practice, it's a growth strategy. When clients feel supported and successful, they talk about it. That internal advocacy quietly opens doors to other parts of the business, other budgets, and other teams.

Get in front of budget decisions before they're made

Understanding when a client plans and allocates budget is one of the most valuable things you can know. Mike's advice is to position yourself at the start of that cycle, well before any formal brief exists. If a client already has you in mind when they're pitching internally for budget, you're almost already hired.

Stop relying on the end-of-project opportunity phase

Both Mike and Andy agree on this one: the bolted-on "opportunity phase" at the end of a project almost never delivers. By the time a project wraps up, there's fatigue on both sides and nobody wants to go looking for the next big idea. The expansion conversations need to happen during the work, not after it.

Growing existing accounts isn't about being pushy or clever. It's about being present, curious, and genuinely useful, which, if you think about it, is what good creative work is all about anyway.