How To Become A Senior Account Director: What It Is and Career Path

What is a senior account director and how to become one

Updated January 8, 2025

4 min read

Quoted expert

Jerri Lynn Kyle

As a Senior Account Director, you will be responsible for working in marketing, sales, and advertising for a company. You will provide customer service and give sales pitches to customers. You will also train your sales staff to know what effective sales are. You will need to trust your customers, find new clients and keep everyone happy. A Senior Account Director also needs to manage and monitor customer accounts and keep products and product pitches personalized.

Many Senior Account Directors also work for advertising agencies and help clients build their brands. They work during regular business hours, usually in an office or a home office, and need to be a team player. A bachelor's degree in business administration, marketing, or sales is usually required. You will need to show extensive marketing experience plus knowledge of basic computer programs and have good communication skills since you will keep track of a large number of clients. For all these tasks and education, you will receive an annual salary of $74,000 to $158,000 with added bonuses.

What general advice would you give to a senior account director?

Jerri Lynn Kyle

Senior Instructor, Internship Coordinator, Missouri State University

1.Don't be discouraged! Jobs are out there but you might not get your dream job starting out. It's a journey, so try to make the most of every stop.
2.Start building your professional credibility, both with how you perform your job, and how you interact with your coworkers.
3.Finally, be confident, but at the same time be teachable and coachable. Your degree doesn't make you an expert. Sometimes you realize you don't even know what you don't know, and that's okay. You aren't going to know everything and that's why you need to be coachable.

ScoreSenior Account DirectorUS Average

Salary

8.2

Avg. Salary $122,004

Avg. Salary $59,228

Stability level

6.4

Growth rate 5%

Growth rate 0.3%

Diversity

2.7

Race

American Indian and Alaska Native 0.24%

Asian 4.07%

Black or African American 3.24%

Hispanic or Latino 9.82%

Unknown 4.41%

White 78.23%

Gender

female 41.90%

male 58.10%

Age - 46

Race

American Indian and Alaska Native 3.00%

Asian 7.00%

Black or African American 14.00%

Hispanic or Latino 19.00%

White 57.00%

Gender

female 47.00%

male 53.00%

Age - 46

Stress level

6.4

Stress level is manageable

7.1 - high

Complexity level

8.7

Complexity level is advanced

7 - challenging

Work life balance

4.4

Work life balance is poor

6.4 - fair

Key steps to become a senior account director

Explore senior account director education requirements

Most common senior account director degrees

Bachelor's

78.7 %

Master's

14.8 %

Associate

4.6 %

Start to develop specific senior account director skills

Skills	Percentages
Healthcare	15.21%
Account Management	13.94%
Business Development	8.27%
Client Facing	8.18%
Project Management	6.65%

Complete relevant senior account director training and internships

Accountants spend an average of 6-12 months on post-employment, on-the-job training. New senior account directors learn the skills and techniques required for their job and employer during this time. The chart below shows how long it takes to gain competency as a senior account director based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data and data from real senior account director resumes.

Research senior account director duties and responsibilities

Supervise insurance billing maintenance and review all manage care contractual adjustments to ensure patients are billed correctly prior to self-pay transfer.
Complete oversight of four grants.
Demonstrate ROI with extensive post-program outcomes reports, as well as effective status reports, program updates, and evaluation summaries.
Establish a governance and oversight model which become standard practice to monitor delivery performance of contract services.

Get senior account director experience

Generally, it takes 6-8 years to become a senior account director. The most common roles before becoming a senior account director include account executive, account director team lead and account manager.

Prepare your senior account director resume

When your background is strong enough, you can start writing your senior account director resume.

You can use Zippia's AI resume builder to make the resume writing process easier while also making sure that you include key information that hiring managers expect to see on a senior account director resume. You'll find resume tips and examples of skills, responsibilities, and summaries, all provided by Zippi, your career sidekick.

Choose from 10+ customizable senior account director resume templates

Build a professional senior account director resume in minutes. Browse through our resume examples to identify the best way to word your resume. Then choose from 10+ resume templates to create your senior account director resume.

Apply for senior account director jobs

Now it's time to start searching for a senior account director job. Consider the tips below for a successful job search:

Browse job boards for relevant postings
Consult your professional network
Reach out to companies you're interested in working for directly
Watch out for job scams

How do senior account directors rate their job?

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Senior account director reviews

A zippia user wrote a review on Jun 2019

Pros

Strategic Planning to develop and capture new business opportunities, building strong customer/partner relationships and analyzing the financial performance of customers to help improve their financial and operational performance. Negotiations

Cons

Being away from family because of excessive travel

A zippia user wrote a review on May 2019