The Standard · Sales and Business Development
Account Management
Manages accounts with AI-assisted insight and communication that stays honest and on record.
You manage client health, reviews, renewals, and expansion conversations across existing accounts. You use the assistant to synthesise evidence and draft messages, but the assistant can invent signals or value claims. You keep client communication honest, contextual, and recorded.
The exam for Account Management is not open yet. A skill opens once its questions are approved and tested.
What it measures
Whatever the skill, the exam rates your work in the same six areas of the Standard. Three are for the value you get from the assistant, and three for the control you keep. Each area gets one of 4 ratings (Emerging, Developing, Proficient, Accomplished). For Account Management, a strong performance looks like this. What each area includes and excludes.
Value
What you get from the assistant: how far it takes the work, how well you brief it, and the piece you hand in.
- Reaching further
You use the reply to anticipate client questions, compare account options, and name gaps before completing the account work.
Using the assistant to produce work beyond what you could have produced alone, rather than the same work faster.
- Briefing the assistant
You brief the assistant with the client reader, purpose, source facts, format, length, and required contents.
Giving the assistant the reader, purpose and source facts the work depends on, and the form, length and contents you need back.
- The finished piece
You turn the assistant's reply into a client-ready account plan, review, or message with your own judgement.
Turning the assistant's output into something a colleague could use: editing it, combining it and adding original thinking.
Control
What you keep in hand: checking its work, keeping information safe, and deciding what stays with a person.
- Checking its work
You check account claims, figures, and assumptions against client records, correcting unsupported renewal or expansion evidence.
Checking the assistant's claims, figures and assumptions against the source before the work is used.
- Safety and confidentiality
You keep personal, confidential, and commercially sensitive client information out of the brief and finished communication.
Handling confidential and personal data, seeing compliance, ethical and reputational risk, and declining unsafe requests.
- Knowing what to delegate
You decide which account analysis or draft the assistant receives, what stays with you, and who approves open commitments.
Deciding what to hand to the assistant and what to keep, and at what stakes, before any output exists.
What you do in the exam
Every skill of the Standard is examined the same way, at the same pass mark, in the Applied AI Badge. Two tasks with the assistant and two sets of questions, over 15 minutes. You do real work with an AI assistant beside you, hand in what you would send, then answer follow-up questions about your own work.
- 01
An account health snapshot from portfolio signals, client records, and recent communications.
- 02
A QBR narrative from usage data, success evidence, client priorities, and next-step options.
- 03
A renewal or expansion proposal from account history, value evidence, and stated business priorities.
These are the kinds of task the exam sets. Your exam draws its own from a bank the Examination Board has approved.
- Exam
- Applied AI Badge
- Price
- US$19
- Length
- 15 minutes
- Attempts
- One for each purchase, then a 7-day wait
What the badge certifies
What an employer reads
Passed an Institute exam in account management. They briefed the assistant with account records, caught unsupported renewal claims, and delivered a recorded QBR.
You earn it in one exam, never by finishing a course.
- Name on the certificate
- Applied AI Badge: Account Management
- Who it is for
- Account managers, customer success managers, and client relationship managers who retain and grow existing accounts.
- Valid for
- 2 years, then renew
- Verification
- Every badge has a public verification page an employer can open, and a place in the public register if you choose it.
- Marked by
- An AI examiner marks your work against a marking guide and quotes your own words as evidence. A person checks anything borderline.
Near it in the Standard
- Grant Writing
Writes grant applications with AI that meet the call exactly and make no claim the evidence cannot back.
- Negotiation
Prepares negotiations with AI and keeps the judgement, and the relationship, human.
- Business Development
Researches and approaches prospects with AI and keeps every claim about them accurate.
- Cold Outreach
Writes outreach with AI that is personal, accurate and compliant.
- Sales Conversations
Prepares sales conversations with AI and never lets it promise what the product cannot do.
- Networking & Relationships
Builds relationships with AI-assisted research and follow-up that stays genuine.
- Tender & Bid Writing
Writes tenders and bids with AI that answer the specification and evidence every claim.
Everything in Sales and Business Development, including the level exams that name the whole function.
Practise it before you pay for it
Practice is free (up to 50 sessions a day) and shaped like the exam, with a coach that tells you what to change. It never counts towards a credential, and an exercise you practised is kept out of your exam.
Want to learn it first? AI+ Account Management covers this skill, and AI+ Pro teaches it as a course. Neither is required to pass.