A day in the life as an Associate Director of Technical Account Management
Meet Wanni Tsai, Associate Director of Publisher Technical Account Management at Xandr (via AT&T acquisition of AppNexus). Wanni has worked at AppNexus/Xandr for 5 years, and she studied Mechanical Engineering at MIT.
Read on to get a glimpse into Wanni’s role and what her work-life looks like these days!
What are the core requirements of your job?
As a Technical Account Manager, it’s really important to be able to act as a bridge between internal teams who build the product and external customers who use it. Internally, I translate the technical details trapped within engineering/product brains to stories that commercial teams can use to compel customers to adopt our product. Externally, I try to understand what clients want and explain their needs to our technical counterparts so we can build a product that will fulfill their needs.
What characteristics and skills do you think make someone successful in your job?
- Relationship Building — to have personal connections with cross-functional teams internally and with our customers externally.
- Technical curiosity — to be curious and have a solid understanding of how different features/platforms work.
- Critical thinking skills — to create a repeatable process that helps a business scale efficiently.
Before work
What’s your morning routine and how does it look different because of quarantine?
I enjoy making coffee with my Moka pot every morning before I turn on my laptop. The smell of freshly brewed coffee gives me a sense of calmness.
What media do you consume before getting started on work?
I listen to Robinhood’s Snacks Daily to see what’s happening in the market and read Morning Brew to get my daily news updates. Sometimes I will take a look at Reddit’s front page.
In the mornings
How do you structure your to-do list for the day and manage time efficiently?
I look at my work calendar first thing after turning on my laptop to see what important meetings I have for the day and make sure I’m prepared for those meetings. Then, I go through my unread emails to make sure there’s nothing urgent that I need to deal with. I will reply to emails that take me less than 10 minutes to reply immediately. Next up, I check Slack messages — if something takes more than 5 mins to explain, then I will mark them as “unread” — look at them later when I have free time.
Once I’m done with those quick checks, I prioritize the top 3–5 tasks that I need to work on and block time on my calendar to make sure I finish those tasks. Here are a few examples of tasks that have made it on my to-do list:
- Preparing a sales pitch with the Sales and Product teams to make sure we understand the client’s needs/KPIs and our product is a good fit from a technical perspective for this potential client.
- Since I’m managing a team now, I set up check-ins with my direct reports to see how they are doing both personally and professionally especially during the quarantine period.
- Set up time to help the top tier clients or other Technical Account Managers troubleshoot product issues and provide feedback to the Product team.
Ultimately, I will always make sure I reply to all my emails by the end of the day. If I think certain tasks will take me more than a day to complete, then I will reply to the sender to let them know that I’m working on it and give a time estimation.
Lunch time!
What do you typically do during your lunch break? Are you a #desksalad person or do you take a break?
I’m a #desksalad person if I’m swamped for the day. Most of the time I like to have lunch with my teammates and make sure we don’t talk about only work-related topics during lunch. I like to use my lunchtime to build relationships with my coworkers and just get to know them more.
In the afternoons
What do you do to stay focused throughout the day?
Drink coffee and a lot of water! When I feel sleepy after having my daily coffee intake, I drink water to wake myself up. If I’m really losing focus, then I will take a walk or check on some of our company’s social Slack channels (#dogs, #random, #plantnexus…etc) to give myself a mental break.
What’s something you have to do for your job that might surprise people?
We work closely with the Product team on rolling out new features — sometimes our team helps QA different features and gathers feedback from our clients.
Winding down
What’s the last thing you do to wrap up before logging off for the day?
I make sure I don’t have any unread emails or Slack messages before logging off!
While in quarantine, how do you switch off from “work mode”?
I make sure I actually turn off my laptop and walk away from my desk. I typically will start cooking dinner so my brain knows it’s not working time anymore.
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