Account Manager
What this job does:
Serves as the primary business relationship owner for a portfolio of pharma, biotech, or research institution clients - ensuring satisfaction with products or services and identifying growth opportunities. Day-to-day, meets with scientists, lab directors, and procurement teams, presents solutions addressing research or clinical needs, and negotiates contracts. Combines scientific credibility with business acumen to translate client research challenges into product solutions while hitting revenue targets.
This job is similar to these lab/research tasks:
Coordinating shared projects across labs, negotiating resource and equipment access, maintaining relationships with collaborators, presenting research to external audiences
Typical starting salary range
$90k to $160k
Salary estimate represented as 25th to 75th percentile. Gathered from recent job postings, Glassdoor.com, and Salary.com
Daily task breakdown
- Client relationship management: meetings, calls, check-ins (30%)
- Sales activities: prospecting, proposals, contract negotiation (25%)
- Strategic account planning and territory management (20%)
- Internal collaboration: cross-functional coordination with marketing, product, support (15%)
- Industry learning and administration: CRM updates, conferences, training (10%)
Skills you'll use in this job:
CRM proficiency (Salesforce); territory and pipeline management; scientific literacy in relevant therapeutic/technology areas; contract negotiation; consultative selling; strategic account planning; cross-functional collaboration; presentation skills; problem-solving; regulatory awareness (FDA/PhRMA)
Talk about these PhD skills in your resume and interview:
Talk about managing collaborations with other labs - coordinating shared projects, negotiating resource access, and maintaining productive relationships with diverse scientific teams. Talk about how translating complex experimental findings into clear conference talks and grant narratives maps directly to consultative selling, where you articulate product value to sophisticated scientific audiences.
Alternative job titles to search:
Key Account Manager; Strategic Account Manager; Scientific Account Manager; Technical Account Manager; Bioscience Account Manager; Territory Manager; Client Relationship Manager; Account Executive (Life Sciences); National Account Manager
*Note:
-Job titles are inconsistent between companies. Try various keywords.
-PhDs tend to undershoot seniority level. Target higher than you think.
