Greetings, account planners. 
The annual Planner Survey is out, and it’s really important that you all fill it out. Here’s why:
- Greater transparency into salaries by position, experience, region, size of agency, etc. help us better negotiate for our salaries. It helps us figure out what the high and low ends are and therefore gives us leverage: we know what the agencies are willing to pay, and we can start the salary discussion from a better educated, and therefore more advantageous position. TRUE TESTIMONIAL: I used the survey to negotiate my last salary – it worked, and it worked to my advantage. I wouldn’t have had the guts to ask for that salary otherwise.
- It also helps us see where the discrepancies are – do men and women make the same amount? Are more senior planners at smaller agencies under-valued compared to their colleagues at big agencies, or vice versa? What do we gain or give up in making the choice to take certain roles, in certain cities, at certain agencies?
- Sunshine, as they say, is the best disinfectant. The more we know about how much and how hard we work, how we’re paid, what our benefits are like, where the opportunities for career growth are, and so on, the brighter the light shines on agency practices, and hopefully encourages them to behave better.
I have another reason that filling out this survey is important. Four women (all planners!) in four countries put this thing together – and no one pays them to do it. Heather Lefevre (Amsterdam), Julie Lee (Madrid), Megan Averell (Boston), and Bori Toth (Berlin) do it for free, share the results for free, and they do this for all of us. We should make this easier and more useful and more influential by participating. This is how we honor their effort. Okay, that’s the end of my guilt trip.
So – go here to take the survey. Tweet about it, share it on Facebook; get your colleagues to take it, get your bosses to take it.