Few things spur panic in the AE faster than a client -- it's the bread and butter baby -- being acquired by another company. Although acquisitions are often rumored beforehand, it happens at the top levels of organizations, usually removed from the auspices of your marketing contacts. Panic at the agency ensues. "Who are they? Are they going to act as holding company or merge businesses? Are they going to keep their name, their staff, their products... arghhhhhhhhh!"

If your client is being acquired, it is almost always the smaller, more dynamic company being swallowed: yours. And those in power will want to have their people, their processes, their relationships, since that is their powerbase.

So what do you do?
 
Your loyalty is with your agency, not the client. Often AEs forget that and get dragged down in flames seeking loyalties on an unstable platform of acquired clients looking for a life raft.

Suntzu says, "Nothing is more difficult than the art of maneuvering for advantageous positions."

Great AEs look for the opportunity but do not delude themselves. They assess whether the other agency is going to be able to handle the workload for online. They understand that although that agency will try, more often than not they will fail. The other agency will not know your client's business. Here is where it gets interesting. Educate them. Make yourself invaluable to the other agency. Meet with them to go over your current client's strategy and offer to help in the transition by being honest and upfront about what you're working on and why.

A bad AE becomes territorial. They repeat to themselves how they know nothing about the client's business. They attempt to subvert projects to just win that little extra business back. The problem? More often than not they lose.

Don't be territorial. In the end, you will be much better positioned to keep portions of the work, insert yourself as a good agency resource that understands a key portion of the new company's business and sustain the relationship for a while. You may fully lose it, you may not, and you may actually end up with more business that you can handle. But at least you have mitigated your agency's risk and given your shop an opportunity to fill a potential gap.

This is not a zero-sum game that in order for you to win, they must lose. View it as such at your peril.