ACCOUNT OVERVIEW HOW TO

If available, you can use this section to include any recent or major news, either positive or negative, or any other signals that might indicate their current north star metric or where the business is ultimately heading. It’s also a great place for any newcomers to the account to quickly grasp what the customer does at a high level. The company overview is an opportunity to research the company’s foundations, history, mission, and evolution. Have we already been successful in cross-selling, upselling, or renewals? What products did we close and who was our primary point of contact in that deal? If any attempts at account expansion have been unsuccessful, take note of the attempts and any detail or insight you can provide as to why the deal fell through. We go into more detail about each section, what the goal is, and what should be included.īefore trying to understand the business needs, it’s helpful to get a sense (or reminder) of what’s previously been closed, attempted, and the strategies that have been successful or not. Here is a template for your team to consider during account planning.

ACCOUNT OVERVIEW HOW TO

Since account planning is essentially a structured process for learning how to make your product or service indispensable to the customer, if successful, that’s exactly what you’ll become. On the flip side, account planning should also help increase the value for customers over the life of the engagement. Yet 51% of sales leaders report missing account growth targets due to ineffective account management, in one Gartner study. Companies that provide as good an experience post-sale as they did pre-sale are more likely to retain customers. Many companies front-load their investment in sales and marketing, only to leave their customers in the dark after the sale is won. These factors directly impact your customer lifetime value (CLV), or the amount of revenue you’re able to generate from a given account.Īn alternative method for increasing CLV is lengthening retention, or contract length, even if the contract size remains unchanged. Customer Lifetime ValueĪn account plan is ultimately successful if it enables you to win renewals, increase contract size, or otherwise grow the account. That’s why it’s important to incorporate an account plan into your sales process. When executed properly, account planning is a win-win pursuit for both customer and seller: both parties capture the greatest value and nothing is left on the table as every great negotiator knows, you never split the difference.

Importance of Account Planning: A Double-Sided Coin These are critical to prioritizing your accounts, but there’s an ocean of metrics out there we’re here to help you cut through the noise. When prioritizing which accounts to focus on, you can consider metrics like their TAM (Total Addressable Market or Total Potential Revenue), market share, and growth rate as good determining factors for future account growth potential. Often, reps choose their largest revenue accounts, but you should stop and think about the ultimate goal of strategic account management: which accounts have the biggest upside potential? And remember, past performance is not a perfect indicator of future performance. Often confused with account planning, strategic account management is the methodical approach of identifying and prioritizing the accounts that should be given more attention and how to allocate the required, and limited, resources at your disposal. Think of the account plan as a sailboat’s itinerary, the destination is known and the route decided, but the boat must still tack with unpredictable and ever-changing winds. But first, some foundations: What is an Account Plan?Īn account plan is a detailed strategy for building upon existing relationships-the account-to uncover the customer’s needs, how to deliver the most value, and subsequently increase their customer lifetime value and likelihood of retention.Īccount planning is the process of researching and strategizing the account in question but should be treated as an ongoing process because the landscape can and will change. So why not leverage your existing relationships to drive more revenue? In this article, you’ll learn why this is a responsibility your team should be embracing and a template to follow. And in all cases, that’s exactly what it should be. In some cases, that’s exactly what it is: a foot in the door.

Account planning views “closed-won” as an oxymoron-the initial sale is a mere foot in the door to opening a much bigger opportunity that should never be “closed.”

Account overview