Start an Account Plan

Learning Objective

After completing this topic, you’ll be able to:

• Start an account plan

• Start building pipeline at the level of a single account

Starting your account plan

You can start your account plan via the Account Plan launchpad on the relevant Salesforce Account record. On the launchpad you can also define the type of account plan that is applied by selecting it in the drop-down menu (as highlighted below).

When selecting a plan type, it is worth considering the following:

• What are you trying to achieve? The following plan types are created by Altify for account plans:

  • Acquisition - the Customer Acquisition account plan type guides account teams to build relationships, learn the customer’s business, develop account strategies to displace the current provider, and focus resource investment to acquire new customer business.

  • Expansion - the Customer Expansion account plan type guides account teams to expand and elevate relationships, assess cross sell and expansion potential, develop account strategies, and focus resource investment to expand business with existing customers.

  • Customer Success - a Customer Success plan is used for a new or existing account where the goal is to retain and grow revenue in the account.

• What are the solutions you are looking to sell to the account? The choice of solutions that are available in your account plan to plan revenue against is determined by the plan type that you select.

We will now look at each functional area of an account plan - each one is represented by a tile on the Account Plan launchpad.

Note: The functions that are available in an account plan is also determined by the account plan type. If a function, e.g. Account Details, is not available, the tile is disabled on the launchpad.

Relationships

See Expand and Elevate the Right Relationships: Introduction to revisit the relationship map content.

Insights

See Deliver Insight to Your Customer: Introduction to revisit the insight map content.

Potentials

The Potentials page is where you can build pipeline by identifying and exploiting 'white space': solutions that can deliver value to an account or its divisions. 

You can learn more about white space in account plans here: Mapping Whitespace at the Account Level.

Account Details

On the Account Details page, a list of pertinent questions guide you toward developing an account strategy and uncovering key information about the account.

Note: The plan type determines the questions that are displayed. So, for example, if the plan type Acquisition is selected, the questions are geared toward winning new business.

For help with completing questions on the Account Details page, see Account Details in the Altify online help.

Objectives

Formulate the goals (objectives) to achieve your account strategy, and the tasks (actions) that need to be completed in order to achieve each goal.

For help with creating objectives and actions in an account plan, see Objectives in the Altify online help.