What is an account plan?
An account plan is a strategic plan for a customer account. It will typically include the why, what, and how for every initiative that you are planning to execute for that account over the next 12 months
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An account plan is a strategic plan for a customer account. It will typically include the why, what, and how for every initiative that you are planning to execute for that account over the next 12 months.
An account plan will be specific to the account and should have a cadence—for example, it may be reviewed quarterly. Think of an account plan like a template that you customize for each one of your accounts—it’s a framework that you can use across your customer base but with specific information about each individual customer.
What does account planning have to do with customer success?
An account plan is created based on the needs, challenges, and goals of a particular customer. This means that it takes into consideration the customer’s strategy and helps to align activities with that strategy in order to improve business outcomes.
Therefore, an account plan is more than just a list of activities—it also focuses on why those activities are important and what they will ultimately accomplish for the customer. It will take into consideration your own company’s strategy and help ensure that you are successfully delivering on any promises made to the customer.
An account plan also acts as a communication tool for both the customer success team and their executives, as well as for their counterparts within your company (i.e., sales). In addition to being useful at executive meetings or sales reviews, an account plan can help keep everyone focused on the big picture in the day-to-day chaos of managing accounts.
Why create an account plan?
Account plans should be created in the shortest time possible and reviewed on a regular basis.
The first step is prioritizing your customer’s pain points—the areas that may have hindered them from using your product successfully.
Once these issues are identified, set up an account plan meeting with your customer and product manager (or other decision-makers). At this meeting, ask each person what areas of pain need to be addressed with their customers. You’ll want all viewpoints involved because everyone on your product team can see different facets of the account and how they relate to each other. If there are issues facing multiple people on your team (and they should be!), set up a separate meeting with everyone who isn’t directly affected by the problem.
Another good idea: include someone from another department so you can hear how other aspects of your business affect customers’ lives as well. One key takeaway is that the more people you involve in setting up an account plan meeting, the more likely it is that everyone will speak up about important issues since no one wants to feel left out or unheard.
What should be included in an account plan?
The more details you have in your account plan, the better:
- What you know about the customer and their business
- What you want to know about the customer and their business.
- What you think their decision criteria for a vendor is (e.g., price, service levels, product features)
- What you believe your organization can deliver to them
- Your hypotheses on how they perceive your company’s products and services.
- How they view your competitors’ products and services
- An organizational chart and who are your promoters and detractors
- A list of all the activities you wish to develop, with SMART goals
Plan and maintain a regular cadence of activity to grow your customer accounts and keep them happy
Account plans are an essential tool for keeping your team on track to meet its goals.
A well-documented account plan will tell you everything you need to know about how your customers’ goals align with yours. In particular, I recommend using it to track the progress of your customer’s goals, as well as any risks or opportunities in the account. It’ll also give you insight into the customer’s business and their challenges.
By creating a regular cadence of activity around your accounts, you’ll improve visibility across teams and increase collaboration within them. You can use these conversations to update each other about priorities and performance against targets and identify new ways for your team to help your customers grow. This can ultimately help save time that would otherwise be spent tracking down information at different stages of a project or deal cycle.
In addition to helping you stay organized, good account planning helps keep customers engaged on an ongoing basis, improving loyalty and satisfaction over time.
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