Account planning is a process that helps sales organizations identify potential clients, create detailed profiles of those companies, and develop a plan for how to approach them. It’s important to note that this is not the same as account management. Instead, it’s an initial step in selling to companies or individuals based on their needs. Without proper account planning, you could waste time and effort trying to sell something that isn’t relevant to your target audience.
What Is Account Planning?
Account planning is a strategic marketing and sales process. It’s the process that helps you identify and prioritize your best prospects, create a plan to win with those prospects, and deliver value so that they will want to buy from you. To be a competitive force in today’s marketplace, you need to have an account planning strategy that keeps you moving forward.
Data shows that over two-thirds of brands use account-based marketing to engage with customers. Moreover, many organizations have dedicated leaders to handle account-based marking departments.
Account planning has its roots in “prospecting.” It means finding new opportunities for revenue growth by identifying potential customers with needs or problems that your company can solve.
In its simplest form, account planning first involves understanding the customer’s situation today, their current challenges and pain points, and then figuring out how to use this knowledge to generate business by solving their needs in the future. This means mapping out the journey from discovery (where they are today) through engagement (what they need now) up until purchase or recommendation (when they’re happy with their choice).
Why Does Account Planning Matter?
Account planning is a method of helping salespeople, managers, and leaders get the most value out of their time. When you can plan effectively, you can avoid wasting your time on things that don’t matter or at least direct it toward where it matters most.
Data shows that 60% of the companies that used account-based marketing witnessed an increased revenue by at least 10% within the first year. Moreover, many who used this strategy said it outperformed several other marketing investments.
Account planning helps you focus on prioritizing and achieving essential business objectives such as:
- Making more sales, more effectively
- Improving customer retention and loyalty
- Increasing market share
Find Client Background Information
Before beginning to plan, you need to know everything about your client. You need their background information and goals. You have to be able to assess their needs and objectives by looking at their business as a whole and asking questions like “what are they trying to achieve?” or “who are they trying to reach?”
The more you know about the client, the better equipped you’ll be when it comes time for planning.
Analyze the Competition
It’s crucial to analyze the competition in a way that uses your account planning skills. Look at what they do, who they are, and what they offer. Identify their weaknesses, strengths, and how they are performing. Find out how they are pricing their services and what their clients think. According to the U.S. Small Business Administration, you can use surveys, questionnaires, and in-depth interviews to do competitive analysis.
When you understand the competition, you can create strategies to work around them or even use them to your advantage when presenting yourself as a choice for buyers. Data such as audience base, competitive pricing, market trends, etc., can help develop the right strategy for increased sales.
Decide Key Performance Indicators
Once you’ve identified the most critical drivers of your business and created a list of potential KPIs, it’s time to start thinking about the specifics. KPIs need to be specific, measurable, and relevant to be effective.
It can be challenging to grow your sales if you don’t find and monitor the right KPIs. The research firm McKinsey has highlighted that having too much data but no focus is a key troubling trend between businesses and success.
You should also ensure that the KPIs you track are aligned with your sales strategy. If they aren’t, they won’t help you achieve your goals. Annual contract value, customer lifetime value, and the average pipeline lead age are key metrics to measure.
Create a Plan
This is where you’ll set your goals and objectives and how much time and money need to be allocated to achieve those goals. In addition, this part of the process must consider feedback from the people affected by changes, meaning sales teams, marketing teams, customer service departments, etc.
This is also where all of these pieces come together with strategic objectives set by upper management and/or clients for everyone involved in the process to understand how each piece fits into the larger puzzle.
Make Changes Based on Feedback
Though listening to feedback is essential, you shouldn’t let it dictate your entire strategy. Sales teams are very collaborative, so they’re often open to different ideas and opinions. But that doesn’t mean every idea will work. Your overarching goal as an account planner is still what matters most at the end of the day.
It’s also important not to get too caught up in analyzing other people’s goals and expectations when deciding on a plan for yourself or your team. The more time you spend worrying about what others want from you, the less time you left to figure out what you want from them and how best to achieve it.
Finally, when working with other members of your organization who aren’t part of sales but have some sort of stake in what happens with these accounts, they must understand where each party stands and what ultimately needs doing. This will ensure everyone can stay focused on their tasks at hand.
Conclusion
The main takeaway from all this? Account planning is not just an important part of sales. It is also a crucial part of the sales process and can make or break your business. In 2021, more and more brands started adopting account-based marketing.
And in 2022, more than half of those who adopted this practice found success in reaching their goals, such as aligned sales and marketing teams, faster sales cycles, and stronger, more trustworthy relationships with clients. Don’t wait until the last minute to put together a plan. Start with one right now.