Account plan

What is an account plan?

An account plan is a written plan for growing a major account: its goals, stakeholders, opportunities and next actions. It turns what the account team knows about the customer into an agreed direction for the relationship. It is a working document for the account team, kept current as the account changes.

Why it matters to a revenue leader

For a large customer, the revenue at risk and the revenue available both sit in one place. Forrester describes a strategic account plan as a way to understand the customer's business, coordinate the sales approach and lay out a long-term relationship. Gartner warns against static, set-and-forget plans and finds that teams who update their plans often and use them with the customer build more decision confidence on the customer's side. In commercial services, the plan matters most on multi-site and national accounts, where renewals and new sites are often decided by different people.

A security services company's largest customer is a 40-site retail chain. The account plan records the chain's goal of reducing shrink, the regional directors who approve site work, and the 12 sites still served by a competitor. The account team reviews the plan with the customer's facilities lead, so both sides work from the same picture.