---
name: account_planning
description: "Build and run a sales account plan for one named account: research the account from its own filings and your CRM history, map stakeholders by role, access, influence, and stance, inventory opportunities from a whitespace matrix, set objectives with owners and measures, multi-thread the buying group, and run the plan on a fixed review cadence. Use when someone asks for an account plan, a key account strategy, a plan to grow or defend a named customer, stakeholder mapping for an account, or an account review. For a marketing program across many accounts use abm_playbook; for one live deal's qualification use a deal skill, not this one."
---

# Account Planning

## Purpose

An account plan is the working strategy for one named account over the next 12 months: what the account is trying to do, who decides what inside it, where your business with them can honestly grow, what you will do in what order, and how you will know it worked. It lives where the account team works, usually the CRM account record, and it changes when the account changes.

This skill produces that plan and the routine that keeps it alive. It is not a territory plan, not a marketing program, and not a qualification sheet for a single deal. Two established methods sit behind it, used here in plain form: the Large Account Management Process (LAMP), the account-level method from the Miller Heiman family now held by Korn Ferry, which works in three stages of gathering data, setting strategy, and executing it; and the account plan structure taught in Salesforce Trailhead, where the plan is a central document built from research, with objectives that each carry an owner, dates, and a tracked measure.

Scope rule: plan few accounts properly or do not plan at all. One account owner can hold a real plan for a small number of strategic accounts. A plan for every account in a territory is a spreadsheet exercise that no one reads.

## Workflow

### 1. Decide if the account earns a plan
Score the account on future potential and willingness to work with you, not on current spend alone. Current spend tells you what the account was worth; it is a weak guide to what it will do next. Write down: growth potential (expansion surface, the account's own growth, upcoming triggers), relationship access (can you reach decision makers, or only users), strategic fit (does winning here prove something, open a market, or anchor a region), and risk if lost. Accounts that clear the bar get a tier: Tier 1 strategic, Tier 2 growth, Tier 3 coverage. The tier sets the review cadence in step 7, nothing else. Record who chose the tier and when, so the choice can be argued with later.

### 2. Research before you write anything
Work the checklist in `references/research-checklist.md`. Outside-in first: the account's own reports, earnings material, press releases, hiring, and leadership changes. Then inside-out: your CRM history, what they own and actually use, support and renewal record, who has met whom. Label every material fact with its source and date. Label inferences as inferences. If a section has no evidence, write "unknown" and add a research action. A plan built on guesses about the customer's priorities will aim good effort at the wrong objectives.

### 3. Write the account picture
One page, in this order:
- What the account is: structure, business units with their own budgets, size in the terms your data supports.
- What it is trying to do: its stated priorities, with the source for each. Priorities the account published or said to you, not priorities you wish it had.
- Where you stand: revenue and products today, relationship health, open problems, renewal dates.
- What could change the year: trigger events, threats, competitor positions.
- Your vision for the account in one or two sentences: the outcome you want to be known for there. If the vision could fit any account, rewrite it until it could only fit this one.

### 4. Map the stakeholders
Build the map in `references/stakeholder-map.md`: one row per person with role, access, influence, support, their personal outcome, and a next action. Keep the four ratings separate and evidence-based. Then run the checker:

```bash
python3 ~/workspace/skills/account-planning/bin/plan_check.py --stakeholders stakeholders.csv --whitespace whitespace.csv
```

Fix what it flags before moving on: a missing economic buyer, fewer than three direct relationships, a decisive person you cannot reach, an opposed stakeholder with real influence and no plan to address their concern. Unknown stance is a finding, not a failure: it sets your next two weeks of discovery.

### 5. Build the whitespace matrix and the opportunity inventory
Use `references/whitespace-and-opportunities.md`. Rows are business units or buying centers, columns are your offerings, each cell gets one status: owned, pilot, active opportunity, competitor, declined with reason, or never approached. Then sort open cells by kind (new unit, product gap, depth gap) because each kind needs a different first move. Promote a cell to the opportunity inventory only with a customer problem backed by evidence and a value estimate labelled as your estimate. Promote an inventory line to a real opportunity only when it has a named sponsor, a stated problem, and a meeting on a calendar.

### 6. Set objectives and the multi-threading plan
Write three to five account objectives for the year. Each objective states: the customer outcome it serves, the result you are committing to, a measure, a start and target date, and one owner. Objectives like "deepen the relationship" fail this test; if it cannot be measured, it is a hope, rewrite it or drop it.

For every buying function the map shows as unreached, add a threading action: target person, who introduces you, the reason that person would take the meeting in their outcome terms, and the date you ask. Thread early, while you are learning, not at the end of a deal when reaching past your contact reads as going around them. Single-threaded coverage is a named risk in the plan until it is fixed: if the one contact leaves or loses influence, your view of the account goes with them.

### 7. Run the cadence
Follow `references/review-cadence.md`. Internal reviews: monthly working review and quarterly deep review for Tier 1, quarterly for Tier 2, semi-annual or on a trigger for Tier 3. Customer business reviews: quarterly for Tier 1, semi-annual for Tier 2, led by their goals and the outcomes you committed to last time, ending in a short joint action list sent in writing within a day. Between reviews, update the plan within a week of a material change: a sponsor change, a merger or restructure, a material win or loss, a competitor taking a cell, or a delivery failure the account felt.

### 8. Close the loop each quarter
In the quarterly deep review, grade last quarter's objectives with evidence, close the dead ones in the meeting, re-run the plan check, and refresh the research items that have gone stale. The plan that comes out of the review should differ from the one that went in. If nothing changed, the review did not happen, whatever the calendar says.

## Output Contract

One account plan, stored in the CRM or a linked document, containing:
1. Account picture (step 3), one page, facts dated and sourced.
2. Stakeholder map with role, access, influence, support, personal outcome, and next action per person.
3. Whitespace matrix plus the opportunity inventory, with entry-test status per line.
4. Three to five objectives, each with customer outcome, measure, dates, and owner.
5. Multi-threading actions for every unreached buying function.
6. Risk list: single-threaded spots, opposed stakeholders, competitor cells, renewal exposure, delivery problems.
7. Review record: tier, cadence, date of last review, commitments made and whether they were kept.

## Operating Rules

- Accuracy first: every factual claim about the account carries a source and a date. Numbers about the account come from records or the account itself. Estimates are labelled as estimates with their basis shown. Do not import win-rate or spending statistics from vendor blogs into a plan; they are not evidence about this account.
- Never write a stakeholder's stance, influence, or priorities as fact when you have not heard it from them or seen them act. "Unknown" is a valid entry. Guessed maps produce confident, wrong plans.
- The plan is account-level. A single opportunity gets its own deal strategy; do not let one large deal swallow the account plan, and do not let the account plan pretend a hope is a forecast. Inventory lines stay out of the forecast until they pass the entry test.
- Protect the contacts who help you. Do not name an internal champion in outreach to another unit without their agreement, and do not share one unit's information with another unit of the same account unless the account treats it as shared.
- Keep the plan where the team can see it and where a new account owner can pick it up cold. A plan that lives in one person's notebook leaves with that person.
- Coordinate before you contact. Check for other teams working the same account, including marketing programs and other regions, before running a threading action. Two uncoordinated approaches to the same executive in one week reads as disorder, because it is.