Account Planning Checklist

Account planning means a process for creating a plan that identifies sales opportunities and defines a course of action for
exploiting these opportunities. The following Account Planning Action Plan explains 4 steps for doing the process. These steps
are:
 Review Account History
 Explore Current State
 Look for Opportunities
 Adjust the Plan

1. Review Account History.

 Review all sales-related documentation and look for any information that describes past and current customers of
your company
 Get customer profiles and carefully analyze them
 Have a snapshot of every customer’s activity for the last several months
 Review sales history along with values that have been created for your company
 Look for any competitive footprint that could describe why your customers decided to purchase your
products/services
 Analyze successful deals and try to determine what factors have caused sales success
 Analyze failed deals and try to figure out their reasons
 Review current state of sales and check what issues and problems remain pending
 Identify past references and quotes

2. Explore Current State.

 Get the latest data about deals with current customers
 Sort all the deals by success and failure
 Understand reasons of failed deals
 Check if those reasons remains the same as in past periods
 Think what solutions can be implemented to handle the troubles
 Evaluate performance of your sales team to see if every salesperson works fine
 Check if your team uses correct sales methods for dealing with customers
 Understand what your company does wrong. For example, it may run ad campaigns that do not impact target clients
 Be sure there is a good strategy for planning pre-sales and post-sales negotiations, including phone calls, meetings,
presentations, demonstrations, etc.

3. Look for Opportunities.

 Be sure your sales department has a good base of knowledge regarding current and prospective accounts
 Force your team to use this knowledge base in prospecting and lead generation
 Analyze the market your firm operates in and check if your products/services are competitive and unique
 Determine what sales opportunities are open to your business
 Construct a roadmap for future sales activities
 Have a list of potential, qualified and confirmed sales issues that your customers may deal with
 Know what solutions can be used to handle those issues in advance
 Map out company capabilities and offerings that will address customer needs
 Think what improvements can be made to your team, procedures, and overall environment
 Brainstorm your salespeople to identify what other improvements can be made
 Gather feedback reports from your team regularly to track performance status of the selling process
 Be prepared for running new ad campaigns and other promotional events that must strengthen your company’s
position in the market
 Develop an action plan that specifies how to exploit open opportunities

4. Adjust the Plan.

 Review status of your plan to immediately detect and respond to any issues that arise
 Check if your current sales quotes and orders are relevant to customer demand
 Update and correct the plan immediately after new opportunities are identified and your company is ready for
exploiting them
 Conduct short meetings and briefings with your sales team to review status of the plan and discuss current issues and
conflicts
 Be sure there is a pre-sales negotiation schedule that is regularly updated and corrected as to the plan
 Be sure your salespeople take care of post-sales negotiations with customers.