3/26/2024-Q2 Strategic Account Planning

While it may feel like you have hundreds of things to take care of each week in your role, understand that strategically chasing revenue beats fiddling around in your inbox any day.

The words "strategic account planning" do not have to be intimidating. As Terence’s quote infers, keep it simple: assess the issue and figure out how to solve it.

For example, how will you grow Acme Inc by 20% in Q2?

For the most part, your answers are your strategic plan.

The hardest part about account planning is finding quiet time to work on ’em. (And projecting revenue against each account.)

Other than that, easy peasy. Don’t freak.

With this being the last week of Q1, work on your Q2 plan and translate your strategy into tactics.

Focus your approach in these two areas:

1. People: who do you need to meet with?

2. Obstacles: what hurdles must you overcome to move forward on each account?

The former is simple – though getting the meetings is not. The latter is harder because you may not know enough about the specific objections per each account or have developed a solution. Yet.

So…get going and work on it.

Strategic account planning is a dynamic process that should get your attention weekly, not just at the end of every quarter.

If you buy the premise that your best thinking comes out of you when you can sit and think and repeat that process with frequency, then you’ve just seen the light about the keys to figuring out complex issues.

Every day, you’re pushed and pulled in numerous directions, but that work is not as fun as when you can thoughtfully think about each key account from a bird’s eye.

Like anything and everything in the sales game, you must be disciplined and committed to strategic account planning just as you are to prospecting, growing your skills, and all the other issues you must attend to regularly.

And while those other things seem to add up to 89 hours a week, understand that strategically chasing revenue beats fiddling around in your inbox any day.

As Key and Peele show you in this YT Short, planning to rob a bank is easy – apparently much easier than the account planning you’ll do today.

But while there’s a hitch to their plan, your challenges can be solved with time and thought.

Isn’t that what you like about your job? Trying to figure out strategic pathways to solve problems that…wait for it…unlock the safe?