Strategic account plans are tools designed to help you when you’re trending up in a quarter…or trending down.

If you’re lagging in sales this quarter – but working hard to get meetings – don’t go it alone. Get your manager involved. Your manager can help, but will be more receptive and eager to help only after hearing about your exhaustive efforts to get meetings.

Give your manager a quick synopsis of everything you’ve done to break through to your KDMs, and equip them with key knowledge about your buyers that they can use. At the end of the quarter, you’ll want to co-own your prospecting efforts with your manager, especially if you miss your number.

Besides the obvious point above about how your planners can guide you toward efficient prospecting efforts, consider these other elements of how to think strategically about the rest of the quarter:

1. Ideas. No doubt there are details about ideas and solutions for key accounts buried in your planners that might not have received attention. That means it’s time to get together with your solutions team (or whatever you call the peeps who help you design big mouse traps) and get working on something specific for your top prospects.

2. Resources. It’s summer, people are scattered, and they’re distracted too. A review of your account planners most certainly will prompt actions you need to take to mobilize the resources that support the closing months of this year. Don’t let the other sellers on your team monopolize the time of the magicians inside your org whom you need.

Q3 is not done. There’s always something you can do to drive results in the near term, so let those planners lead the way.