Why do you need an account plan?

When you first decide to approach a company through an introduction, networking event, or from your daily routine, you will need to put together and account plan. This account plan will be part of your power page and it will contain information about your own personal approach to winning the account and a plan on when to follow-up. An account plan is like setting goals. You have the ultimate target and the steps to get where you want to be. One thing about the account plan is that sometimes it takes a long time to get from where you are now to where you want to be, in regards the company you are approaching; sometimes we never get there!

I put an account plan together and my target was a large corporation which shall remain nameless for now. The time between beginning the plan and actually fulfilling the plan was three years. I had to jump through a lot of hoops in order to get to the right people. The timing was also crucial, I had to gauge the best time of year (budget year) to approach the company, and also make sure I had the right knowledge to get in the door. In another case, I put a plan together for another large corporation, found a contact that I already knew from fundraising events, and picked up the contract in fourteen days. I basically knew where I wanted to go with the account and followed through.

Planning and goal setting can be onerous for most of us. It is especially difficult to set company and personal goals but it is extremely important to do them without fail. The only time I have really succeeded in gaining accounts is when I planned the process.