Stop treating account planning as research homework. This execution-first framework helps reps spend 90% of time engaging prospects, not filling out templates.
Account planning isn’t new to B2B sales organizations. Most teams have had some version of it in place for years — templates, docs, required Salesforce fields. Reps know what an account plan is. They know how to fill one out.
So why does account planning so often fail to deliver the impact it promises?
The problem is that account planning is treated like a research exercise instead of an execution system. It becomes homework: something you complete, submit, and move on from, rather than a tool that actively helps you close deals faster and expand accounts more strategically.
For account planning to actually work, it has to be built around what happens after the plan is created. Clear next steps. Coordinated actions. And real outcomes like stronger multi-threading, tighter deal execution, and higher win rates across complex accounts.
"You're asking a sales person to spend time filling something out, not spend time engaging with a customer or a prospect. You're asking a sales person to tell leadership or tell an internal RevOps team about their customer or their prospect and form a plan of attack versus go and execute on it,” explains Bayley Fesler, the Director of Revenue Operations at Xactly Corp.
Reps are measured and paid on deals closed and revenue booked. When account planning is framed as something to complete for leadership visibility rather than something that accelerates selling, it quickly falls to the bottom of the priority list.
What’s more, different teams use different approaches (think Google Sheets, Quip docs, Salesforce fields) which creates inconsistencies and makes it impossible to know what's working and what’s not. Leadership can’t tell which plans are effective, reps don’t know what “good” looks like, and the process becomes impossible to scale or enforce.
Worse, this fragmentation creates knowledge loss. When account plans are tied to individuals or isolated systems, critical context disappears when accounts change hands or reps leave — forcing teams to relearn what they already knew.
The bottom line? Traditional account planning consumes too much time. Reps spend hours researching, mapping stakeholders, and filling out fields when they need to be engaging buyers and closing deals.
If account planning takes hours (or worse, days) it’s already failing.
An execution-first approach starts with a simple rule: 90% of account planning time should be spent executing, and only 10% should be spent setting up the plan. The purpose of planning isn’t to produce perfect research; it’s to get reps into meaningful conversations as quickly as possible.
Yet in many organizations, the opposite happens. Reps are encouraged (or implicitly expected) to do in-depth company research, manually map org charts, and overthink positioning before their initial outreach.
This is where AI can help expedite the planning process and remove the research bottlenecks. Used correctly, AI acts as a research assistant that produces a strong first pass and can quickly generate:
“I don’t want reps spending a ton of time on this. We let the AI sort of generate the first pass, and then from there we ask that they coordinate with their SDR,” says Bayley.
But the goal also isn’t to have AI do everything. The human element is essential, so it’s important to build in specific questions that force reps to think through whether the AI-generated hypothesis actually makes sense for this specific account.
Sample questions include:
These questions push reps to apply context, experience, and deal instinct, which are the inputs that turn surface-level research into meaningful engagement. More importantly, they help reps move from planning to action with confidence instead of overthinking.
And that speed matters. The faster a rep can go from assigned account to first personalized outreach, the more pipeline they generate. Spending three days researching an account doesn’t make outreach three times better, it just means three fewer accounts were contacted that week.
One of the biggest reasons account planning fails is the measurement trap. Most teams measure activity (for example, how many account plans exist) rather than execution. A completed template doesn’t mean a rep actually engaged the account.
At Xactly Corp, Bayley’s team focuses on redefining and simplifying what “good” is. Instead of asking reps to complete 10 to 12 fields, the standard is three criteria, each tied directly to action.
“We just want them to do these three things. We want them to identify the key stakeholders. We want them to take a stab at how Xactly is going to add value to this account? And then for the SDR and the AE to say, ‘I’m gonna reach out to these high-level contacts and you’re gonna reach out to this set,’” explains Bayley.
The three criteria:
Rather than having to fill out long account planning templates, defining just three clear criteria makes planning fast to complete, easy to update, and simple to enforce consistently.
Plus, teams that make this work pair it with objective, visual accountability (often a simple red/yellow/green status). Reps can instantly see whether they’ve completed the essentials, and managers can coach without subjective reviews.
Even the strongest account planning framework will fail if it lives outside a rep’s day-to-day workflow. When account plans sit in Google Docs or Quip, customer and contact data lives in Salesforce, and outreach happens in tools like Outreach or SalesLoft, reps are forced to constantly context-switch. Every switch adds friction, and friction is what causes account plans to get outdated, ignored, or abandoned altogether.
That’s why operationalizing account planning requires eliminating the need to move between systems just to execute. If reps have to remember to open another tool to reference their plan, they won’t do it consistently. The plan needs to live where selling already happens.
“Less swapping around tools, because that’s usually the first excuse that I hear for not doing something. And I love to close the excuse factory or remove reasons to not do something,” says Bayley.
Embedding account planning directly into Salesforce removes much of that friction. When the plan lives on the account record alongside pipeline, contacts, and opportunity history, it becomes part of the selling motion instead of a separate task. Reps don’t have to hunt for context or remember where the plan lives; it’s already there when they’re ready to act.
For existing customers, automatically pulling in data like ARR, renewal dates, products purchased, and health scores keeps plans current without manual effort. That frees reps up to focus on decisions and outreach, not data gathering.
The end goal is to eliminate the gap between planning and execution. When reps can move straight from a value hypothesis to active outreach without switching tools, planning stops being a blocker and starts driving action.
One-size-fits-all account plans don’t work because selling motions aren’t the same.
New logo reps are starting from scratch. Their account plans should focus on orientation and execution such as a high-level company overview, assumed business objectives, a clear value hypothesis aligned to your sales methodology (MEDDIC, Vista Value Selling, etc.), and identified stakeholder roles like Economic Buyer, Technical Buyer, and End User.
Customer expansion is a different motion entirely. Reps already have access and history, but growth depends on whether value is being realized. Expansion plans should center on:
Expansion planning shouldn’t default to upsell mapping — it should get reps to evaluate whether the customer is actually achieving the outcomes they were sold, and where risk may exist.
“I want them to revisit the value statement and ask: are we achieving those goals? Has the customer experienced value? And what threats exist to our install?” stresses Bayley.
When RevOps teams try to design a system that works for every scenario, every account, and every motion on day one. The result is complexity, and complexity kills adoption.
Account planning doesn’t need to be perfect, it needs to be usable.
That starts with setting realistic expectations. If reps are currently engaging 10% of key stakeholders in their top accounts each quarter, the next goal shouldn’t be 100%. It should be 20%. Doubling penetration is meaningful progress and far more achievable than aiming for perfection and missing entirely.
“Trying to build a habit and a muscle, make it super, super easy . . . If we’re at 10% penetration, the goal by year end should be 50%, not 100% next quarter,” explains Ross Rich, CEO and Co-Founder of Accord.
Scope matters just as much as goals. Not every account in a rep’s territory needs an account plan. Start with top-tier accounts like ICP fits, signal-driven accounts, or those with the highest revenue potential so reps can focus their effort where it has the most impact.
Before rolling anything out broadly, test it with a small group of reps. Validate that the AI-generated context is accurate, the prompts make sense, and the value hypotheses align with your positioning. Once reps are consistently completing the three core criteria on their highest-priority accounts, you can expand from there.
The common thread across effective account planning isn’t better templates or more required fields — it’s a relentless focus on execution excellence. The execution-first account planning framework is built around three principles that shift planning from documentation to action.
The three-pillar framework:
Use objective scoring (red/yellow/green) so accountability is visual and non-negotiable.
Account plans fail when they exist to report on accounts to leadership, and succeed when they help reps engage accounts more effectively. As AI continues to improve at research and synthesis, the advantage will go to teams that use it to accelerate execution. The winners won’t be the teams with the most detailed plans, but the ones whose reps spend the most time in real conversations with the right stakeholders.
