Account plan template for technical sales

An account plan is a short document that says what you know about an account, who matters, why now, and what you will do next. Most plans fail for one of two reasons. They are so long that nobody opens them after the first week, or so thin that they repeat the company's website.

This article gives you a template you can copy into a document or spreadsheet today, explains each section, and shows a filled-in version. It is built for sellers who sell to engineering teams in deals that take months. For the thinking behind it, see how to build a strategic account plan; for the research that fills it, use the pre-call research checklist.

The principle: a plan you will reopen

Write the plan so that you can read it in two minutes before a call and update it in five minutes after. That limits it to one page for each account. Anything that doesn't change what you do next goes in your notes, not the plan.

Every statement should carry a source and a date. "They are moving to the cloud" is an opinion. "Engineering article on a cloud migration, September 12" is a fact you can check and age.

The template

Copy this and fill it in for each account. The section names are plain on purpose.

How to fill in each section

1. Account and tier

Give every account a tier. Without one, a list of 200 accounts is a list of 200 equal tasks. Three tiers are enough:

• Act now: a fit and a recent reason to call.
• Work this quarter: a fit with no reason yet. You build the reason.
• Watch: a possible fit, nothing to act on. You check again later.

Write one line on why. "Hiring its first reliability role; platform team of unknown size" is a reason you can revisit.

2. Fit

Fit answers whether this account can use what you sell. Take the criteria from your own best customers: the size of the engineering team, the stack, the problem. Then check the account against them, listing the evidence. Include blockers here too: a stack you don't support, or a requirement you can't meet. A plan that lists only reasons to buy is a sales pitch to yourself. The article on buying signals sorts evidence into timing, fit and blockers.

3. Why now

This is the section that earns the call. List changes newest first, with dates: a new leader, a reliability hire, a migration post, a stretch of incidents. Delete a line that would be true of any company. If you have no recent reason, write "none found" and leave the account in a lower tier. That is a useful answer.

4. People

A table works best here. Include a column for the date you checked each person still works there; the list goes stale quickly. For help finding names at a big company, read how to find the right person at a large company.

5. Known and unknown

Split it into three short lists: known (with sources), guessed (marked) and not yet found (with the question that would find it). This is the section that stops you from stating a guess as a fact on a call. It also tells you what to ask.

6. Next step

One action, one person, one date. "Send a note to the staff engineer about the talk, by Friday." Add a fallback: "If no reply by Thursday, write to the director." A plan without a next step is a research file.

7. Log

After each contact, add a dated line. What did they say? What did you learn that changes the plan? Update the sections above and then log it. The log is the history, and the sections are the current state.

Add a stakeholder map for bigger deals

When a deal involves several teams, add one more section: a stakeholder map, sometimes called a buying committee map. It lists every person or role who can help or block the deal, with three columns beyond the people table: how much influence they have, whether they are for, neutral or against you today, and what you will do about it. Fill in "unknown" freely. An honest "unknown" shows you where to research next. See finding the right person at a large company for how to fill the gaps.

A filled-in example

The template as plain text

Paste this into any document or spreadsheet and fill it in.

Spreadsheet or document?

Use a spreadsheet when you have 50 or more accounts and want to sort by tier or date. Use one document per account when you have fewer than 20 and the deals are large. A mixed approach works well: one row per account with the tier, why now and next step, plus a linked document for the accounts in "act now".

Keep it alive

Before each call, run the pre-call research checklist and update the plan with what you find.

Set a review day each week. Open the "act now" and "work this quarter" plans, check whether any why-now line has aged past usefulness, check the people you plan to contact, and set the next step. Ten minutes per active account is enough. A plan nobody reviews drifts into fiction.

Where Repclose fits

Repclose writes this kind of plan for each account on your list. You upload accounts and a sales profile; it ranks them, lists about 10 people for the top-ranked accounts (the top 10 by default), and gives the top 5 a profile check and a short card on why they might care. The plan has sections such as At a glance, Why now, Green flags and Supporting sources, and each point links to its source with the publication date where available. You can add notes in plain English and edit the tier. Points that come from your notes are labeled as yours, and guesses as inferred.

You can export a plan as a one-page meeting brief, as Markdown or as plain text. See a finished one in the sample brief, or start with your first 5 plans free.