Account Planning: How to Manage
Strategic Accounts Using Salesforce
Track: Sales Operations & Performance
Jason Garoutte, salesforce.com
Matt Browning, salesforce.com
Kathy Ecklund, ADC Telecommunications

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Session Goals
 See examples of account plans and market
plans created with Salesforce
• Matt Browning from salesforce.com
• Kathy Ecklund from ADC Telecommunications
 Learn how the platform can help
 Hear ideas for extending custom apps with
partner tools

Matt Browning
Senior Manager, Field Operations
• Project Manager:
salesforce.com Internal Account Planning Deployment
• 7 Years with salesforce.com
• mbrowning@salesforce.com

What is an Account Plan?
Strategy for maximizing sales across multiple
related salesforce accounts.
Value to the organization:
 Maximize effectiveness by adopting a single strategy
where an account family is serviced by multiple
sales reps
 Build pipeline by maintaining a long-term focus
 Drive customer success by increasing internal
cooperation and cross-departmental visibility

The Role of a Tool versus a Methodology
Methodology:
A set of procedures and guidelines for strategic
customer engagement
Tool:
Supports the methodology at a systems level

Requirements Gathering:
How we decided what to build
Goal was to get something the users would embrace
 Solicited ideas from management
 Worldwide focus
 Support a wide variety of needs and requirements
 Focus groups for feedback
 Guinea pig roll-out and iterative feedback

Design and Build:
How our Operations team used the platform to build our
Account Planning tool in weeks
 Basic structure complete in under 2 days by non-technical
team members
 Objects
 Fields
 Buttons/Links
 Development Edition org
 Integration to external tools completed with some assistance
from IT
 Shells created for all major accounts

Deploy:
How we rolled out to 150 reps in 90 days
 Executive sponsorship
 Build the momentum: Previews at regional offsites
 3 guinea pigs
 Set expectations: Management meeting
 Maximize adoption, minimize set-up
 Launch and training
 Deadlines and inspections

App Design: Fields and Related Lists

Account Planning Team:
Who’s in charge of “global” account plans?
• 1 family per region
• 1 plan per region
• AEs added to plans in external regions

App Design: Fields and Related Lists

Business Issue

Account Plans Relationship Diagram
Ac c ount P la n
1:M
1:M 1:M
Us e r B us ine s s Is s ue
(Ac c ount P la nning Te a m)
Ac c ount Influe nc e r
1:M 1:M
Opportunity C onta c t

Leveraging S-controls & Apex Code
 Share All Accounts
 S-control: Button
 Apex Code: Trigger
 Show All Opportunities
 Calculate Total Potential Licenses

Extensions We Built: Linking to Outside Apps
 LinkedIn
 Dreamfactory
OrgView ($)
 Stratascope TVM ($)

Integration of Account Plans into Daily Life
 Plan created and strategy set by sales rep
 Inspection date set
 Plan approved by manager
 Quarterly executive account reviews
“How are we doing against goals and objectives?”
 Continuously iterate as landscape changes

How to Know When it’s Good Enough?
 An Account Plan is good enough if a manager can determine
3 answers in 3 minutes:
1. What is the potential?
2. What are the keys to unlocking it?
3. Where are we today?
Map Keys Treasure

Results We've Seen So Far
 200 Account Plans completed and reviewed
 Positive feedback from sales executives and guinea
pig sales reps
 Management reinforcement important to ongoing
success
 Key test: whether our execs start turning to this
object by habit when we do executive Account
Reviews

ADC TELECOMMUNICATIONS
Kathy Ecklund
Senior Project Manager
kathy.ecklund@adc.com

ADC Telecommunications
•World leader in providing global network infrastructure products and services
that enable the profitable delivery of high-speed Internet, video, data, and voice
services to residential, business and mobile subscribers worldwide
•340 sales reps in 140 countries
•3000 customers worldwide
•Annual Sales $1.3 Billion
• INDUSTRY: Telecommunications
• EMPLOYEES: 8,500
• GEOGRAPHY: Global
• # USERS: 630
• Business Units affected: Sales, Marketing, Technical Support, Customer Service,
Product Management, Finance
• PRODUCT(S) USED: SFA, Service & Support, 9 downloaded AppExchange applications
(ExactTarget, ICentera, SAVO, PRM, Diamond Data)

What is Account Planning at ADC?
 Provides a strategic plan for account relationship, product
solution, and competitive positioning with our customers
 Captures relevant customer information necessary for strategic
planning and alignment: financial analysis, strategic market
objectives, competitive pressures, market drivers, etc.
 Assigns accountability for Strategic and Tactical Objectives
 Ties Specific Opportunities and Campaigns to our Account and
Market Plans
 Communication vehicle for sales and functional business units

Why ADC Wanted Account Planning?
 “Living Document”: Ability to have a dynamic and
easily accessible account plan record in Salesforce
 Reduce administrative work required by sales
• Pre-populates information already entered into
Salesforce
• Opportunities
• Campaigns
• Accounts
• Contacts
 Consolidated location for account plans
 Visibility of account plans to the rest of the business

Planning at “Global” Account Level
 Global Account Manager (GAM) responsible for Global
Account Plan (Parent)
 Drive appropriate input from Regional Account Managers
(Child), or Local Account Managers (Grandchild)
 Link regional and local input as appropriate
 Developed Dashboards to provide visibility to Global Account
activity and opportunities
Global Account Plan templates serve as our communication tool to coordinate global product and
GTM strategy development, and insure strategic consistency in our approach to the customer.

The Solution
 Downloaded the Strategic Account Plan from the AppExchange
 Customized it to fit our sales methodology and current Account Plan
format
 Created a look-up to the custom object which allowed us to have a Parent-
Child-Grandchild approach to our plans
• This allows us to capture different strategies for a specific region as well as for
a local presence
• Gives the Global Account Manager visibility to the account across all locations
• Report across all plans by Account Name
Parent
P
AMER EMEA APAC
Local 3
Local 1 Local 2

Strategic Account Plan Detail Screen
Formula Fields Formula Fields

Strategic Account Plan Related Lists

Strategic Account Plan Related Lists
ADC's Account Plans

Plans for a Market?
 Created Market Portfolio Plans
• These plans are based on the Market and not tied to
a specific account
 The Market Plans collect the same base information
as a Strategic Account Plans, but also includes ties
back to specific Campaign initiatives and Strategic
Opportunities
 Used by Sales people with multiple accounts based
on geography assignments

Market Portfolio Plan Detail Screen

Market Portfolio Plan Related Lists
ADC's Market Plans

Sharing Rules
 We have a private model within Salesforce for Account Plans
 Additional Sharing rules give visibility of all plans to Product
Management, Finance, Marketing, and Sales Operations
 We worked with SAVO, an AppExchange Partner, to allow us
to print our Strategic and Market Portfolio plans with their
related lists
 SAVO integration also allows our Sales Reps to make changes
to the fields on the detail page when in the “Print Preview”
mode. These changes are automatically written back to
Salesforce as well as viewable on the final printed document

Example of Printed Strategic Account Plan

Example of Printed Market Portfolio Plan
Print Plan Demo

Results So Far
 Currently have 107 Strategic Account Plans that have
been created since we launched the program in January
2007
 All 10 “Global Accounts” have a Strategic Account Plan
completed
 Strategic Account Plans have been used by sales in
place of PowerPoint slides for Quarterly Account
Reviews
 Created Dashboards for Global Visibility

Tips and Tricks
 AppExchange or build it yourself?
 Why reinvent the wheel if it’s already done and you can get it for free?
 Incorporate your Sales Methodology
 Our old Account Plan Word Documents already incorporated our Sales
methodology
 Used the word documents to further customize the plans I downloaded
from the AppExchange
 Project tips:
 Make sure you have your process identified in advance to avoid re-
work later
 Get feedback from your users as you build the custom object
 Use a pilot team to run through the process and make any last
adjustments as necessary
 Get Executive Sponsorship

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QUESTION & ANSWER
SESSION
ADC Telecommunications Kathy Ecklund
Senior Project Manager
salesforce.com Matt Browning
Senior Manager, Field Operations
salesforce.com Jason Garoutte
VP, Field Operations