Account plans for your top ten accounts

Most account plans are written once, presented once and never opened again. They're too long, too generic and built for a review meeting instead of for the seller.

That's a shame. For a services firm, the ten accounts that matter most can make or break the year. They deserve more thought than the other two hundred.

Here's a version that fits on one page and stays alive.

Pick the ten honestly

Ten is a deliberate number. It's small enough to think hard about each one and big enough that one cold account doesn't sink you.

Mix existing clients with new logos. A plan for ten current clients is an expansion plan. A plan for ten strangers is a hope. Most firms do best with something like six clients they can grow and four new accounts with stacked signals.

Be strict. An account makes the list when the size of the opportunity is real and you have a believable way in. A famous logo with no warm path doesn't qualify yet.

What goes on the page

Start with one sentence on why this account, now. Not why they'd be a nice client. Why this year. A new CTO, a platform migration named in a filing, a merger that doubled their footprint.

Then write the hypothesis. What do you think is broken, in their words, and what is it costing them? This is the heart of the plan. If you can't write it in two sentences, you don't know the account well enough yet.

Next, list the people. Who feels the problem, who owns the budget, who judges the work. For each one, note whether you've met them and who in your firm knows them.

Then the next two moves. Not a quarterly strategy. Two specific things someone will do in the next thirty days, with a name next to each.

That's the whole plan. It fits on one page and takes an hour to write.

Build the warm path into the plan

For new logos, the plan is mostly about the way in. Look at your former employees, past buyers who moved there and partners who serve them. Find the shortest path to the person who feels the problem.

Write the opener into the plan. It forces the hypothesis to become something you could send tomorrow.

Your last earnings call named supplier onboarding as the reason two plants missed their ramp dates, and James said your team inherited the problem after the reorg. When onboarding slips at that scale, it's usually the data handoff between procurement and quality that breaks, not the plants. Is that accurate, or is the bigger issue something else?

If the opener doesn't hold up, the account isn't ready for the top ten.

Review two accounts a week

Don't review all ten every week. You'll skim them and change nothing.

Pick two. Go deep for fifteen minutes each. Did the two moves happen? What did we learn? Has the hypothesis held, or did a buyer correct it? Update the page in the meeting, not after.

Over five weeks, every account gets a real look. Over a quarter, each gets reviewed two or three times, which is more attention than most top accounts ever get.

Let the plan change

The best account plans get rewritten. A buyer tells you the problem is something else. A champion leaves. A signal fires that changes how you read the account.

When that happens, rewrite the hypothesis and the next two moves. Keep the old version at the bottom so you can see how your thinking moved. A plan that hasn't changed in three months is either a plan for an account where nothing is happening, or a plan nobody is reading.

Swap accounts out when they stop earning their place. Ten slots are scarce. Treat them that way.

The point

Ten accounts, one page each, a hypothesis you could send tomorrow and two moves with names on them. Review two a week. Rewrite freely.

For choosing the ten, read tiering accounts without overthinking it and plan next year from the accounts, not the quota. For clients already on the list, expansion pipeline from existing clients goes further.