Chapter 16 — Resources

Where Value Lives • Chapter 16 Companion

The Living Account Plan

A real account plan is not an annual document completed for inspection. It is a living discipline that helps the organisation understand the customer’s changing world, make choices, align attention and create recognised value.

Welcome to the Chapter 16 Companion Page

There are account plans, and then there are documents that sit in the CRM wearing the clothes of account plans.

A conventional account plan often describes the customer, lists opportunities, records stakeholder names and states a revenue target.

A living account plan does something more useful. It helps the organisation keep thinking.

It asks what is changing in the customer’s world, which opportunities connect to customer-recognised value, where the relationship is vulnerable, what evidence supports our beliefs and where organisational attention should be invested.

A dead plan describes. A living plan thinks.

Fred’s Comments

The Account Plan Is the Conversation, Not the Container

Account planning processes usually begin with excellent intentions.

Leadership wants more discipline, better visibility, clearer opportunities and fewer surprises. Then someone designs a template.

The template grows. Sales wants pipeline. Finance wants margin. Service wants delivery risk. Product wants innovation potential. Marketing wants references. Leadership wants strategic alignment. Soon, completing the plan feels like applying for planning permission.

Account managers respond in the way people respond to most administrative burdens. They comply.

They complete the fields, reuse last year’s language and write reassuring phrases such as “develop trusted-adviser relationship”. The document is uploaded and approved. Then the real work continues, largely unchanged.

The problem is not that templates are useless. A good structure can focus attention and protect organisational memory.

The problem begins when completing the container becomes more important than improving the thinking.

A useful account plan should change after a meaningful customer conversation. It should expose assumptions, make investment choices explicit and help different internal functions understand how they contribute to customer-recognised value.

It should also help us decide what not to do.

If the plan disappeared tomorrow and nobody’s decisions became worse, the plan was not alive. It was storage.

And storage is not strategy.

— Fred

“The point of the living account plan is not to create a better document. It is to create a better relationship.” — Fred Mills, Where Value Lives

Key Takeaways

  • An account plan is a thinking and decision discipline; the document or CRM record is only its container.
  • A living plan begins outside-in with the customer’s market, pressures, priorities, risks and changing definition of value.
  • The plan should distinguish evidence from assumption and make uncertainty visible.
  • Account strategy requires choices about where to protect, grow, repair, incubate, maintain, simplify or exit.
  • Opportunity lists become strategic only when they connect to customer priorities, decision reality, recognised value and a credible right to win.
  • Stakeholder understanding must remain current because value is recognised by particular people in particular contexts.
  • Mutual value belongs in the plan: customer outcomes and supplier outcomes should both be explicit.
  • The account plan is cross-functional because the customer experiences the whole organisation, not only the account manager.
  • Governance keeps the plan alive by refreshing context, evidence, risks, actions and investment decisions.
  • A useful plan should be as short as it can be while still guiding real decisions.
  • Honesty is more valuable than optimism. Weak access, invisible value and poorly qualified opportunities should be stated plainly.
  • The plan should preserve organisational memory so insight and trust do not disappear when people change roles.

Chapter 16 Download

The Living Account Plan

This executive companion resource presents the complete Chapter 16 guide in the established Where Value Lives format. Use its highlighted planning questions and ten-part Living Account Plan Canvas to review an existing plan, challenge assumptions and keep account decisions connected to the customer’s changing world.

The canvas covers the Customer World, Customer Value Priorities, Current Position, Recognised Value Evidence, Relationship and Stakeholder Map, Strategic Opportunities, Risks and Friction, Investment Choice, Mutual Value Objectives, and Governance and Next Actions.

Download The Living Account Plan

PDF executive companion resource • Primary supporting resource for Chapter 16 of Where Value Lives

Questions to Take Back to Your Organisation

  1. Does our account plan reflect the customer’s current world, or mainly preserve last year’s assumptions?
  2. What do we genuinely know about this customer, and how do we know it?
  3. Which important statements in the plan are evidence, inference, assumption or simply unknown?
  4. What does the customer currently value, and whose language are we using to describe it?
  5. What value has the customer recognised, and what delivered value remains invisible?
  6. What is our honest current position in the relationship?
  7. Which opportunities are connected to customer priorities and a credible right to win?
  8. Which opportunities should we stop pursuing?
  9. Who defines, experiences, recognises, blocks or defends value inside the customer?
  10. Where is the relationship vulnerable, and where are we creating avoidable friction?
  11. What is our explicit investment posture: protect, grow, incubate, repair, maintain, simplify or exit?
  12. What value are both organisations trying to create?
  13. Which internal functions must act, and what decisions or resources are required?
  14. What governance rhythm will keep the plan current?
  15. Would anybody’s decisions become worse if this account plan disappeared tomorrow?

Try This With AI

This prompt can help turn an existing account plan into an evidence-based living plan. Remove confidential or personally identifiable information before using external AI tools, and do not allow AI to convert missing evidence into confident claims.

Act as a rigorous Strategic Account Management planning reviewer. Using ONLY the information I provide below, help me convert our current account information into a Living Account Plan. ACCOUNT / CUSTOMER: [Insert] CURRENT ACCOUNT PLAN OR NOTES: [Paste or summarise] RECENT CUSTOMER CONVERSATIONS: [Insert] KNOWN CUSTOMER PRIORITIES AND PRESSURES: [Insert] STAKEHOLDERS AND RELATIONSHIPS: [Insert] VALUE DELIVERED AND EVIDENCE: [Insert] COMMERCIAL POSITION AND OPPORTUNITIES: [Insert] KNOWN RISKS, FRICTION AND SERVICE ISSUES: [Insert] CURRENT GOVERNANCE AND ACTIONS: [Insert] Analyse the information under these ten headings: 1. CUSTOMER WORLD 2. CUSTOMER VALUE PRIORITIES 3. OUR CURRENT POSITION 4. RECOGNISED VALUE EVIDENCE 5. RELATIONSHIP AND STAKEHOLDER MAP 6. STRATEGIC OPPORTUNITIES 7. RISKS AND FRICTION 8. INVESTMENT CHOICE 9. MUTUAL VALUE OBJECTIVES 10. GOVERNANCE AND NEXT ACTIONS For every material statement, classify it as: DIRECT EVIDENCE REASONABLE INFERENCE ASSUMPTION UNKNOWN Do not invent customer priorities, stakeholder opinions, opportunity value, decision criteria, internal support, commercial data or evidence. Then identify: A. What has changed in the customer’s world. B. The five assumptions most urgently requiring validation. C. Value that has been delivered and recognised. D. Value that may have been delivered but remains invisible. E. Opportunities genuinely connected to customer priorities. F. Opportunities that appear weak, speculative or supplier-centred. G. The most important relationship and delivery risks. H. Where we may be difficult for the customer to work with. I. The recommended investment posture: PROTECT, GROW, INCUBATE, REPAIR, MAINTAIN, SIMPLIFY or EXIT. J. The evidence that would be required before increasing investment. Finish with: – the five most important decisions required; – actions, owners and suggested review dates; – customer conversations needed; – internal alignment needed; – information that must remain marked UNKNOWN; – a concise executive-sponsor briefing of no more than 250 words; – and an answer to this test: “Would anybody’s decisions become worse if this plan disappeared tomorrow?”

Keep Exploring Where Value Lives

A living account plan may speak about “the customer”, but the customer is not one mind.

Different people define and experience value differently. They carry different pressures, incentives, risks, ambitions and definitions of success.

If value lives in the five inches between the customer’s ears, we must ask: which customer?

Chapter 17 examines The Stakeholder System — how value, influence, risk, access and decision-making move through the customer’s organisation.

← Back to Chapter 15 Continue to Chapter 17 →