Effective account management is essential for nurturing customer relationships and driving business growth.
Customers have long sought a built-in Account Planning feature in Salesforce, as there was no native tool to facilitate this process. In its absence, businesses often turned to third-party applications, custom-built solutions, or leveraged Salesforce’s Quip templates within records to fill the gap.
Recognising this, Salesforce has introduced the Account Plans feature, designed to streamline and enhance the account planning process within its platform. This quick blog post explores the benefits, setup process, and customisation options of Salesforce Account Plans.
The Importance of Account Planning
Account-based selling strategies involve cross-functional collaboration to achieve common goals and revenue outcomes, ultimately maintaining productive relationships with clients.
Proper account planning ensures that collaboration happens seamlessly, with measurable goals and clear strategies.
Previously, organisations relied on third-party solutions or custom implementations for account planning, leading to challenges like disconnected systems and outdated information.
Salesforce’s Account Plans address these issues by providing an integrated, out-of-the-box solution that you can start using now!
Key Features of Salesforce Account Plans
Salesforce Account Plans offer several functionalities to enhance your account management:
SWOT Analysis- Dedicated sections to analyse strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats, helping teams understand their market position.
Objective Setting and Tracking- Define clear, measurable objectives with assigned owners, start and end dates, and track progress using visual indicators.
Buyer Relationship Mapping- Visualise key stakeholders and their relationships within the account, facilitating better engagement strategies.
Embedded Dashboards- Access real-time data on opportunities, revenue, and win rates directly within the Account Plan for informed decision-making.
Availability
The new Account Plan functionality has been incorporated into the core Salesforce Sales Cloud at no additional cost for Salesforce customers on Enterprise editions and above.
Setting Up Account Plans
Enabling Account Plans in Salesforce is straightforward, and, at a high-level, includes the following steps:
Step 1 – Enable the Feature- Navigate to the Account Plans Setup page in Salesforce and toggle the feature on. Note: you will likely need to enable this in production first and then refresh a sandbox to try out the feature and customise it.
Step 2 – Customise Objects- Once enabled and available in a sandbox; access the Object Manager to tailor the Account Plan, Account Plan Objective, and related objects to fit your organisation’s processes.
Step 3 – Update Page Layouts: Add the Account Plans related list to relevant page layouts and record pages to ensure accessibility for your team.
Step 4 – Set Permissions: Review and assign appropriate object and field-level permissions to users based on their roles.
Setup Account Plans by accessing SETUP and searching for ‘Sales Account Plans’ and then follow the steps.
The key objects are:
- Account Plan – This is the central ‘hub’ for each customer’s strategic plan, serving as the foundation for all other related objects. You can have multiple Account Plans for each account (e.g. an account plan for 2025 and an account plan for 2026 etc.)
- Account Plan Objective – These define the specific goals and objectives for each account, such as revenue targets
- Account Plan Objective Measure – These are the metrics used to track progress towards the objectives, allowing you to quantify success
- Account Plan Objective Measure Relation – This object establishes the relationship between the objectives and their respective measures
Customising Account Plans
At Ribbonfish we love to customise Salesforce 😉 and thankfully, Salesforce Account Plans are highly customisable to align with your organisation’s unique needs:
Fields and Layouts- Add custom fields and adjust layouts to capture information specific to your account planning process.
Automation- Implement automation (e.g., using Salesforce Flow) to streamline tasks like notifying team members of new Account Plans or updating related records.
Integration- Leverage Salesforce’s integration capabilities to connect Account Plans with other tools and data sources, enhancing functionality and data consistency.
Also, as the ‘Account Plan’ is essentially just Salesforce records, you can tailor the Record Page for your organisation’s needs using the Lightning App Builder.
Using Account Plans
With setup and customisation complete, your team can now seamlessly integrate Account Plans into their daily workflows. Since these plans are accessible directly from individual accounts, they enhance both usability and overall functionality.
To create an Account Plan, users need simply navigate to the Account Plan related list and press ‘New’. Note: multiple Account Plan records can be created and used. This provides a versioning mechanism every time a new plan is needed & allows you to retain historical data.
Then, simply fill in the form with the details.
The main fields include an account plan name to name the account plan, a start and end date, a status and then various fields to capture the account vision, strategy, SWOT analysis, customer landscape & competitive landscape.
The Account Plan also comes equipped with essential fields for conducting a SWOT analysis—a widely used framework for assessing market position, together with a dedicated Competitive Landscape section. However, your organisation has the flexibility to adopt a different approach or customise these sections to better suit your needs if needed (e.g. custom fields / layouts etc.)
Account Plan records are private by default, but account managers can share them with their team or colleagues using the record’s sharing settings. If wider access is needed from the start, organization-wide defaults can be adjusted to grant automatic visibility, removing the need for manual sharing.
Objectives, Targets and Measures
Successful account planning requires collaboration, strategic discussions, and alignment on key priorities with customers. But beyond the planning stage, execution is just as critical—tracking progress and taking action where needed is essential. Salesforce makes this process seamless with Account Plan Objectives.
Once the initial Account Plan record has been created and the initial fields populated, users can use the ‘Objectives’ button to add new objectives.
For example, in the screenshot below, we have an objective for a revenue target of £100k in March 2025.
Each objective is assigned to an owner and comes with mandatory start and end dates to keep initiatives on track. If measurable outcomes are required, users can set key metrics using currency, percentage, or numerical values. The Current Value and Target Value fields then help visualise progress directly within the Account Plan, giving teams real-time insights into their strategic efforts.
More to Explore
This was just a brief look at Salesforce Account Plans, but there’s even more available now and more to come.
Salesforce is continuously enhancing the feature with powerful additions aimed at making account planning more automated and data-driven. Objective Metrics Calculation Definitions, arrived in Spring ’25, will allow admins to set filters that automatically pull in real-time data from opportunities, cases, campaigns, or contacts—removing the need for manual updates. Meanwhile, the Strategic Tracker for Account Plans, launching by mid-April 2025, will introduce Sales Action Plans, providing structured task and event tracking at the objective level. Lastly, the Whitespace Map component is already available and offers valuable insights into past Closed Won Opportunities, helping sales teams easily identify upsell and cross-sell opportunities.
With these updates, Account Plans are shaping up to be an essential tool for strategic account management in Salesforce.
Summary
Incorporating Salesforce Account Plans into your sales strategy can transform how you manage and grow key accounts. With its robust features and customisation options, this tool empowers your team to collaborate effectively, set and achieve strategic objectives, and maintain strong customer relationships.
Some benefits for of using Salesforce Account Plans for Sales Teams include:
- Enhanced Collaboration– Centralise account information to ensure all team members have access to up-to-date data, fostering better collaboration.
- Strategic Planning– Align sales activities with defined objectives and strategies, leading to more focused efforts and improved outcomes.
- Efficiency Gains– Reduce reliance on external documents / other systems etc. by consolidating all account planning activities within Salesforce, streamlining workflows.
How Ribbonfish Can Help
At Ribbonfish, we specialise in Salesforce consulting and implementation services. Our team can assist you in:
Implementation- Seamlessly integrating Account Plans into your existing Salesforce environment.
Building- A custom build tailoring the feature to align with your business processes and objectives.
Training- Providing comprehensive training to ensure your team effectively utilises Account Plans.
Support- Offering ongoing support to adapt the tool as your business evolves.
By partnering with Ribbonfish, you can maximise the potential of Salesforce Account Plans to drive strategic account management and business success.
Get in touch – contactus@ribbonfish.com