Account Planning using AI in 30 minutes

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Abraham Lincoln once said, “Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the ax.” That is how crucial account planning and research is…
Account planning is more than a strategy; it's the heartbeat of sustainable growth. In essence, it’s about understanding your key accounts deeply, identifying their needs, and crafting bespoke strategies to engage and grow these relationships.

Here's why it matters:
- Long-term Value: Instead of chasing transactional sales, account planning shifts the focus to building long-term, value-driven relationships with clients. It’s about being a trusted partner rather than just another vendor.

Key statistics:

• According to a Gartner study, organizations that embrace account planning see an average revenue growth of 20%.
• Forrester’s research shows that companies with mature strategic account planning programs achieve annual revenue growth of 15% or more.
• As per another study, Industry leaders report a 7x increase in win rates when they follow account planning best practices. It's all about preparation and insight.

We are going to uncover following topics below -

• Key Fields
• Key Steps
• Leveraging AI
• Workflow - Before vs After
• The ROI
• Account Planning to Pipeline Generation

Key Fields

Top accounts the ones you’re hyper-focused on breaking into. You need to know everything about them. Here’s a set of important fields that you need to know for account planning.

1. Business Overview

• Public/Private
• Annual Revenue
• Year Started
• Customer’s vision/strategy
• Target markets
• Financial information

2. Competitor Analysis

3. Relationship maps  

• Relationship history
• Contact role
• Relationship status
• Influence
• Org chart
• Whitespace map
• Sales path

4. Customer Solutions and Business Initiatives

• Short-/medium-/long-term priorities
• Strategic opportunities

Leveraging AI

The traditional account planning methods are time-consuming, static, and often plagued with inconsistent data. But what if AI could transform this process into a streamlined, 10-minute task?
Let’s look at the challenges with traditional account planning and how AI changes the game.

The Challenges

• Time-Consuming:
  • Manually entering data, researching clients, and updating account plans eats up valuable selling time.
  • Every minute spent on admin work is a minute lost from closing deals.
• Lack of Real-Time Updates:
  • Sales reps have to constantly revise account planning docs to reflect current market conditions and client needs.
• Inconsistent Data Quality:
  • Human error, varying data sources, and differing interpretations lead to inconsistent data.
• Inflexibility:
  • Templates are generic and don’t capture the unique characteristics or complexities of specific accounts.
    
    One-size-fits-all doesn’t fit anyone well in today’s dynamic market.

Account Planning through AI

• Account prioritization – Continuous monitoring of accounts and surfacing the ones where expansion is more likely (using account prioritization)
• Automated Research & Insights
  • AI automates the gathering and synthesis of account information, providing up-to-date insights.
  • It collects data from multiple sources like 10K reports, earnings calls, social media, news articles, and consolidates it into actionable intelligence.
• AI-Driven Recommendations
  • AI analyzes market trends, account’s latest pains, competitor activity, and account history to offer tailored recommendations.
  • This approach empowers you to focus on high-priority opportunities.
• Continuous Optimization
  • Outreach communications are not only automatically generated but can be updated continuously based on real-time insights.
  • Helps you ensure that outreach insights remain relevant and recent as new information rolls in.
• Customization and Flexibility
  • While templates are rigid, AI allows customization to account for specific client needs and market changes effortlessly.

Case

Let’s say your company has 5000 mid market and enterprise accounts. The AI can continuously scan them and alert you when an account becomes a priority.
It alerts you about a public company target where this is a solid reason to reach out and talk about expansion.
Your AI tools quickly gather critical details: they’re VC-backed and also have strategic investors, aiming to expand their market share by 15% over the next year. Competitor analysis reveals they’re lagging slightly behind industry leaders but have strong potential for growth.
AI-driven insights highlight that their primary revenue stream is SaaS products targeted at SMBs through direct sales channels. They’ve recently launched an inbound marketing campaign aimed at reducing customer churn—an area where your solutions could make a significant impact.
Within minutes, you have a clear picture of their goals, challenges, and opportunities. Your strategy?
Propose a solution that aligns perfectly with their top-line goals and ongoing initiatives while mitigating identified risks.

With AI-powered account planning:

• Account prioritization based on continuous AI scanning
• You automate time-consuming research tasks,
• Get real-time updates,
• Ensure consistent data quality,
• And gain the flexibility to customize strategies dynamically.

Workflow - Before vs After

In the last section, we discussed how AI could save research hours for SDRs, Account Executives (AEs) and Customer Success Managers (CSMs). Let us look at the journey from traditional account planning to a streamlined AI-powered account planning.

The Traditional Account Planning (~8 hours per account)

1. Manual Research:
   1. AEs spend hours sifting through PDFs, 10K reports, LinkedIn profiles, and other sources.
   2. Each piece of information is manually entered into the CRM.
2. Data Analysis:
   1. Analyzing gathered data to understand account needs and market positioning.
   2. This step is both time-consuming and prone to human error.
3. Strategy Development:
   1. Crafting a Point of View (POV) based on the research.
   2. Often involves multiple revisions and back-and-forth with internal teams.
4. Outreach / Meeting Prep:
   1. Creating detailed presentations for client meetings.
   2. More time spent formatting slides than focusing on strategic insights.

The New Account Planning: With AI (~30 Minutes per account)

1. Automated Data Gathering:
   1. Use Evabot AI to extract relevant information from online sources.
   2. Input data directly into the CRM, reducing manual effort and errors.
2. Data Synthesis:
   1. Evabot AI analyzes collected data to identify key insights.
   2. Provides a summarized view of the account’s current status and strategic direction.
3. AI-Driven Recommendations:
   1. Evabot AI offers tailored recommendations based on market trends, competitor activities, and account history.
   2. Prioritizes high-opportunity accounts and aligns strategies with their specific needs.
4. Continuous Optimization:
   1. Real-time updates ensure that your sales outreach remains relevant and specific.
   2. Evabot AI continuously refreshes data as new information becomes available.
5. Strategy Development:
   1. Crafting a Point of View (POV) based on high score insights.
   2. Often involves buy-in as best insights are always available in the top 5.
6. Outreach / Meeting Prep:
   1. Creating detailed presentations for client meetings.
   2. Time is spent in formatting as content and structure is created using AI.

Example Account Planning Workflow with Evabot AI

1. Step 1: Input Data
   1. Provide the link to the company’s name, URL and keywords.
2. Step 2: Generate Insights
   1. Evabot AI extracts insights about pain points, challenges, revenue streams, market strategies, and more.
3. Step 3: Data Integration
   1. Automatically populate these insights into your CRM.
4. Step 4: Continuous Updates
   1. As new data becomes available, Evabot AI continuously updates the CRM.
   2. You always have the latest information without manual intervention.

The ROI

By automating account planning and research with tools like Evabot:

• Time Savings:
  • Current Process No AI: ~850 hours for 100 accounts
  • New Process with Evabot: ~50 hours for 100 accounts
• Efficiency Gains:
  • Eliminate redundant tasks and reduce human errors.
  • Ensure consistent data quality and real-time updates.
• Strategic Focus:
  • Free up AEs to focus on high-value activities like client engagement and deal closure.

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Summary

With AI-powered tools like Evabot:

• You save significant time on account research and planning.
• Automatically receive up-to-date prioritized insights.
• Focus more on high-value activities like client engagement and pipeline generation.
• Ensure that your strategies are always relevant, personalized, and data-driven.

By transforming your workflow from an 8-hour manual process to a streamlined 30-minute task using Evabot AI, you free up valuable time for AEs.
This allows them to concentrate on what they do best: building relationships, closing deals, and driving revenue growth.