Set Up an Account Plan

Learning Objectives

After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:

• Explain the importance of an account plan.
• List the resources that key accounts managers use in account planning.

Build the Account Plan

With the balance, budget, and goals in mind, it’s time for Gustavo to set up a plan for the NTO account and create promotions. To plan and track the promotions in one place, Gustavo uses the account plan, also known as the Account P&L. 

The Account P&L shows an account’s overall performance and profitability. It’s a helpful resource from the beginning of the TPM cycle. Gustavo builds promotional plans that are linked to the Account P&L to track many KPIs, such as planned costs and volume for the coming year, sales forecasts for the coming year, and actual volumes and revenues for the current year. The Salesforce TPM stores that data, which Gustavo references and accesses, even from other systems like demand planning, enterprise resource planning, or third-party syndicated data from Nielsen or IRI.  

Data Is Gold

The data in the Account P&L is invaluable—it works like a GPS for Gustavo, giving him the information he needs to develop plans and promotions that meet his target. The data even provides the starting point, known as the base volume. This is exactly what it sounds like—the baseline of products sold by a consumer goods company without any promotions. With this data, Gustavo can decide if he needs any promotional activity to hit his sales targets. This base volume represents what he’s expected to sell without additional promotions. 

There are choices. Base volume is either consumption-based (volume purchased by consumers) or shipment-based (volume shipped to the retailer). Using the Account P&L and its data, Gustavo and his team determines which metric best achieves their targets.

Base volume isn’t static, either. Based on Gustavo’s knowledge of the account and new data inputs, base volume adjusts to set more accurate sales forecasts. This provides Gustavo with up-to-date information to meet or even exceed his targets. Strong data supports goals that drive the business.

Sales Target-Base Volume Gap Analysis

Base volume is not enough for Gustavo to meet his assigned sales target. To close this gap, he needs to fill his plan with promotions. Gustavo reflects multiple promotional options of the marketing and brand initiatives within Alpine and defines a promotion plan that is prioritized for the next year.

Sales Target – Base volume = Volume Gap. This volume gap is filled using promotions.

Good Planning Is Crucial

With the TPM’s strong data platform, Gustavo is ready to build NTOs business plans with the flexibility to adjust along the way and set the right KPIs to reach their business goals. Several plans—regional, category, product, and brand-specific—all factor into the Account P&L. Again, the Account P&L shows Gustavo a view of all the metrics he needs for NTO. These customer business plans track weekly forecasts and account performance, which display at any level of the product hierarchy. 

In the Account P&L, Gustavo manages all the authorized products lists through the Salesforce TPM. The TPM displays each product, and the Account P&L tracks the KPIs, including those independent of the promotions. This way, Gustavo receives data-driven displays of their promotions’ impacts. The Account P&L lists products in two ways:

• Global lists: A set list of products where a volume or condition record exists—meeting specific volumes or conditions triggers the need for a promotion for specific products. Global lists can be extended by adding a product to a promotion—this adds the product automatically to the Global list, and is also known as open listing.
• Time-dependent lists: A list of products eligible for promotion previously defined for the customer by Gustavo and Alpine’s leadership, all set in a specific time frame. These are more flexible and allow Gustavo to determine which products are most relevant to promote to reach NTO’s goals during that time frame. All valid products must be added to the time-dependent list before they can be used in a promotion.

Once the team identifies the products to promote, they forecast product performance week-over-week during the trade cycle or the fiscal year. The TPM also tracks KPIs and performance against target goals. 

Now that the products and categories are set, account-level planning is complete, and everything is accessible and sortable in the Salesforce TPM, it’s time for Gustavo to create promotions and tactics. Let’s see how he does this in the next unit.