Since I joined Growberries earlier this year, one of the features I’ve found most useful for complex customer relationships is the new Salesforce CRM capability called Account Planning. At first glance, it may seem like just another feature in a powerful platform, but in reality, it represents a fundamental shift from simply managing customers to strategically growing them.

A Smarter Way to Manage Complex Customer Relationships

After seven years in the Salesforce ecosystem, I’ve seen many organizations struggle to translate strategy into execution when it comes to managing their key accounts. While the standard Account object provides a great overall view, it wasn't designed to manage complex, forward-looking strategies across multiple teams or markets. This can lead to valuable long-term goals and stakeholder plans getting buried under a mountain of notes, disconnected tasks, or simple team memory. Account Planning solves this by giving teams a dedicated space to build, track, and execute these future plans, separate from the day-to-day operational clutter.

Moving From Notes to Actionable Plans

Account Planning allows teams to work on strategic goals within a defined framework, separate from the operational clutter of the main Account page. It introduces an additional layer of structure that supports long-term relationship management – particularly valuable in enterprise and multi-market contexts.

At the heart of this feature are Objectives: individual, trackable goals that can be assigned to team members, given deadlines, and connected to measurable outcomes. This makes it easier to align work across roles and regions, distribute ownership, and ensure progress is visible to all stakeholders.

Rather than relying on scattered notes or general action items, Account Planning turns strategy into an operational asset.

Designed for Scale and Complexity

Account Planning is especially useful in organizations that operate across countries, industries, or product lines. For example, one customer account may require distinct strategies for the Nordic region versus the U.S. market. With this feature, teams can build separate plans under the same customer umbrella – tailored to the priorities and timelines of each market.

This becomes particularly important in companies where account ownership is shared or rotated, and where onboarding new team members requires a clear overview of current plans, goals, and responsibilities.

The structure provided by Account Planning helps teams avoid duplicated efforts, unclear ownership, and misaligned goals.

Common Implementation Pitfalls

As with any feature rollout, it’s important to implement Account Planning with clarity around its purpose. It is not intended to replace the Account page or duplicate data. Instead, it provides a distinct planning space where teams can outline forward-looking strategies and monitor progress over time.

One common misstep is using Account Planning too early in the sales process – before relationships or opportunities are well defined. It works best when there is already some context or depth to the account, such as after initial research or discovery phases.

Another challenge is customization. While the current version offers limited flexibility, Salesforce is expected to expand these capabilities over time. In the meantime, teams should focus on using the existing structure effectively, rather than delaying adoption in pursuit of perfect alignment.

Enabling Better Collaboration and Execution

Ultimately, Account Planning fosters the collaboration, focus, and transparency that are critical for managing complex, multi-faceted customer relationships. It provides a practical framework to turn good intentions into measurable progress. 

The business case is simple: better planning leads to better execution. And Account Planning is built to make that easier.

If you want to learn more about how to implement Account Planning for your company, contact me at (modhurima.sil@growberries.com) to get in touch.