Salesforce Account Plans: The New Feature Your Sales Users Will Love

Effectively managing account strategy, related goals, and stakeholder involvement is something every account manager has to do in order to nurture customer relationships during the sales cycle. Supporting the account planning process in Salesforce generally entails a custom implementation using general-purpose tools such as spreadsheets or presentation decks or even a third-party tool.

This assumes that local documents and slides are no longer used, although it may still happen, right? In this post, we’ll deep dive into the new Account Plans, what they entail, how you can get started, and, of course, what kind of customizations are possible to make this feature your very own.

The ‘Why’ Behind the Change

Account-based selling strategies imply cross-team collaboration at all stages to not only achieve common goals and revenue outcomes but ultimately maintain a productive relationship on both ends of the deal, proving to be a favorite approach across all industries and company sizes.

This is where proper account planning also comes into play – collaboration should happen seamlessly while ideally being measured and tied to measurable goals.

From a customer’s perspective, having Account Plans in Salesforce has been long requested, as there was previously no out-of-the-box mechanism or dedicated space to support this process. More often than not, this request resulted in the use of third-party solutions, in-house custom solutions, or Salesforce’s own Quip templates embedded into Salesforce records.

While these options could initially get the job done, significant limitations, such as disconnected systems, stale information, lack of automation capabilities, or perhaps budget constraints, were something companies always had to keep in mind – this is no longer the case!

By including the new Account Plan functionality into the core Salesforce Sales Cloud offering at no extra cost (for Enterprise editions and above), Salesforce aims to empower customers to adopt an in-app account-based selling solution while having out-of-the-box features readily available in their toolkit.

Salesforce has also customized this new account planning capability for industry specific use cases, starting with the Business Relationship Plans, which are tailored to meet the needs of Financial Services Cloud users.

As always, the main advantage of a standard feature is the ability to set it up and start using it while also having the option to customize most of its aspects to reflect your bespoke process, all while having Salesforce as a single source of truth. Using this out-of-the-box option means you can seamlessly integrate future innovations Salesforce will bring to the platform.

Enable Sales Account Plans

Account Plans became generally available shortly after the Winter ‘25 release and were progressively rolled out to all Sales Cloud instances by the end of November 2024.

Similar to many other Salesforce features, you will simply have to toggle the switch on within the dedicated Account Plans Setup Page, add the related list to Page Layouts and Record Pages, and you’re good to get started!

Once Account Plans are enabled in the production instance, you can also request a sandbox refresh to try it out in a test environment before deciding if it’s the right tool for your use case. Or, you can observe what further customizations are required for it to mold exactly to your team’s needs. It should also be known that any metadata changes should be built in sandboxes, tested, and only then deployed to production.

As soon as you have access to the new feature in your sandbox, you can head directly to Object Manager and start customizing your Account Plans. Following the feature being turned on, you will notice that three new standard objects appear in your org:

• Account Plan
• Account Plan Objective
• Account Plan Objective Measure
• Account Plan Objective Measure Relation

Note: Object and field-level permissions should also be reviewed and enabled on the permission sets used by your sales team, for example, or you could simply create new permission sets and add them to existing permission set groups depending on the access structure you’re using.

As Account Plans are actually Salesforce records, you can easily tailor the Record Page for your organization’s needs using Lightning App Builder. If certain components or their position do not work for you or if you’d like to embed other items on the page, feel free to adjust what works best for your teams! 

An optional feature you should also consider enabling at this point is the Buyer Relationship Map, which is available within the Account Plan record if you choose to use it. Since this feature is also included with Enterprise editions and above, you should definitely try it out.

Your users will easily be able to build fully interactive stakeholder hierarchies related to either accounts or opportunities.

Meet the Account Plan

Now that the setup and customization are done, it’s time for your internal users to enjoy this feature day-to-day! With the plans being accessible from individual accounts, this can certainly count as an enhancement to both the functionality and the user experience.

The Account Plan Record

When creating an Account Plan, the only mandatory field by default is the Account Plan name. Depending on what fields and customizations you choose to add during setup, more information may be required before creation – but that is up to you and your team.

Multiple Account Plan records can be created and used as a versioning mechanism every time a new plan is needed. This is a more suitable option compared to updating one plan over and over again and potentially losing historical data.

When viewing the Account Plan record, the top of the page out-of-the-box dashboard displays key information from opportunities related to the account the plan is related to – specifically the Stage breakdown as well as the Win Rate.

If needed, you can customize the record page (as mentioned in the setup section above) and switch this dashboard to another one of your choosing.

Following the dashboard and highlights panel at the top of the page, similar to any other Salesforce record, the Account Plan includes fields and field sections, as well as related lists on the right-hand side. We will explore the objectives in more detail in the next section.

The Account Plan includes all the fields you need for a SWOT analysis (which many companies use as a framework to determine their market position) and a dedicated Competitive Landscape section. Of course, your organization can choose to use a completely different framework or further customize these sections – it is entirely up to you.

While Account Plan records are private by default, account managers can choose to share their Account Plans with their team or other colleagues using the sharing settings on the Account Plan record page.

As expected, you can change this behavior by updating the organization-wide defaults if extended access is needed as soon as plans are created, rather than relying on granular record-by-record sharing.

The good news for both admins and Salesforce users is the fact that Account Plans are actually individual records. Not only will the captured data be stored in fields, but you can also build granular reporting using native Salesforce reports and dashboards.

These can be leveraged by sales leadership during reviews and QBRs to track progress and dive into the latest updates made to Account Plans.

Objectives and Measures 

In general, account planning is a strategic process involving collaboration and customer conversations to align on different goals, needs, and next steps. When it comes to the execution, however, having the possibility to track the various steps and take action accordingly becomes paramount – Salesforce has got you covered in this regard as well!

Selling will always remain a team sport, especially in large organizations with a longer sales cycle. This means that multiple internal or even external collaborators will be involved. Account Plan Objectives allow you to create as many objectives as needed per Account Plan, regardless of their nature, so that the effort that goes into executing the plan can be tracked accordingly.

These objectives can be assigned to different individuals, and each record has a start date and end date that are mandatory right from the get-go, alongside the owner.

During the creation, your team can determine if the objective is measurable or not. If it is, they can choose between currency, percent, or number as a unit of measure. The Current Value and Target Value will also have to be input for progression to be accurately displayed directly on the Account Plan.

Salesforce Account Plan Objective also offers the flexibility to add the measure afterward – even if the information was not available initially. This makes it easier for account managers to get started and come back later with any additional changes as goals and targets change.

Objective Metrics Calculation

As promised last year, Salesforce is keen on making Account Plans as dynamic as possible while removing the need for manual input when the data is, in fact, right on Salesforce records.

Starting with February’s Spring ’25 Salesforce release, Salesforce Admins will have the option to leverage the new Objective Metrics Calculation Definitions in the Sales Account Plans Setup to define filters for how opportunity, case, campaign, or contact data is aggregated to serve as the current value for one or more Account Plan Objective Metrics.

This way, the definition will become available to use across multiple objectives as needed while also standardizing the filters – this change makes the current value permanently accurate, without users having to go in and manually update it anymore (though the manual option above still remains a possibility).

Creating or editing a Calculation Definition is not only straightforward but also flexible, as multiple filters can be used to narrow down the records. Salesforce also provides two out-of-the-box definitions on the opportunity object for you to use as an example and help you get started.

Note that after creating your own definitions, they will default to a draft state until you manually activate each of them. While the description is not mandatory, make sure to complete it with details about the filters so that users can see exactly what the definition is about when selecting it later on for their objectives. Additionally, you can return and edit only certain attributes of the definition – such as the name and description, but not the object, the type of calculation, or filters.

To use a Calculation Definition on a new or existing objective, you simply need to select the active one you would like to use. This will make the current measure value read-only as it will be automatically calculated, but you need to set the target. Additionally, the records considered for the calculation will have to be selected on the side panel.

Notice that if the selected opportunities in this scenario don’t meet the criteria from the definition, which in this example was for the amount to be greater than 500K, they are not counted towards the objective but do add to the count of related records. Overall, this approach makes it easy to track progress against the objectives accurately.

Review and Breakdown Activities by Objective

Another feature Salesforce announced last year that will be coming shortly is the Strategic Tracker for Account Plans. This will also be rolled out at no additional cost for orgs that already benefit from the new Account Plans functionality, by late March to mid-April 2025, as mentioned in the release notes.

If you’re already familiar with Industries Action Plans, Sales Action Plans are reusing the same objects that make up their functionality (ActionPlan, ActionPlanItem, etc.), with additional support for events to account for the sales meetings, not only tasks. The target objects for Sales Action Plans can be Account Plan Objectives, Accounts, Cases, Campaigns, Contacts, Contracts, Leads, or Opportunities, making them a versatile choice for multiple areas and processes.

They will have their own dedicated Setup Page under Account Plans, where you can manage permissions, customizations, and templates.

The Action Plans will appear at the objective level, as each one may follow a different plan or structure, and this approach allows for granular tracking. The plans can include both tasks and events, depending on the actions the objective owner will have to take as part of the plan.

Keep in mind that whenever a new Action Plan is created, selecting the template is mandatory. However, based on the settings at the Action Plan Template level, users may be allowed to add additional items at their discretion, on top of the predefined ones. Also, make sure that the users have the necessary Sales Action Plans permissions.

Zooming into the template itself, it is ultimately a record composed of both tasks and events as needed. There is also a very handy Days to Complete functionality, which is calculated based on the start date of the Action Plan, and is mandatory upon creation – this helps the team stay on track with all associated tasks and events. The default owner is the Action Plan Creator, but this can easily be changed after creation, for example.

Identity Upsell Potential

Another new feature which will become available in Spring ‘25 is the Whitespace Map component, which can easily be positioned anywhere on the Account Plan Record Page to offer product-related information about both the specific account the plan is directly related to and other accounts in the hierarchy, if any. This chart considers all products from Closed Won Opportunities from the past year, enabling the account team working on the plan and related objectives to quickly identify additional upsell or cross-sell areas.

Planning Your Way 

As mentioned above, the new objects – Account Plan, Account Plan Objective, Account Plan Objective Measure, Account Plan Objective Measure Relation, and even Action Plan – are available within the Object Manager for you to further configure based on your stakeholder’s requirements and business process.

Customization, however, does not solely mean creating new fields, validation rules, and maybe customizing layouts. Since all four objects also support triggers, this means that, for example, you could easily build a flow to notify the account team from the related account that a new Account Plan has been created. The same automation could just as easily update the account fields if warranted.

Alternatively, why not automatically create the Account Plan record, related Account Plan Objectives, and Account Plan Measures as soon as an Account over a certain Annual Revenue threshold is created?

Ultimately, you can choose the automation you would like to create. But, it’s important to consider these as soon as possible to lower the manual efforts and ensure a smooth experience for all users.

Also, if you benefit from your organization already purchasing the Einstein for Sales add-on, you could easily use the Account Plans related list as a resource in your Prompt Templates for rich grounding. 

This option can be especially useful in scenarios when multiple Account Plans exist and the account is transitioned to a new account manager. Moreover, the output can be quickly tested directly in Prompt Builder. All in all, the sky’s the limit when it comes to the number of use cases! 

What’s Next?

Although we are now seeing a second iteration of Account Plans, the enhancements will not stop here – improvements to this feature will continue through the next few releases as well. Please note that the features we will refer to below are subject to change, and you should make all purchasing decisions based on readily available features.

• Account Research: will allow you to summarize strategic account information and subsequently update the Account Plan with a click of a button.

To learn more, check the Dreamforce presentation on Salesforce+.

Summary

Out-of-the-box Account Plans have been a long-awaited functionality, and surely, a lot of Salesforce professionals dove right in immediately following them becoming generally available. By removing the need to acquire third-party tools or build a custom solution from scratch, the Account Plans, alongside the customizable measures and objectives, can supercharge how your team works and further enhance your organization’s account-based selling initiatives.

Have you already tried out the new Account Plans? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!