FAQs – Account Planning by GSP

You can print the underlying report from any dashboard chart. Alternatively, you can create a custom report with all the necessary information. 

With large customer organizations, you typically have different strategies for each region or business unit. This approach means you need an Account Plan for the HQ, plus Account Plans for each area or business unit. Account Plans for complex organizations gives you more information.

We recommend you create Account Plans of 12 months duration. This article gives you more information on this topic.

As with any object in Salesforce, only one person can own each Account Plan. However, you can use the Account Plan Colleague Roles feature to assign multiple users to an Account Plan.

This article explains how the opportunity Amount is rolled up to the KPI section on the Account Plan. Optionally, you can roll up custom fields from the opportunity to the Account Plan. 

We recommend you record Activities against Objectives rather than the Account Plan. For example, using this approach, you track the open and completed Tasks needed to execute each Objective successfully.

Add the standard Clone button to the Account Plan page layout. However, we don't recommend cloning Account Plans; instead, you should think about your relationship with the customer each year and what you want to achieve. Using the Clone button carries the risk that you avoid this critical thinking process.

e recommend breaking your goals into specific Objectives. Then, track the progress of each Objective using the Status field. Reports and dashboard charts within the app provide overall visibility of progress on Objectives.

You can modify the value of all picklist fields to reflect your business needs. You can also add custom fields to each object in the app.

We don't have pre-written Account Plan examples. However, each of our customers who purchase the GSP Account Planning app can receive a free one-hour coaching session from an expert. The world-class team at SBR Consulting provides this service.

Absolutely. Use the account planning process to manage and track your approach with potential customers.

Only the opportunities from the same Account link to the Account Plan. However, remember that you can create separate Account Plans for individual business units or regions within complex and large customer organizations.

In addition, the Opportunities by Top Level Account on the dashboard displays all opportunities within an organization hierarchy.

You should only add the Key Stakeholders at the customer to the heat map. These can be defined as the people who play a critical role in your interactions with the customer, in addition to their power and influence over the decision-making process.

Currently, the Account Plan Colleague Roles are separate from the Account Team function. This separation is because people and roles may vary yearly, so the Colleague Roles should be modified on each Account Plan. In contrast, the Account Team is often not updated each year.

You can link other custom objects to the Account Plan. For example, if you have an object that tracks customer satisfaction, you can build a flow or trigger that rolls up the values to the Account Plan. Let us know if you need help with this process.

You should conduct Account Health Reviews every month. You need to be honest with your scoring; otherwise, it will be challenging to identify the successes and areas for improvement with the customer.

You can use the standard object-related features on the Profiles to control access to Account Plans. However, remember that Account Plans have a master-detail relationship with the Account; this means that if a user can see the Account, they can see the Account Plan.

That said, in the future, it may be possible to constrain objects’ visibility in a master-detail relationship using the Restriction Rules functionality.

You can control the visibility of Account Plans using the standard features and Profile controls. However, remember that ideally, any user that can update an Opportunity needs edit access to the related Account Plan to ensure the KPI roll-up fields on the Account Plan update to reflect the Opportunity value.

All GSP apps have appropriate test methods and code coverage. Without this coverage, we could not publish the app on the AppExchange.

However, you may find that some of our test methods fail in your Salesforce environment.

These failures usually happen because there are mandatory fields or validation rules in your Salesforce environment that our test methods do not include. In other words, the mandatory field or validation rule does not exist within the source environment for the app.

You do not need to be concerned about this.

The test methods within any managed package are not part of the routine when you deploy change sets from a sandbox to your production environment.

As a result, a test method failure within a GSP app will not interfere with how users work or the configuration enhancements you make to your Salesforce setup.

All GSP apps are guaranteed to be compatible with future Salesforce releases.

We achieve this by ensuring the code and configuration within each app meet published Salesforce best practice standards.

We run a series of automated technical tests with each new release of an app to validate adherence.

Salesforce guarantees that if you abide by these standards, all functionality is compatible with future releases.

Optionally, you can give us temporary access to your Salesforce environment. You could do this if you want our help to set up the app or resolve a problem.

Take these steps to give us temporary access to Salesforce:

1. Click your avatar in the top right corner.

2. Settings.

3. Grant Account Login Access.

You’ll see several options for the period you want us to access your environment. Choose a period and click Save.

Don’t forget to let us know if you’ve done this because we don’t get an automated email or other notification.

If you have a GSP app installed in your Salesforce environment, we cannot see your data or any part of your configuration or setup. The only people that can see the data are your Salesforce users to whom you’ve given environment access.

You can customize our apps within pre-defined parameters. For example, you can change picklist values, add new fields, and modify the page layouts.

You can also change the name of fields within the app using the Override feature within the Translation Workbench.

We thoroughly explain the customizable features of each app in the relevant Customizing the App section of the knowledge base.

You can’t change the underlying code within each app or modify the critical functional features. Nevertheless, other objects within Salesforce can link to the objects within our apps. You can also write triggers and Flows on the objects within each GSP app.

For example, with our Account Planning app, you can link Orders or Invoices to the Account Plan and roll up the values. If you want help or advice in doing this, then Get in Touch.