Streamline account planning with AI

How automation transforms traditional processes for better results

DEAR STAGE 2: Kyle Coleman did this crazy thing this week on LI and shared Account Plans for people in real time. I’m an AE at an early stage company and think we could really benefit from more strategic and structured account planning. How can I replicate this process? ~STRATEGIC SELLER

DEAR STRATEGIC SELLER: I saw it too! When Kyle started responding to folks, in real time, delivering 14 ACCOUNT PLANS IN ONE HOUR, I was blown away. For those of you who missed it, check out the original post here. 

Over the years, I have worked with many companies to develop account planning templates and drive a systematic approach to target account prospecting using this strategy. While it can feel like busy work, or yet another thing your manager is asking you to do, well-researched account plans can drive new pipeline, accelerate opportunities and help you close more deals. 

So rather than put words in his mouth, I reached out to Kyle and asked… “How’d you do that? And how can others?”

Kyle laid out his thoughts here:

First, the “Why?”

Kyle (clearly) shares my affinity for account planning and agrees that the AEs who put in the work to build account plans gain unique insights into:

• Where the account is placing bets for growth

• The key initiatives tied to the account's growth strategies

• The challenges the account faces in achieving their strategic goals

Thorough account plans provide AEs with a strategic perspective and point of view on their target accounts. This allows them to position their solution as enabling the account's most important business objectives. Rather than just pitching product features, AEs can actually show how they will move the needle on metrics the prospects’ executives truly care about. This elevates the rep from random product pusher to strategic advisor.

In other words, meticulous account planning is a must for sales success.

And now, the “How?” 

Kyle first reflected on how account plans used to be built. And by used to, we mean even last year… 

Building detailed account plans was an incredibly tedious manual process. To understand a public company's strategies and challenges, reps would have to: read through lengthy earnings call transcripts, dig into dense annual reports and 10Ks, and try to synthesize these documents by hand to identify key themes. This process could take countless hours and even then, the insights were limited by the rep's ability to analyze and summarize pages of complex material.

But AI is changing that. This critical process that used to take hours can now be done in minutes. In fact, Kyle was using copy.ai to deliver these strategic insights in minutes (remember…14 in 1 hour!).

The workflow he used is simple:

1. Input the company's ticker symbol

2. Provide your product's value proposition

3. Copy.ai analyzes the latest earnings call and annual report

4. The AI identifies the company's growth bets, challenges, and strategies

5. It summarizes the key takeaways aligned to your value prop

As a former sales leader and GTM advisor to early stage companies, I constantly think about the application of AI to the sales process — I can promise you that we are only just scratching the surface. For AEs looking to accelerate their own learning and improve their sales process, this is a great place to start! The automated analysis is not only way faster, but provides a level of strategic perspective difficult to match manually.

Want to try it yourself? Follow Kyle over to copy.ai’s “research public companies” page. 

Until next week!