Account planning is no longer spreadsheets and slide decks. It has evolved into a sophisticated process allowing companies to find better ways to grow revenue without chasing new business, all while improving valuable customer relationships. Yet the most meticulously crafted account plans can be rendered useless without one critical element: a clear understanding of who holds power, influence, and decision-making authority within your target accounts.

Basic Embedded Account Plan

Traditional Salesforce account planning works well to capture simple data like customer information, business objectives, revenue targets etc. Account plans typically include components like account overviews, key contacts, strategic goals, and action items. Teams set SMART goals, assign ownership, and track progress through dashboards and reports.

However, these plans often treat stakeholders as isolated data points rather than interconnected individuals within a complex organizational ecosystem. Sales teams might know they need to reach a VP of Operations or engage a CFO, but understanding how these stakeholders relate to each other, who influences whom, and where the real power dynamics lie remains frustratingly unclear.

This gap between simply knowing who your contacts are and understanding how they operate as a political and organizational network is precisely what causes your deals to stall, champions to fail, and those meticulously planned strategies to be a waste of time.

Account Planning With Stakeholder Maps

OrgChartPlus is a native Salesforce application that brings visual relationship mapping directly into your account planning workflow. By transforming flat contact lists into dynamic organizational charts and relationship maps, it addresses the blind spots that traditional account plans leave unresolved.

Visualizing the Complete Organizational Landscape

OrgChartPlus allows sales teams to build comprehensive org charts directly from Salesforce contacts at both the account and opportunity level. Instead of scrolling through contact lists or trying to mentally piece together organizational hierarchies, salespeople can see the entire structure at a glance. They can make notes on specific contacts and record attributes such as influence, meaning they can plan their account growth strategy from a position of knowledge, rather than guessing. 

The tool offers three distinct views designed to help teams visualize, organize, and target stakeholders effectively. This visual clarity improves account planning by making it immediately apparent who sits where in the organizational hierarchy, who reports to whom, and where potential white space exists.

For account planners, this means being able to identify not just the obvious decision-makers but also the hidden influencers or potential champions that might otherwise be overlooked.

Power Dynamics and Relationships

Understanding organizational structure is valuable, but understanding relationships and influence is what really makes a difference to account planning. With OrgChartPlus, teams can map lines of influence or conflict between contacts, creating what amounts to a political map of the account.

Sales professionals can assign specific attributes to each contact and opportunity roles that clarify each personas function in the buying process. Levels of influence show who truly moves decisions forward while support attributes can be used to indicate whether someone is a champion, neutral, or blocker.

This relationship intelligence takes into account the human dynamics that ultimately determine whether deals progress or stall. Instead of treating each stakeholder as an isolated target, teams are able to understand how to leverage relationships, neutralize opposition, and build consensus across the organization.

Identifying Champions, Blockers, and Decision-Makers

Every account plan should answer fundamental questions: Who supports our solution? Who opposes it? Who makes the final call? With OrgChartPlus, these answers are visible and actionable.

By visually coding contacts based on their stance and influence, sales teams can instantly identify where they have strong relationships and where gaps exist. The tool even allows teams to bring competitors into the view, showing how rival vendors are positioned within the accounts political landscape.

This competitive intelligence, combined with clear identification of champions and blockers, enables account planners to develop targeted engagement strategies. Rather than generic outreach, teams can prioritize building relationships with high-influence stakeholders who have the power to advance deals.

Automating Stakeholder Identification with Templates

One of OrgChartPlus’s most powerful features is its ability to create custom stakeholder templates based on roles, titles, and other fields. Account planners can define what a typical buying committee looks like for their solution, and OrgChartPlus will automatically populatecontacts into the appropriate positions.

This automation serves two critical functions for account planning:

First, it accelerates the account mapping process, allowing reps to quickly establish a baseline organizational view without manual positioning of every contact.

Second, and arguably more importantly, it reveals contact white space: gaps in the account where key stakeholders have yet to be identified or engaged.

For strategic account plans focused on expansion and upselling, these white space insights are invaluable. They show where relationships need to be built and where risk exists because critical stakeholders remain unknown or unengaged.

Integrating Relationship Data into Strategic Reporting

Account planning in Salesforce relies heavily on data. OrgChartPlus extends this capability by making relationship data reportable and measurable. Sales leaders can run Salesforce reports on OrgChartPlus data to understand:

• Opportunity relationship scores that quantify the strength of stakeholder relationships
• Account health metrics based on engagement breadth and depth
• Adoption metrics that ensure sales teams are keeping account maps current

These reports move subjective relationship assessments into objective metrics that can guide coaching, identify at-risk accounts, and measure the effectiveness of account planning efforts.

Dashboards can be built across different organizational levels, giving users, account managers, territory managers, and sales leaders tailored views of relationship health.

Enabling Collaborative Account Strategy

Account planning should never be a solo activity, but coordinating team input can be challenging. OrgChartPlus supports multi-user collaboration, allowing account team members to contribute their knowledge and perspectives to the organizational maps.

Sales executives can share insights about C-suite relationships, while frontline reps document technical buyer connections. Customer success managers can add information about operational stakeholders, creating a comprehensive view that no single team member could develop alone.

Moreover, OrgChartPlus charts can be exported directly into Word or PowerPoint, making it easy to socialize account strategies beyond Salesforce users. Account planning reviews, QBRs, and executive briefings become more impactful when stakeholder relationships are presented visually rather than as lists in a spreadsheet.

Practical Applications: OrgChartPlus in the Account

In this section, we will examine how OrgChartPlus improves each phase of the account planning process:

Initial Account Assessment

When developing an account plan, teams begin by gathering intelligence about the customers organization, goals, and challenges. OrgChartPlus accelerates this phase by providing a visual framework for organizing stakeholder information. As contacts are added to Salesforce, they’re positioned within the org chart, immediately revealing the accounts structure and highlighting where information gaps exist.

Strategic Goal Setting

With a clear view of stakeholder relationships and influence, account planners can set more realistic and targeted goals. If the org chart reveals weak relationships with financial decision-makers, the account plan might prioritize CFO engagement. If it shows a strong champion in operations but blockers in IT, the strategy might focus on neutralizing technical objections while leveraging the operational champions’ influence.

Action Planning and Task Assignment

OrgChartPlus makes action planning more precise by connecting specific activities to specific stakeholders. Rather than vague tasks like ‘engage executive sponsors’ account plans can specify & strengthen relationship with ‘VP of Digital Transformation (current support level: neutral, influence level: high) to convert to champion before Q3 renewal discussion’.

Opportunity Management

When opportunities are created within strategic accounts, OrgChartPlus’ dual functionality at both account and opportunity levels shines. Account-level relationship maps inform opportunity-specific stakeholder strategies, ensuring that deal teams leverage existing relationships while identifying opportunity-specific buying committee members who need engagement.

Progress Tracking and Plan Refinement

As account plans progress, OrgChartPlus provides visual indicators of relationship development. Teams can see whether stakeholder maps are becoming more complete, whether influence networks are being leveraged, and whether support levels are improving. This ongoing visibility enables account planners to course-correct before small relationship gaps kill their deals. 

Implementation Best Practices

To maximize the value of OrgChartPlus in your account planning process, consider these implementation strategies:

Start with your most strategic accounts: Rather than attempting to map every account immediately, begin with your highest-value customers and most critical opportunities. This focused approach demonstrates value quickly and builds momentum. 

Integrate org chart reviews into account planning rituals: Make stakeholder mapping review a standard component of account planning sessions, quarterly business reviews, and deal reviews. Regular updates ensure maps remain current and actionable.

Combine with other account planning elements: OrgChartPlus is most powerful when integrated into comprehensive account plans that include business objectives, competitive intelligence, and action plans. The visual stakeholder maps should inform and be informed by these other planning components.

Leverage templates for scalability: Develop stakeholder templates for different customer segments, industries, or product lines. This standardization makes it easier for reps to quickly establish baseline org charts and identify white space.

Make relationship scoring objective: Establish clear criteria for assigning influence levels and support ratings. Consistent scoring across accounts makes reporting more meaningful and enables better benchmarking.

Summary

The most effective account plans are those that recognize a fundamental truth: businesses don’t buy, people within businesses buy. Understanding those people, their relationships, influence, and their agendas is what separates successful account planning from mere wishful thinking.

OrgChartPlus brings this human dimension into Salesforce account planning with visual clarity and strategic depth. It answers the questions that traditional account plans leave unresolved: Who really matters? How do they relate to each other? Where are our relationship gaps? And most importantly: what should we do about it?

For organizations serious about strategic account growth, the combination of structured Salesforce account planning and visual relationship intelligence from OrgChartPlus creates a powerful framework for understanding customers deeply, engaging them strategically, and growing accounts sustainably.

Take advantage of this opportunity and start your free trial today!