Accounts

One record per legal entity or operating division you sell to. It carries the facts the rest of the system reads instead of asking the rep again:

The last activity date is written by the system whenever an activity on the account completes. It is the field managers sort on when they ask which customers nobody has spoken to this quarter. The last order date, from a connected order system, answers the other question: which customers have stopped buying.

A subsidiary, a division or a regional entity is its own account with a parent. The hierarchy answers questions a flat list cannot: what is our total pipeline across this group, and which entities buy from us. It also shows whether the parent’s master agreement covers a deal at the subsidiary. Contracts and opportunities stay on the entity that signs, and the reports roll them up to the parent when asked.

Partners are accounts of type partner. A deal a partner sourced or influenced names the partner on the deal itself, so partner revenue is reported without bending the hierarchy.

Most accounts have more than one address: a manufacturer has plants, a bank has branches. Sites record each location with its type, address and primary contact. Contacts can be placed at a site, so a rep visiting the plant knows who is there. A delivery or an installation on a deal can point at the site it goes to.

Every account has one owner and sits in one territory. Territory rules run in priority order over country, state, postcode, industry, employee-count band and named-account lists. The first rule that matches sets the territory, and the territory’s owner becomes the account owner unless a manager overrides it. Named-account rules run first so a strategic account in a region does not fall to the regional rep by accident. A lead that matches an account with an owner goes to that owner ahead of the rules.

When territories change, sales operations runs a realignment: the new rules are drafted with an effective date, modelled into a list of moves, approved by the managers and applied in bulk. Each moved account keeps its previous owner, its previous territory and a reference to the realignment that moved it. Open opportunities keep the territory they were created in until the manager reassigns them, so a rep is not stripped of a deal they have worked for months because a postcode boundary moved.

Larger accounts are worked by more than one person: the account executive, a sales engineer, a customer success manager after the win, an executive sponsor at the top. Team membership grants access to the account and its deals without changing ownership, with read-only or edit rights per member. The team list is also what the customer sees on the contract handover, so they know who to call.

For strategic and key accounts, the owner writes a plan for the fiscal year: objectives, the products the account does not yet buy (whitespace), a target revenue, and a relationship map. The map records who on our side knows whom on theirs. The plan goes to the manager for approval and is reviewed on a date the plan sets. Plans are records with a status, so a manager can see which key accounts have no plan and which plans are overdue for review.

• Strategic and Key Accounts: the accounts in the top tiers with owner, territory, revenue and last activity date.
• The account page itself: contacts, open opportunities, quotes, contracts, activities and team members on one screen, with the hierarchy above and the sites below.
• Territory Coverage for the manager: accounts, pipeline and closed revenue per territory, the accounts that have no owner, and the before and after of a modelled realignment.