Account Management

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Account Management

Account management is the discipline of growing and retaining revenue by treating customer relationships as long-term investments rather than transactional events. The best AMs are strategic advisors who help customers achieve outcomes - and in doing so, earn the right to expand. This skill equips an agent to build account plans, map stakeholders, run high-impact QBRs, identify expansion signals, manage renewals, and rescue at-risk accounts before they churn.

When to use this skill

Trigger this skill when the user:

• Asks how to build or structure an account plan
• Needs to map stakeholders or understand org-chart dynamics
• Wants to prepare, structure, or run a Quarterly Business Review (QBR)
• Asks about upsell, cross-sell, or expansion strategies
• Needs to manage an upcoming renewal or contract negotiation
• Wants to build or interpret an account health score
• Is dealing with an at-risk, unhappy, or churning customer
• Asks about land-and-expand motions or enterprise growth plays

Do NOT trigger this skill for:

• Outbound prospecting or new-logo pipeline generation - use a sales-prospecting skill
• Product roadmap decisions driven by customer feedback - use a product-management skill

Key principles

1. Be a strategic advisor, not a vendor - Customers don't renew vendors; they renew advisors who help them win. Lead every interaction with their business outcomes (revenue growth, cost reduction, risk mitigation), not product features. Always know their top 3 strategic priorities before entering any meeting.

2. Map the org chart relentlessly - Single-threaded relationships are renewal risk. A champion who leaves takes your deal with them. Build relationships at three levels: the executive sponsor (owns budget), the champion (drives adoption), and end-users (create stickiness). Update your stakeholder map every quarter.

3. Be proactive, not reactive - The worst time to discover a customer is unhappy is when they send a cancellation notice. Run regular cadence calls, monitor product usage data, track open support tickets, and surface risks before they compound. Proactive outreach is 10x more effective than reactive damage control.

4. Land and expand - The initial contract is the beginning of the revenue journey, not the goal. Every implementation and onboarding decision should be made with expansion in mind: which adjacent team could use this next, what workflow creates a natural upgrade trigger, and which exec sponsor has budget for a broader rollout.

5. Health scores predict churn - Combine quantitative signals (login frequency, feature adoption, support ticket volume, NPS, contract utilization) into a single health score. Accounts that drop below a threshold need immediate intervention. A declining health score is almost always visible 60-90 days before a churn event.

Core concepts

Account tiers classify customers by strategic importance and revenue potential, not just current ARR. Tier 1 (strategic): top 10-15% by ARR or growth potential - receive quarterly EBRs, dedicated CSM, executive sponsor pairing. Tier 2 (growth): middle 30-40% - monthly cadence calls, QBRs twice per year. Tier 3 (long-tail): remaining accounts - mostly automated touchpoints with reactive support.

Stakeholder roles are the key personas inside every customer account. The champion is your internal advocate - they want you to succeed because your product makes them look good. The economic buyer controls the budget and signs the renewal; they care about ROI, not features. The blocker is the person who can kill the deal or renewal - usually a competing vendor ally, a skeptical IT director, or someone whose team is disrupted by your product. Winning requires engaging all three, not just the champion.

Health scoring is a composite signal built from multiple data sources: product usage (logins, feature breadth, DAU/MAU), relationship signals (executive sponsor access, NPS score, responsiveness), business signals (contract utilization, ROI achieved, expansion conversations), and support signals (open ticket count, escalation history). Weight each dimension and produce a red/yellow/green score updated weekly.

Expansion signals are leading indicators that an account is ready to grow. Look for: high feature utilization hitting plan limits, new team or department onboarding independently, executive sponsor referencing adjacent use cases, positive NPS (9-10) with specific praise, and successful ROI documentation. Expansion is easiest to sell when the customer is already experiencing value.

Common tasks

Create an account plan

An account plan is a living document updated quarterly that aligns your activities to the customer's strategic goals. Use this template structure:

Account Plan: [Customer Name]
Last Updated: [Date] | Owner: [AM Name] | Tier: [1/2/3]

CUSTOMER OVERVIEW
- Industry / segment / company size
- Primary use case and products contracted
- Contract value: $[ARR] | Renewal date: [Date]

STRATEGIC GOALS (customer's top 3 priorities this year)
1. [Goal 1 - source: last EBR / customer's annual report]
2. [Goal 2]
3. [Goal 3]

HOW WE MAP TO THEIR GOALS
- Goal 1 -> [your product capability / ROI delivered]
- Goal 2 -> [your product capability / ROI delivered]

SUCCESS METRICS (agreed with customer)
- Metric 1: [target] | Current: [value]
- Metric 2: [target] | Current: [value]

RISKS
- [Risk 1]: [Mitigation]
- [Risk 2]: [Mitigation]

EXPANSION OPPORTUNITIES
- [Opportunity 1]: [Trigger / timeline / owner]

90-DAY ACTION PLAN
- [ ] [Action] by [Date] - [Owner]

Update the account plan before every QBR and share a summary with the customer. An account plan the customer never sees is a vendor plan, not an account plan.

Map stakeholders - power grid

A stakeholder power grid maps each contact by their level of influence (low to high) against their sentiment toward you (detractor to champion). Plot each contact as a dot on the 2x2 grid:

High Influence |  MOBILIZE        |  PROTECT & GROW  |
               |  (convert these) |  (nurture these) |
               |------------------|------------------|
Low Influence  |  MONITOR         |  LEVERAGE         |
               |  (watch)         |  (as references) |
                  Detractor/Neutral    Champion/Positive

For each stakeholder document:

• Name, title, business unit
• Their personal win (what success looks like for them)
• Engagement frequency and last contact date
• Relationship owner (who on your team owns this relationship)
• Key risk: what would cause them to turn negative

Never rely on a single champion. If your only contact leaves and you have no other relationships, treat that account as high churn risk immediately.

Prepare and run a QBR

A QBR (Quarterly Business Review) is a strategic meeting - not a product demo or support update. Reserve it for business outcomes and forward-looking planning. See references/qbr-template.md for the full deck structure.

Standard QBR agenda (60 minutes):

00-05  Welcome + agenda alignment
05-15  Customer's business update (let them talk first)
15-30  Value delivered: ROI review, success metrics vs. targets
30-40  Challenges, blockers, open issues
40-50  Roadmap alignment + upcoming opportunities
50-58  Mutual action plan: commitments from both sides
58-60  Close + next meeting scheduled

Pre-QBR preparation checklist:

• Pull usage data and calculate ROI / value delivered
• Review all open support tickets and escalations
• Check health score trend over the quarter
• Confirm executive sponsor attendance (reschedule if they can't attend)
• Prepare 3 strategic questions tailored to their industry
• Draft expansion opportunity to introduce at the right moment
• Send agenda 5 business days in advance

Never start a QBR with a product update. Start with their business. "What's changed for you this quarter?" buys more goodwill than any slide deck.

Identify expansion opportunities

Expansion should feel like a natural next step to the customer, not a sales call. Use this framework to identify and sequence expansion plays:

Expansion types:

• Seat expansion: more users in the same team - triggered by hitting seat limits
• Module/feature upsell: adjacent product capability - triggered by workflow gaps
• Cross-sell: different product to same account - triggered by adjacent use case
• New business unit: rolling out to another department - triggered by internal champions

Expansion readiness checklist:

• Customer has achieved documented ROI from current contract
• Champion has positive NPS (8+) and is actively using the product
• Economic buyer is aware of the value delivered (not just the champion)
• New use case or team has been mentioned in conversation
• Renewal is not within 60 days (too close - wait until renewal is secured)

Always document the expansion opportunity in the account plan with a trigger (what event would make this timely), an owner, and a target timeline.

Manage renewal process - timeline

Work backwards from the renewal date. Deals that start the renewal conversation too late almost always get discounted or delayed.

Renewal Date minus 120 days:
  - Confirm renewal is flagged in CRM and forecast
  - Verify success metrics and pull ROI data
  - Identify any risks (health score, open tickets, stakeholder changes)

Renewal Date minus 90 days:
  - Run renewal QBR focused on value delivered and future roadmap
  - Surface any expansion opportunity (renew and expand together)
  - Begin commercial conversation with economic buyer

Renewal Date minus 60 days:
  - Send renewal proposal with updated pricing and term options
  - Address any objections or procurement requirements
  - Loop in legal early if contract redlines are expected

Renewal Date minus 30 days:
  - Follow up weekly until signed
  - Escalate to your manager if no response after 2 attempts
  - Offer a brief extension (30 days max) if procurement is the bottleneck

Renewal Date minus 7 days:
  - Confirm countersigned paperwork received and processed
  - Schedule kickoff for the new contract period

A renewal that starts at 30 days out is already late. Treat 90 days as your minimum lead time; 120 days for enterprise accounts over $100K ARR.

Build account health scoring

A practical health score combines 4-6 signal categories into a single number (0-100) or a red/yellow/green rating.

Recommended signal categories and weights:

Score calculation: assign 100 (green), 50 (yellow), 0 (red) per category, then multiply by weight and sum. Score above 75 = green; 50-75 = yellow; below 50 = red.

Automate health score calculation where possible and review the full at-risk list (red accounts) in weekly team standup. Human review catches what data misses.

Handle at-risk accounts - save playbook

An at-risk account requires a structured save motion, not ad-hoc heroics.

Step 1 - Triage (within 24 hours of signal):

• Identify the root cause: product gap, relationship breakdown, budget cut, or competitive threat
• Assign a save owner (usually senior AM or CSM lead)
• Notify internal stakeholders (AE, product, leadership if >$50K ARR)

Step 2 - Executive engagement (within 48 hours):

• Reach out from your executive to their executive sponsor
• Tone: "We've heard there are concerns - we want to understand and solve them"
• Avoid being defensive; listen first

Step 3 - Root cause meeting (within 1 week):

• Run a dedicated meeting (not a QBR) focused only on understanding their issues
• Ask: "If we could fix one thing, what would it be?"
• Commit to a specific action plan with dates, not vague reassurances

Step 4 - Recovery plan:

• Document a joint success plan with measurable milestones
• Offer a structured path: if X is fixed by Y date, we expect your confidence to return to Z level
• Check in weekly until green health score is restored

The most common mistake in save plays is over-promising. Commit only to what you can deliver. A broken promise during a save play accelerates churn.

Anti-patterns

Gotchas

1. Champion departure kills the renewal - A champion who changes roles or leaves takes their internal advocacy with them. If you haven't built multi-threaded relationships before that happens, you're starting from zero 60 days before renewal. Update the stakeholder map every quarter and treat any "single contact" account as high churn risk.

2. Expansion before proven ROI backfires - Pitching an upsell to a customer who hasn't seen clear value from the current contract reads as a vendor play, not a strategic partnership. It erodes trust and can accelerate churn. Require documented ROI and champion buy-in as prerequisites before any expansion conversation.

3. QBR without the economic buyer is a lost quarter - A QBR attended only by day-to-day users cannot advance the renewal or expansion conversation. The economic buyer controls the budget. If they decline to attend, reschedule rather than proceed; a QBR without them produces no commercial outcomes.

4. At-risk response speed matters more than quality - Waiting a week to craft a perfect save plan while a customer is actively evaluating competitors is worse than a fast, imperfect response in 24 hours. Triage immediately, engage at the executive level within 48 hours, and treat the first response as a listening mission, not a sales defense.

5. Generic account plans are ignored - An account plan that references the customer's industry but not their specific strategic goals is a vendor template, not a strategy. Customers can tell when they're reading a copy-paste document. Tie every action in the plan to a named goal from the customer's last QBR or annual report.

References

For detailed content on specific sub-tasks, read the relevant file from references/:

• references/qbr-template.md - Full QBR deck structure, slide-by-slide guide, preparation checklist, and facilitation tips. Load when preparing or running a Quarterly Business Review.

Only load a references file if the current task requires deep detail on that topic.

Companion check

On first activation of this skill in a conversation: check which companion skills are installed by running ls ~/.claude/skills/ ~/.agent/skills/ ~/.agents/skills/ .claude/skills/ .agent/skills/ .agents/skills/ 2>/dev/null. Compare the results against the recommended_skills field in this file's frontmatter. For any that are missing, mention them once and offer to install:

npx skills add AbsolutelySkilled/AbsolutelySkilled --skill <name>

Skip entirely if recommended_skills is empty or all companions are already installed.