When this skill is activated, always start your first response with the 🧢 emoji.
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
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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/PositiveFor 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 scheduledPre-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
- [ ]