Account planning

This account planning framework is designed to help you quickly get up to speed on accounts and consistently think through a set of questions that deepen the partnership with your accounts. It encourages a proactive approach to identifying expansion and cross-sell opportunities, driving growth and customer success. This template was initially developed for managing a book of business primarily consisting of smaller startups. It will likely need modification to be useful for larger, more enterprise, accounts.

Here are some times where it may help:

• When onboarding a new account.
• As part of a regular account review cadence (e.g., quarterly).
• When a significant change occurs within an account (e.g., new funding, leadership change, new strategic initiative, product launch).
• To proactively identify and strategize on expansion or cross-sell opportunities.
• Any other time you want to. Or not. No one is checking your work.

Account planning template

I. Business info:

• Name:
• Description:
• Website:
• HQ location:
• Business type: B2B SaaS, E-commerce, Marketplace, Developer Tools, Fintech, Healthcare, etc.
• Goal: Identify typical key metrics and challenges for this company type/stage (e.g., MRR, CAC, LTV for SaaS; GMV, AOV for E-commerce).

A. Business stage:

Businesses have different goals and constraints based on funding and stage. A venture-backed early-stage company may be very cash-conscious and focused on product-market fit, while a more established enterprise may be more focused on scaling, efficiency, and locking in multi-year discounts.

• Current stage: (Seed, Series A/B/C+, Public, Bootstrapped, Acquired by X)
• Funding:
• Investors:

B. How they make money:

• Key product(s) or services they offer: List their main offerings that their customers use.
• Pricing, if available:

C. Vibe-based matrix:

Refer to the vibe-based sales matrix (internal only) - where does this account fit?

• Potential ways to cross-sell:
• Main risks:

II. Product impressions:

You should always try out a customer's product where possible, as it can give you useful context. It helps you identify best practices we can recommend, understand their user experience firsthand, and spot potential cross-sell or value-add opportunities for PostHog.

• Personal impression/user experience notes: Your observations as a potential user – what was intuitive, confusing, delightful? Any obvious pain points or areas for improvement? How do they handle onboarding, core workflows, etc.?
• Potential areas where PostHog could provide insight for their product development/UX: "Their checkout flow has 5 steps; Session Replay could help them identify drop-off points." "They just launched a new mobile app; Product Analytics is crucial for tracking adoption."
• Their product roadmap: What do you see on their roadmap that PostHog can enable for them?

III. Hiring roles / goals:

Review their careers page, LinkedIn job postings, and any announcements about team growth. Hiring trends can tell us what the business will be focused on in the next 12-24 months, what skills they're prioritizing, and what type of growth the business is forecasting.

• Roles currently hiring for:
• Goals associated with these new roles: (Document Product and growth related goals. This tells us what the business will be seeking)
• Skills associated with these new roles: (Are there specific technical skills required? This can educate us about the customer's tech stack.)
• How to position PostHog as an enabler for these roles/goals:

IV. Business objectives :

Collect as much context as you can about the customer and their goals. Look for opportunities to align PostHog to those goals.

• What are they trying to achieve with PostHog? / What larger business goals does PostHog support? Increase feature adoption by X%, reduce onboarding drop-off by Y%, identify top 3 user paths to conversion, validate hypotheses for new product Z.
• Do they feel the value from PostHog aligns with their expectations and investment? Yes/No/Partially. Are they happy with the value received?
• What obstacles are they facing?
• In using PostHog effectively: Technical hurdles in instrumentation, knowledge gaps in using advanced features, specific feature limitations for their use case, not enough time/resources allocated.
• In their overall goal achievement (where PostHog might help but isn't fully leveraged): Lack of engineering resources to implement new tracking, siloed data preventing holistic views, difficulty translating data into actionable insights.
• Are there upcoming constraints? Budget freezes, code freezes, headcount restrictions, technical migrations, major product re-platforming, seasonality impacting their business.
• What do their future needs look like (6-18 months)? Where does PostHog fit into their roadmap? Scaling analytics capabilities, new product launches requiring instrumentation, desire for A/B testing at scale, moving towards a more data-driven culture, interest in predictive analytics.
• How healthy do they think the relationship is? Have they enjoyed their interactions with us (Sales, Support, CS)?

V. Stakeholders and power users:

• For key contacts:
• Name & role / title:
• Priorities & Goals:
• Attending any trade shows/events where PostHog might be?
• Preferred Communication Channel / Cadence:

VI. Current PostHog products in use:

This can be easily checked in Vitally. Thinking through this in a structured fashion may be helpful when taking on a new account.

• Asses the usage or maturity level for each product: Basic (simple insights), Intermediate (custom events, funnels), Advanced (correlation analysis, complex flags)

A. Underutilized products & cross-sell mapping:

In Vitally, you can often easily identify which products are underutilized or not adopted. It may be beneficial to map these out in a more general sense.

• Product 1 (e.g., surveys):
• Potential use case: "Gather qualitative feedback on new feature X." "Run NPS surveys directly in-app."
• Next step to introduce/drive adoption: "Share case study on Surveys." "Offer to help set up their first survey."
• Relevant case study / content:

• Product 2 (e.g., A/B testing):
• Potential use case: "Test different onboarding flows." "Optimize CTA button placement."
• Next step to introduce/drive adoption: "Discuss their experimentation roadmap." "Show demo of A/B testing setup."
• Relevant case study / content:

B. Optimization opportunities (for existing products):

• "Not using custom events enough; could help them track X more granularly." "Could benefit from more complex funnels to understand Y." "Haven't explored correlation analysis for Z." "Feature flags could be used for targeted rollouts to segment A."

VII. Context / suggestions from others at PostHog:

Check Active Conversations in Vitally, support ticketing, Slack channels, CRM history.

VIII. Open requests and feedback

Has the customer submitted any feature requests or other relevant feedback?

IX. Risks:

• Aware of any risks to this account's renewal or growth? Champion leaving, key user turnover, budget cuts, low adoption/engagement, unresolved issues, evolving needs, upcoming renewal date with low perceived value, negative sentiment.
• Mitigation strategy: