Account Health Scan —
Section 01 of 04

Account plans are built around what we sell, not around what the customer is trying to achieve. If the account manager cannot articulate the customer's strategy in the customer's own language — not in terms of what we sell — the account plan is built on assumption. We are a solution looking for a problem we haven't verified exists.

If the account manager pauses, or reaches for the deck, or describes our product's features rather than the customer's goals, the account is not strategically managed. It is commercially maintained. Those are different things. One expands. The other erodes.

Executive relationships are frequently described in terms of access rather than substance. Attending the QBR is not a relationship. Being on a distribution list is not engagement. A senior stakeholder who has heard our presentation is not an ally. The question distinguishes access from influence.

If the last substantive conversation was more than 90 days ago, or if "substantive" means "they attended the QBR," the executive relationship is nominal. Nominal executive relationships do not survive budget cuts, leadership changes, or competitive challenges.

Every purchase is a bet. The customer bet that buying us would solve something. If the account manager cannot articulate what that bet was and produce evidence that the bet paid off, the customer has no reason to expand and a reason to question renewal. The original problem is the foundation of the value case.

Accounts that cannot point to a solved problem are at risk at every renewal. If the account manager cannot answer this with data, the account is running on relationship inertia — which is not a renewal strategy. It is a countdown.

Utilisation is a fact. It is not an opinion, a relationship, or a feeling. Low utilisation is the most reliable leading indicator of churn. A customer who is not using what they bought has not adopted what they bought. Unadopted products get cancelled at renewal and do not get expanded before it.

If the utilisation figure is below 60% and the account is marked as healthy, someone is confusing payment with adoption. Payment is a lagging indicator. Utilisation is a leading one. The account plan should be built on the leading indicator.

Accounts change. Leadership changes. Strategy changes. Budgets change. Priorities change. The account plan that was built 12 months ago was built for a customer that no longer exists. This question surfaces whether the account manager has been tracking change or assuming continuity.

An account manager who cannot name three meaningful things that have changed in the customer's business in the last six months is not paying attention to the customer. They are paying attention to the account plan. Those are different documents. One is useful.

Competitive presence in an existing account is underreported because acknowledging it is uncomfortable. It means the account is not secured. It means the relationship has limits. Most account managers assume that a customer who is happy with them is not talking to competitors. This assumption is almost always wrong.

The question surfaces whether the account manager is tracking the competitive landscape or assuming it is static. A customer who is actively evaluating alternatives will not announce it. They will simply not expand, and then not renew. The account manager who notices this at renewal noticed it too late.

Unresolved commercial issues fester. A customer who has an open dispute about billing, scope, or SLA performance is not in a position to expand. They are in a position to not renew. Account managers who allow commercial issues to sit unresolved are not managing the account. They are avoiding the conversation.

If there are open issues and they have not been escalated, the account manager does not trust the escalation process or does not want to flag the problem. Either way, the account is not healthy. The plan that shows it as healthy is not honest.

Absolute spend is a vanity metric. An account that spends $500k with us and grows to $550k looks healthy in the plan. An account that spends $500k with us but $3M in our category, and grew the total category spend to $4M while we stayed flat, is losing share. The plan does not show this.

Share of wallet is a more honest measure of account health than absolute spend. If the account manager cannot estimate the customer's total category spend, they do not have the intelligence required to build a credible whitespace analysis. Whitespace built on unknown total spend is fiction with a spreadsheet behind it.

Account managers who cannot answer this question have not asked it. The customer's likely churn reason is usually knowable. There are signals: support tickets, utilisation drops, executive disengagement, competitive activity, commercial disputes. The account manager who has not synthesised these signals has not looked for them.

If the account manager has a credible answer and is actively addressing it, the account is being managed. If the answer is "I don't think we're at risk" without evidence, the account manager has confused absence of a churn conversation with absence of churn risk. Those are not the same thing.

A real internal champion advocates without prompting. They mention us in internal meetings we are not in. They push back against competitors on our behalf. They share our content with colleagues we have never met. They are not champions because they are on the account team's contact list. They are champions because they have acted.

If the account manager cannot name a specific person and point to a specific unsolicited act of advocacy, the account does not have a champion. It has contacts who are pleasant in meetings. Contacts do not defend accounts at renewal. Champions do. The difference between them is the difference between a strategic account and a vulnerable one.