Help/Recipes/Account manager or sales
Account brief before a customer call
- For
- An account manager, customer success lead, or salesperson
- When
- The hour before a customer or prospect call
- Takes
- A couple of minutes of agent time
- You get
- An internal brief: where they are, what is new, what they will need next, open issues, and what to raise
Brief me before my call with <account>. Save it to <cell>, internal. 1. Gather from onecell: their cell or hive (activity and dates, not their private details), earlier call notes and briefs, open tickets and known issues, decisions that affect them, and anything in our plans that names them. Cite each source. 2. Draft "Account brief: <account>, <date>" (dry run first): - a stats block: the few numbers that show how they use us - where they are, in a short paragraph - what they will need next, and why - open issues, as a checklist - what to raise on the call: three points at most - one proposed decision if something needs our call 3. Reply with the link and the one thing I must not forget to ask.
What your agent does
Reads the account's activity
What they have been doing in onecell, as counts and dates, plus call notes, tickets and plans that mention them.Reads ahead
Connects what they are building to what they will need from you next.Lists what is open
Known issues and friction, so nothing surprises you on the call.Gives you three points
What to raise, and the one question not to forget.
What you get back
Open the full example →A brief before a renewal call with Northwind Studio, a made-up customer of a made-up invoicing app. It puts a recent incident on the list, so it is raised before the customer does.
Sample account brief: Northwind Studio before the renewal call
- Seats
- 14
- Good: +3 since spring
- Invoices a month
- about 220
- Average days to paid
- 18
- Good: −6
- Renews
- 1 Sept
How they use Tally
A design studio with clients across Europe. They invoice per project milestone, mostly in euros, and lean on reminders. Their finance lead, Ana, asked for part payments in June; it shipped last week.
Open issues
- Some of their clients got a reminder twice on 14 August (our incident). We apologised the same day.
- They want notifications for only some team members. Not built yet.
Raise on the call
Part payments are live
The feature Ana asked for. Offer to walk her through it.
Own the reminder incident
Say what happened and what changed, in two sentences.
Annual plan
At 14 seats, annual billing saves them about £400 a year.
Variations
After the call
Paste your notes and ask: “Add what they said to the brief, record anything agreed as decisions, and draft the follow-up email.” Next time, the brief starts from here.
A prospect, not a customer
Replace their activity with what you know: earlier conversations, the competitor they use (see the Competitive one-pager recipe), and which of your customers looks like them.
A quarterly review
Set the period to the quarter and add: “Compare with the last review, and list what we promised and whether we delivered.”
Tips
- Keep one cell per account and briefs in it, so each brief builds on the last.
- Record activity, not the customer's private work. The brief is about the relationship.
- Three points to raise. More than that and none of them land.