How to use Claude AI for account planning
Generative AI is an increasingly powerful tool for sales teams as they plan their account strategy, but most teams I come across are not harnessing the power available to them.
In this post I’ll walk you through some examples of how you can use Claude’s Project feature to improve your seller’s capabilities.
Ask a silly question, get a silly answer
Imagine you run into a friend on the street.
“How you doing?” you ask
What do you bet the answer is?
“Good/fine/OK” 99 times out of a 100.
The question has no context, and therefore the answer provides little in return.
Consider another question,
“Great to see you, I was just thinking about you the other day - you went to that Taylor Swift concert didn’t you. How was it?”
The question has context and is very likely to open up a much longer response with plenty of detail.
Consider this when engaging with AI tools like Claude and ChatGPT.
The more context you provide in the prompts, the better the answer you will receive.
Let me show you how.
What are Claude Projects
Projects are a feature in Claude’s AI that allow you to upload documents as context, and to keep similar chats related to a subject together. In a team licence they allow individuals to come and engage in chats around a similar subject.
In this example I have created a project for bp and I have uploaded their most recent investor deck, and the transcript and slides for their most recent quarterly earnings.
When I engage with Claude within this project Claude will use the documents I have uploaded as background knowledge in addition to its wider training.
Describing the organisational structure
One of the first tasks I might have as an Account Executive picking up an account like bp for the first time would be to understand how such a complex organisation is structured.
Here’s my prompt:
Best practice: break up complex requests into step by step instructions. This helps the AI to follow each request in order so that the later responses build on the earlier ones.
Note the use of the word “artifact”. An artifact in Claude is a document or asset that Claude creates. These can be web pages, apps or documents.
Here is what Claude created for me after my prompt:
Now I want Claude to go a level deeper and show me what makes up each of the three core business units.
Claude uses the same documents added to the project and creates another artifact:
Best practice: you should verify everything that comes out of an AI model before treating it as fact. AI models are eager to please and will sometimes see connections where there are none. In this instance I’d be looking through the investor deck to validate what I’m seeing.
Finding potential opportunities
Having got an understanding of how the company is structured I might now want to think through how the product I am selling might be able to help this account.
Let’s assume I work in the Service Cloud team at Salesforce.com.
Best practice: when asking a complex multi-step task ask the AI if it has any concerns or questions before it starts. In this example Claude raises a very valid question about the usage of Service Cloud functionality:
Treat AI like a human on your team
You are seeing how I engage with the AI platforms - I humanise them and imagine they are a member of my extended team - perhaps an SDR that I am coaching, or a demand gen colleague from marketing.
If I was asking them for help, I would provide a lot of context and step by step guidance into what I was hoping to achieve. The more context the better the response.
In this example, one of the use cases that Claude came up with was for customer support related to their rapidly expanding electric vehicle charging network.
In 2022 they had 22,000 charging points, but 2023 that was 29,000.
Claude highlights that the EV charging network is one of bp’s five “transition growth engines” as it transforms from an international oil company to an integrated energy company.
Identifying the senior executive responsible
Let’s assume the EV charging idea is the approach I want to take into this account.
As an AE I’d then be wanting to uncover where this sits in their org structure and who the responsible executive would be:
The response is an example of the power of AI to scour masses of documentation and pull out what you are looking for:
AI is fantastic at inferring - based on Emma answering specific questions on an investor call Claude suggests she is likely responsible.
When we check LinkedIn we see that she is indeed the EVP in charge of customers and products within which the EV charging network sits.
Developing creative outreach ideas
We know that getting in front of new prospects is increasingly difficult. Their inboxes are spammed with hundreds of generic SDR messages per day and it is hard to stand out.
So let’s ask Claude for some ideas:
And here you can see Claude's thought process as the AI follows my step by step instructions.
Best practice: don’t just take what Claude suggests and use as is - instead consider it as inspiration that drives your own creativity.
I personally love the ideas of a miniature EV charging station model in bp colours. I can imagine that if one of those was delivered to Emma’s desk it would stand out and demonstrate that you’d invested time in thinking about your approach.
Of course you’d need to then consider how do you actually get that made and what might it cost - but if you are looking at creating deals of >$1m these are the investments you might make.
Just for a bit of fun, I had Dall-E imagine some examples of the model!
bp desktop charging station
AI gets your creative juices flowing and helps you stand out from everyone else sending generic emails.
Claude projects accelerate your team’s thinking
Through this example you’ve seen me learn about the org structure for an account, I’ve then explored different usecases that are tied to the company’s strategic priorities.
We’ve then uncovered who the senior executive for that program is, and designed some unique gifts to use in your outreach.
I hope this inspires you to see how quickly your team can work, and how creative they can now be in considering their approach to strategic accounts - especially for those accounts they are not so familiar with.
If you want to watch a video with me talking through this process, you can do that here:
Want help?
If you’d like help guiding your sellers through a process like this then get in touch.