What you'll get
- 1 copy-ready blocks
- 3 min read
- Paste the account fact sheet below this
How to use it
before an account earns a place on this week's research list, give the assistant everything you know about it and make it argue the case against: the three strongest reasons this company will not buy from you this year.
The hack: before an account earns a place on this week's research list, give the assistant everything you know about it and make it argue the case against: the three strongest reasons this company will not buy from you this year.
Why argue against your own list
The accounts that waste the most time are not the ones that say no. They are the ones you work for a quarter because the case for them was never tested. A scorecard catches the obvious misfits at list level. The pre-mortem catches the plausible ones: right industry, right size, a warm name in the notes, and one quiet fact that means no deal can happen this year. Hearing that fact from a prompt costs a minute. Hearing it from the buyer costs the quarter.
The prompt
Paste the account fact sheet below this
Here is everything we know about [account], followed by one line on what we
sell. Argue against pursuing this account. Give the three strongest reasons it
will not buy from us in the next year, each grounded in something in the notes
rather than a generic risk. For each reason, say what evidence would weaken it.
Finish with the one missing fact that would most change the case. Do not
balance the argument and do not suggest outreach ideas.The fact sheet is whatever you hold: the scorecard row, call notes, lines from their site or annual report. If you keep one project per account, paste from there.
The pursue or park rule
Try to counter each reason in one sentence, from what you know. A reason you can counter is noise. A reason you cannot counter is this week's research task: find the missing fact before anyone writes a message. If two of the three reasons survive and the missing fact cannot be found from outside, park the account with a review date and give the hours to the next name. The output is never a dropped account. It is pursue with open eyes, or park with a date.
Three mistakes to avoid
- Running it on the whole list. This is a check for the accounts about to get research hours, usually Tier 1. At list level the target account selection scorecard does the sorting; a pre-mortem on 300 names is 300 paragraphs nobody reads.
- Treating the argument as truth. The assistant argues from your notes, and thin notes make weak arguments in both directions. The most useful line in the output is often the missing fact, not the three reasons.
- Letting it kill the hard accounts. The largest accounts always carry real reasons against: an incumbent, a committee, a budget cycle. Those are not grounds to walk away from a named account. They are the objections to know before the buyer says them.
Make it a habit: run the pre-mortem on Monday, when the week's accounts are picked, one account per run. The accounts that survive it get the research block with a clearer brief, and the ones that do not stop costing you quarters.
Why this works on named accounts
Read next
Related articleTarget Account List Template: How Many Accounts and How to Pick ThemRead →More from the Academy
Target Account Selection Scorecard
For founders and sales leaders who have an ICP on a slide and need a ranked list of named accounts.
You leave with a one-page ICP, an 11-point weighted scorecard and three tiers.
One Project per Account: The AI Fact Sheet
For sellers who paste the same account background into a new AI chat every time.
You leave with a fact sheet template, a set of standing instructions and a five-minute weekly update routine.
Want this in your inbox?
Optional. We use your email only to send you this, nothing else.