A global industrial services company with strategic accounts, PowerPoint-based account plans going out of date on arrival, and a reactive-transactional sales motion. Aggreko integrated its own SAMA 7-step methodology into ARPEDIO — making account planning something the whole organization could see.
Aggreko had strategic accounts and a reactive, transactional sales motion. Account plans lived in PowerPoint and went out of date on arrival. Goals didn't link to execution. There was no structured approach to how strategic accounts should be planned, assessed, or renewed.
Aggreko integrated its own SAMA 7-step methodology into ARPEDIO — inside Salesforce, without reshaping the process. Account plans digitized. Visibility into account health became org-wide. Strategic account managers adopted the discipline first; sales reps followed.
Aggreko is in the business of keeping customers running. Industrial power, temperature control, emergency response — the infrastructure customers rent when their own can't carry the load. For a customer base at that scale, strategic account relationships are how the commercial model compounds. But the strategic account practice inside Aggreko had a familiar problem.
Account plans lived in PowerPoint. By the time a plan was shared in a strategic session, the version on one laptop was two iterations behind the version on another. Goals named in the plan didn't show up anywhere in Salesforce. Execution didn't link to the strategy. The sales team defaulted to the motion the system supported: reactive, transactional, deal-by-deal.
What strategic account leadership wanted — a repeatable discipline their SAMs could work through, without bending Aggreko's proven methodology to someone else's software — wasn't available in the tools they already owned.
ARPEDIO let Aggreko keep the methodology. The SAMA 7-step framework Aggreko had built its strategic account motion on — refined over years, tuned to the specifics of how Aggreko sold — integrated into ARPEDIO without needing to be rewritten. Account plans digitized. The SWOT, the goals, the stakeholders, the white space — all lived in Salesforce now, alongside the opportunities and the contacts.
Strategic account managers got a practice they could work. Sales leaders got insight into account health they couldn't see before — accounts scored, relationships mapped, execution linked to the plan. The adoption curve was honest: SAMs — the roles built for methodology-driven work — took to it first. Reps followed more slowly, as the system's signal about what a well-run account actually looked like became visible.
"To me, the one thing that stood out with ARPEDIO was that we could put our own methodology into the tool, and we didn't have to change anything."
"We were one of those companies that used PowerPoint for account plans."
The choice for Aggreko wasn't about methodology — that part was settled. SAMA 7-step was the framework the strategic accounts team wanted to run. The choice was whether the tool would preserve the methodology or compromise it.
ARPEDIO preserved it. The platform became a way to execute the framework, not a replacement for it. Account planning moved out of PowerPoint and into the system of record — same methodology, now with the transparency and signal the organization needed to coach on it.
A recorded 5–7 minute walkthrough of Account Planning & White Space — no form to fill in.