Introduction
Fullcast’s standard export integrates its territory assignment data directly with the Salesforce account team object. Many companies choose to use this data to assign ownership of accounts to the appropriate person on the account team as account owner, but that is not always necessary. This article outlines best practices for leveraging the account team to align internal Salesforce processes (like reporting, automation, and access management) over potentially redundant updates to the account owner field.
Prerequisites
A configured Fullcast tenant connected to your Salesforce instance.
Familiarity with Salesforce Account, account team, and account owner concepts.
Salesforce account teams enabled and configured in your Salesforce org.
The Fullcast Recommendation: Leverage account teams
While historically many organizations mapped roles like the Account Executive directly to the account owner field due to established processes or previous Salesforce limitations, Fullcast suggests considering the benefits of using the Salesforce account team object directly.
Benefits of account teams with Fullcast:
Reduced implementation effort: If using Salesforce account teams for Fullcast data instead of updating account owner, it removes the need to build new flows to leverage updates made by Fullcast.
Enhanced visibility: account teams inherently support a team-selling approach. By assigning multiple users with specific team roles (e.g., Account Executive, SDR, Customer Success Manager, Sales Engineer) via Fullcast, you create a clear view of everyone involved with the account directly on the record.
Improved coverage & reduced risk: Distributing responsibilities across a team ensures comprehensive account coverage. It reduces the risk associated with a single account owner being unavailable (e.g., PTO, departure), ensuring business continuity and consistent customer engagement.
Automatic, granular access: account teams simplify sharing by automatically granting team members configurable access to assigned accounts and related objects based on the role assigned in Fullcast.
More insightful reporting: Move beyond basic owner-based reports. Reporting on account team members and using joined reports allows you to analyze team performance, role-specific contributions, territory coverage effectiveness, and account engagement across different functions.
Reduced disruption: Adding or modifying account team members is generally less disruptive to existing Salesforce automation and workflows compared to changing the account owner, which can sometimes have cascading effects.
Key considerations for implementation
Adopting an account team-centric approach requires some planning:
Define clear roles: Ensure your team roles in Salesforce accurately reflect the roles defined in your Fullcast coverage models. Clearly defined roles are crucial for accountability and reporting.
Establish Accountability: While the team shares responsibility, you might still designate a primary point of contact within the team (e.g., using a specific team role like "Primary Account Manager" or a custom field) if required by your processes.
Review Existing Configurations: Analyze how adopting account teams impacts existing reports, dashboards, list views, workflow rules, flows, and Apex triggers currently based on the account owner field. Plan necessary adjustments. Migrating complex automation logic from an owner-centric model requires careful testing.
Develop Reporting Strategy: Plan how you will leverage account team member data. Consider creating custom report types in Salesforce to analyze team assignments, role distribution, and activity by role.
Manage transitions (survivorship): Define processes for how account teams are updated when employees change roles, take leave, or leave the company. Fullcast's ongoing territory assignments will manage standard updates, but internal processes are needed for exceptions.
Understand access implications: Be aware that adding users to an account team grants them record access based on the defined team role access levels and your organization's sharing defaults. Ensure this aligns with your security policies.
Conclusion
By leveraging Salesforce account teams as the destination for Fullcast territory assignments, organizations can create a more collaborative, resilient, and insightful account management framework. This approach aligns better with modern team-selling motions and provides a richer dataset for reporting and analysis compared to relying solely on the single account owner field.