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Six Greatest Ideas for Building Creative Plans • 135

Get agreement to the allocation of the resources to implement the plan
Most account plans require resources not in the direct control of the account team.
A decision box occurs therefore when management decide on the merits of the
various plans being put forward and allocate their resources.

Try to see this as a contract. The account team is saying to management 'I will
give you these results [objectives] if you will give me these resources.' If manage-
ment say 'yes'> either immediately or as the budgeting cycle grinds on, the team
implements the plan.

If management say no, the team adjusts its goals and resubmits because, of
course, no planning process is complete until the resources have been allocated to
its implementation.

Be careful. Management can often from their wider experience offer short cuts
towards account teams' objectives and therefore legitimately reduce the amount of
resource required to achieve the result.

However, in an immature planning cycle, management, particularly sales man-
agement, have a habit of liking the sound of the result, but not allocating the re-
source in full.

At worst this leads to teams second-guessing the likelihood of their getting re-
sources when they are setting goals, and completely constrains the creativity of the
plan.

For their part, account teams must recognise that while management can get
any resource required to achieve a well-constructed business plan, it requires more
than a week's notice. The plans must signal in detail this year's resource require-
ment and broadly the requirement of the subsequent two years, particularly if spe-
cial or unusual resources are going to be required.

Idea 86 - Get the team to toe the line

Any planning team needs to obey some ground rules concerned with the efficiency