Unlocking the full potential of Salesforce account hierarchies can mean the difference between a clear, cohesive view of your key accounts and a scattered, disjointed one.
When you have scattered account data in your CRM, it’s easy to lose sight of essential connections and valuable opportunities.
Between duplicate records, frequent mergers and acquisitions, and outdated or incorrect data, keeping track of your most important accounts can feel impossible.
Without a clear view of these connections, your team misses critical insights and the opportunity to strengthen relationships with key accounts.
But building account hierarchies in Salesforce can help you bridge your disconnected data and bring clarity to complex account relationships, making it easier for your team to identify key connections and deliver more strategic engagements.
In the following sections, we’ll dive into what is a Salesforce account hierarchy, how these hierarchies can transform your sales strategy, and why having a well-structured account hierarchy is essential for driving meaningful results.
What is an Account Hierarchy?
An account hierarchy in Salesforce is a structured way to organize and view related accounts, showing how a larger company and its branches or subsidiaries connect.
Think of it as a family tree, with the parent company at the top and all its related entities — like locations, divisions, or brands — branching below in an organized, cohesive view.
Salesforce account hierarchies provide a complete view of a company’s organizational structure, showing how each related entity connects back to the parent account. This structure allows your team to easily identify corporate and legal linkages, locate key contacts within each division, and access essential information — such as ongoing opportunities and past interactions — all in one place.
Why Should You Use an Account Hierarchy in Salesforce?
Managing large, multi-layered organizations is overwhelming.
As parent companies acquire subsidiaries, and those subsidiaries absorb additional accounts, the web of connections quickly becomes complex.
Without a clear structure, simple questions like “Which rep owns this account?” or “How much are we selling across a company’s divisions?” become time-consuming puzzles instead of quick answers.
In addition to these challenges, have you ever asked yourself questions like these?
- Which accounts belong to the same corporate entity?
- How much business is my company doing with specific accounts — or across accounts that share the same family tree?
- How many sales reps are assigned to accounts within the same hierarchy? Are there any overlaps in assignments?
- Could we manage these assignments more effectively?
If any of these questions sound familiar, an account hierarchy can provide clarity and structure.
Account hierarchies also offer valuable insights that help drive revenue and strategy, such as:
- Are our sales territories balanced, and if not, how can we improve coverage?
- Who are our largest customers by size, revenue, or products sold?
- Are there cross-sell and up-sell opportunities we haven’t tapped into yet?
- Do whitespace opportunities exist within our target accounts?
- What’s the best way to allocate our sales and marketing resources for maximum impact?
Pro Tip: Use Account Hierarchies to Automate Territory Reassignment and Mass Update Salesforce Records
Save time on territory management by using hierarchies to automate reassignment and mass update records across your Salesforce account hierarchy.
With just a few clicks, you can reassign territories and update multiple records at once, ensuring your data stays organized and up-to-date as your accounts grow.
READ: How to Mass Update Records in Salesforce and Automate Territory Reassignment
How Account Hierarchies Help You Drive Revenue
Salesforce account hierarchies cut through the above complexity by providing a clear, organized view of all related accounts.
By creating an organized account hierarchy, Salesforce users can easily trace each account’s connection back to the parent company and gain clarity on ownership, revenue contributions, and relationship history.
Here’s how:
- Clarifies account ownership. Account hierarchies let you quickly see which reps are responsible for each brand or division of a company. This makes it easy to avoid account and opportunity overlaps, assign resources effectively, and ensure each account has dedicated attention.
- Defines account value. Salesforce account hierarchies let you track total business with a company, from its main office to individual locations. This means you can assess how much revenue each branch generates, prioritize the most valuable accounts, and adjust your go-to-market (GTM) strategy based on a clear, consolidated view of all related accounts.
- Align sales and marketing efforts. By organizing accounts in a hierarchy, you can quickly identify where you might need extra resources. It also helps you balance territories, making sure each account gets the right level of attention while maximizing your team’s impact.
- Identify new growth opportunities. Account hierarchies reveal untapped accounts as well as upselling and cross-selling opportunities within a corporate family. Leveraging this information can help your team expand existing relationships and discover new business, all within the same connected organization.
Pro Tip: Unlock Revenue Potential with Account Hierarchies
Want to get the most out of your Salesforce account hierarchy? From uncovering upsell opportunities to balancing territories, hierarchies offer a powerful way to drive revenue growth across your key accounts.
READ: Top 3 Ways to Use an Account Hierarchy In Salesforce to Supercharge Revenue
Ready to get a clear picture of your largest accounts in Salesforce and uncover insights that fuel growth?
Complete Hierarchies is the first and only no-code solution that automatically builds and visualizes account hierarchies natively in Salesforce.
Available on the Salesforce AppExchange, Complete Hierarchies gives RevOps and sales teams complete visibility into complex account structures, empowering them to make smarter decisions, optimize GTM strategies, and automate account management at scale.
With features like drag-and-drop hierarchy building, customizable hierarchies to match your GTM approach, and integrated roll-up reporting, Complete Hierarchies enhances your team’s ability to track performance, identify whitespace opportunities, and strengthen account relationships across the organization.
Ready to transform your account management? Book a demo and see how Complete Hierarchies can unlock smarter selling, streamlined workflows, and better sales outcomes.
