Monarch - Account Growth – How to Score an Account with Account Pulse

Account Pulse uses multiple aspects of an Account (Billing, Activities, Pending, Pacing, and External News sources) to classify a piece of business into one of the following buckets. It is important to note that not all accounts tick all the boxes exactly in any given category and this is a generic “likely” account in any given classification.  An Account could be amazing with explosive growth giving it a 7 but if the salesperson isn’t also keeping up with activities and forecasting then that will drag the score down a bit to help ensure attention and advance warning is given to trends and behaviours that are not optimal.

The following scores are general descriptions of what your typical account may look like within each Account Pulse scoring bracket. There may be outliers, accounts transitioning into a higher or lower stage, or erroneously scored. 

7 => "High Value" – A High Value Account is generally one that a salesperson has regular contact with, is experiencing tremendous growth in ad spending revenue, can be accurately forecasted, and external news sources have positive sentiment.

6 => "Strategic Growth" - a Strategic Growth Account is generally one that a salesperson has regular contact with, is experiencing growth in ad spending revenue or shows signs of growth due to high activity and forecasted values, can be forecasted accurately with little issue, and external news sources have positive sentiment.

5 => "Emerging Potential" - an Emerging Potential Account is generally one that a salesperson has regular contact with, is projected to experience growth in ad spending revenue in the near future, and external new sources are relatively positive.

4 => "Stable/Foundation" - A Stable/Foundation Account is generally one that is neither significantly growing nor shrinking in ad spending revenue, is not forgotten when holding quarterly check ins, and has news sources that may range from neutral to positive. They can be reliably forecasted due to their consistent nature.

This is considered the neutral classification and should NOT be considered a poor score – we anticipate most Accounts eventually making their way to Stable/Foundation and not continuously growing or shrinking.

3 => "At Risk / Churn" - An At Risk / Churn Account is generally one that is shrinking in ad revenue spent or projected to spend less than previous time periods, may or may not have regular meetings and calls to check in and plan, and may have external news sources that are negative or positive. 

2 => "Low Value Maintenance" - A Low Value Maintenance Account is generally one that has consistently spent less and less over time and shows signs of stopping 

spending altogether if not addressed. Activities may not be happening on a regular basis if the spending is low enough to not warrant regular interaction. External news sources may be negative or positive.

1 => "Net-Negative" - a Net-Negative Account is generally one that has stopped buying.

Each part of the Account that is considered (such as Activities, or Billing) is scored and weighted individually. If all data is present for scoring then the distribution looks like this: 

• Billing, 25%
• Pacing vs LY Pace, 25%
• Activity, 20%
• Pending, 20%
• External Evidence, 10%

Each individual consideration is scored from 1-7 based on criteria (see below) and then multiplied by its weight. Once all calculations have been made, the scores are summed together to arrive at a final score. 

It is possible that sometimes a criteria such as external evidence (news) is absent. Not every account is in the news regularly. When this happens, and Account Pulse finds one of the criteria is missing we will redistribute the weighting. Here is an example redistribution if News were missing.

• Billing, 25%
• Pacing vs LY Pace, 25%
• Activity, 25%
• Pending, 25%

Sample Scoring

Let’s imagine the following scoring happened for an account that has all 5 core pieces of information for scoring. Each section is scored individually, weighted, and then summed to arrive at the overall score based on the following criteria:

The following breakdown is how the final classification is calculated

• ≥ 6.01    High Value
• ≥ 5.01    Strategic Growth
• ≥ 4.01    Emerging Potential
• ≥ 3.01    Stable/Foundation
• ≥ 2.01    At Risk / Churn
• ≥ 1.01    Low Value Maintenance
• < 1.01    Net-Negative

Calculating Individual Scoring Metrics

Billing

We compare YoY Forecast (including Pitched projects) to last year billing to determine a raw growth metric for the Category of Business that the account is in. 

For example, if I am in the “Medical Devices” category, and I can see that the account is up 33% in 2026 over 2025, while the category of Medical Devices is only up 13% then I am outperforming the industry. This reflects positively on your score.

• >= 15% → 7
• >= 10% → 6
• >= 5% → 5
• >= 0% → 4
• >= -9% → 3
• >= -14% → 2
• < -14% → 1

In our example we are at 20% which coincides with a score of “7”.  If I were only up 2% while the industry was up 13% then that would be -11% from the industry and coincide with a score of “2” even though I have 2% growth it is not as high as the industry is performing and indicates potential shakiness with this account.

Pacing vs LY Pace

With pacing we are looking at how close you are to last year’s dollar amount for the same date. For example if today is May 14, 2026, we look at May 14, 2025 (and if that date isn’t available for some reason we find the closest date to it) and then determine how your current billing for the next 12mo compares to the pacing last year for the next 12mo. 

For example, if LY Pace = 1,000,000 and TY Billing = 1,200,000 then you are pacing ahead 20%, which equates to a score of “7” in the pacing.  If you have LY Pace = 1,000,000 and TY Billing = 950,000 then you are pacing behind 5% which equates to a score of “3” in the pacing.

Pacing Scoring is percentage based 

• 15% or higher  scores “7”
• 10.00% to 14.99% scores “6”
• 5.00% to 9.99% scores “5”
• 0.00% to 4.99% scores “4”
• -0.01% to -9.00% scores “3”
• -9.01% to -14.00% scores “2”
• - 14.01% or lower scores “1”

Activities

First we look for Activities to exist in the future and the past. An Account that is in the top 80% of revenue is expected to have an activity in the next 30 days and last 30 days. An account in the bottom 20% of revenue is expected to have an activity in the next 90 days and last 90 days.

Additionally, the method of the activity you have adds to the quality too.

Let’s take an example that I have a Past meeting within time and a future email within time and walk through how we arrive at a normalized “7” score.

The calculation would look like this…

• PastScore = 1.0
• FutureScore = 0.5
• TotalScore = 1.5
• NormalizedScore = (1.5 / 2) * 7 = 5.25

Given Activities are 20% of a full score when News exists, we then get the contribution score  5.25 * .2 = 1.05 toward the overall Account Pulse Score

Pending

When considering Pending, we look at 2 factors. The first is if the pending exists (60%) where it is expected. This means if we had pending for May, June and July by the 9th of April last year, then we should have pending for May, June, and July this year by the 9th of April. If I run my Account Pulse Score on April 10th and there is no pending for May, June, and July then the pending score decreases as a result indicating slight lack of confidence in this account.  If I have booked dollars for that time frame instead of Pending, then that is a slight increase in confidence the account as booked dollars are better than pending dollars.

The 2nd is how accurate has pending historically been when compared to the booked amount (40%). To generate the deal pacing accuracy we filter the deals from the past 12 months and get the amount before it became $0 (indicating a reconciled deal generally) then compare and sum the amount for all deals to the sum of billing amount for the past 12 months and calculate how far off the percentage is from 100%. For example:

• 5% -> 7, example: 95-105%
• 10% -> 6, example: 90-95% or 105-110%
• 15% -> 5, example: 85-90% or 110-115%
• 20% -> 4, example: 80-85% or 115-120%
• 25% -> 3, example: 75-80% or 120-125%
• 30% -> 2, example: 70-75% or 125-130%
• 35% -> 1, example: 65-70% or 130-135%

So if I had a deal that was worth $10,000 and I imported $9600, that is a 4% difference and my score would be 7 since it is within the 96% accurate. If my imported amount was $7,900 that is a 21% difference and my score with be a 3 since that is 79% accurate. If my imported amount were $13,300 that is a 133% accurate and my score would be a 2 – even though I imported well over the expected amount an accuracy this far off indicates the salesperson may not understand the account as well as they should and could cause the relationship to suffer in the long run. Staying as close to 100% accurate is critical for a predictable, stable relationship with a business.

Combining the Deal Pacing and the Accuracy information to calculate the Pending score would look like this where I score a Pipeline = 7 and Pacing = 2:

Pipeline = 7 * .6 = 4.2

Pacing = 2 * .4 = .8

4.2 + .8 = 5.0 

My Pending score = 5, and pending is 20% of a score so the Pending contribution is 5 * .2 = 1

That score of “1” is added to the scores from Billing, Pacing, Activities, and External Evidence to arrive at a final Account Pulse Score. 

External Evidence (News)

External Evidence (News) is the only source for Account Pulse that will not negatively impact you if it does not exist. We recognize that not all companies will have a large, public presence now matter how amazing they are with you as a client. However, if Evidence is found it will be used.

External Evidence can be anything found outside of Monarch. Today that is just news. News has a 10% weight on impacting your score. When not present we distribute 5% back to each of the Activities and Pending sections increasing their weight to 25% from 20%.

Only Bing is used as a news source, and only articles from the last 90 days excluding blogs, Wikipedia, social media, and forums.  Scoring is entirely AI sentiment analysis and looks in the article title, body, and tangential relevance to determine a weight applied to the article. The following will display on articles returned: 

• 0: Extremely negative (sentiment 0.00-0.07)
• 1: Very negative (sentiment 0.08-0.21)
• 2: Negative (sentiment 0.22-0.35)
• 3: Slightly negative (sentiment 0.36-0.49)
• 4: Neutral/Slightly positive (sentiment 0.50-0.64)
• 5: Positive (sentiment 0.65-0.78)
• 6: Very positive (sentiment 0.79-0.92)
• 7: Extremely positive (sentiment 0.93-1.00)

Here are some example words that correspond to positive and negative impacts on sentiment for AI:

• Positive - record, growth, success, profit, innovation, partnership, expansion, award
• Negative - lawsuit, decline, loss, scandal, layoffs, bankruptcy, violation, fine

The final score from External Evidence is added to the score from Billing, Pending, Activities, and Pacing to arrive at a final Account Pulse Score. z