Account Validation Rules

At several organizations I have been at, we had situations where Sales Reps would steal other Sales Reps accounts by reassigning them to themselves.  The tricky part of this is that in a larger organization, there can be instances where the Account should be reassigned or Reps work out a "trade" between each other regarding the account.

One way I deal with this is by creating a Validation Rule on the Account level that allows the Account Owner to be the only person able to change the Ownership of the Account.

Here's the Error Message first so it's easy to understand the definition of the rule:
"Only the Account Owner can change the Account Owner."

​Here's the formula:
ISCHANGED( OwnerId )
&&
PRIORVALUE( OwnerId ) <> $User.Id
&&
$Profile.Name = 'Sales Standard User'
End Formula

The above includes the edition of a profile name but you can write other options as part of this formula.  This simple validation rule has helped to reduce tracking ownership history and emails / messages to the team to change the account owner.  When asked to change the account, I typically just default to "Ask the Account Owner to switch it to you."  It gives autonomy to the Account Owners to manage their business and accounts.