Summary
Topics like “territory planning” and “carving accounts” receive considerable attention this time of year in the context of preparing for next year’s sales execution. Even ChatGPT “thinks” it’s a foundational “truth.” Let’s step back and ask some objective questions about the connectivity between strategic planning and the support work intended to help sales reps.
Territory management is an ongoing process, not a part of strategic planning.
Topics like “territory planning” and “carving accounts” receive considerable attention this time of year in the context of preparing for next year’s sales execution. Even ChatGPT “thinks” it’s a foundational “truth.” Let’s step back and ask some objective questions about the connectivity between strategic planning and the support work intended to help sales reps.
Instinctively, every company performs ongoing territory management.
If 20% of sales reps resigned immediately from a company, would we wait until the end of the year to reassign the opportunities or prospects for which they were responsible? I hope not. Would we ask a new sales rep hired in October to sit around without prospect- or opportunity-level responsibility until the “sales kickoff” four months from now? Obviously not.
It is a foundational necessity to assign and reassign work to individuals, and the same applies to sales reps and their responsibilities. Sales work assignment spans lead generation and pipeline management processes, along with other levers like effective organization design, hiring, performance, and compensation management of sales representatives. This sales work assignment is as much business as usual as assigning individuals to different stations on an assembly line.
