Building an AE territory plan
In this week’s newsletter I’m going to walk you through how I build a territory plan.
A good territory plan will help focus your activities and give you the best chance of significantly exceeding your target.
A territory plan will be different depending on whether you are selling high volume deals into SMB customers, or large strategic deals into one or two enterprise customers,
so for the avoidance of doubt - I’m going to walk you through how to build out an SMB territory plan to help you as a first time seller.
Why a territory plan?
80% of your bookings will come from 20% of your accounts.
Whether you have ten accounts in your territory, or a thousand.
And the goal of your territory plan is to isolate those 20% now, so that you can focus your attention on them.
The plan is not the document
It is your thinking about how you will approach your territory.
The plan is not the document. It is not the slide deck.
The plan is what you think and how you will approach your work.
The plan is created in your mind. In the shower, on a walk, on a whiteboard.
These are the five steps I follow to develop my thinking.
Step 1 - Understand your territory’s Ideal Customer Profile (ICP)
Your best chance of securing a deal is sell to a business who best fits the profile of a customer of your solutions.
If you sell HR software to banks - then looking for companies that are banks is going to be a high priority.
Your company should have a good breakdown of what your company’s ICP is.
But I go one step further - I think about my territory’s ICP.
If I am focused on a specific state, or company size, or industry, or module - then I can further refine my ICP to be very specific to the companies that I can sell to.
Specific things to consider:
Company size
Appetite for new technology solutions
Digital initatives specific to the industry
Existing relationships with technology partners of your company
Existing relationships with consulting partners of your company
Existing customer of another product (if you are in account management)
In a subsegment where you already sell to competitors of theirs
In a town or region where you already sell to competitors of theirs
Executives who have moved from an existing customer of yours
Step 2 - Prioritise your accounts
Now you have your territory’s ICP, go through your account list and prioritise them according to the dimensions above.
Yes there is some science, but also some gut feel to whether you think this account is a good fit.
Use a spreadsheet template like the one below to assign a score to each column.
Draw a line at the top 20% - these are the accounts to focus on for now
Step 3 - Manage your metrics
You should have your target quota available, and now you want to work out what inputs will be required to generate the required outputs.
In a previous edition of the newsletter we looked at calculating your commission at different levels of performance, and this is where that becomes important.
If you are aiming for 200% of target, then now is the time to understand what is required to get there.
Quick maths example.
Required bookings for 200% = $250,000
Assume 4 times quota coverage = $1,000,000 of pipeline
Divide by average deal size ($50,000)
The number of opportunities required over the year = 200
Divide by 12 months = 16.6 new opps per month (4.1 per week)
Therefore - if we add in 4.1 new opps per week of $50k value, then the maths says we’ll end up with 200% of our quota.
We focus on the inputs and the outputs will look after themselves.
Step 4 - Plan your prospecting
Now you want to determine the right prospecting channels that you will use to generate the volume of opportunities required.
This will depend on the type of products or services you sell but consider all of these:
Calling: the phone is still the number one way of getting immediate feedback from a prospect
Emailing: when done well with relevant research, personalisation and leading with value, emailing is an essential part of your tool kit
Social: depending on what persona you are selling into, and taking it account it is can be a longer route to building pipeline, social can be a powerful pipeline builder
SDRs/AEs: depending on your role you may have a counterpart to develop your prospecting plan alongside
Partners: your customers already buy from other companies. Who are they and can they walk you in the back door? A channel often missed by AEs.
Referrals: does your company have existing customers who are connected to your prospects? Can you work with their account managers to request introductions?
Events: depending on your industry, are there must-attend events that your customers rely on?
Content: if you are focused on a specific niche, can you work with your marketing team to write an article, record a video, join a podcast - anything to get your point of view in the market?
Considering all the prospecting channels open to you, plan out how you will spend your time throughout the week and month using a prospecting calendar like this.
How much time should you spend prospecting?
It will depend on whether you are ramping up in a new role (100%) or managing an existing territory (40-60%), but ensure the time spent prospecting is high.
It is very easy to slip into the trap of non-prospecting activity - sending proposals, demos, updating decks - and feel very busy but have not added anything to your pipeline that day.
Unless you have your target pipeline coverage - optimise for prospecting over any other activity.
Step 5: Re-evaluate each month
Too many territory plans are drafted up and never looked at again until the end of the year (this is why I say the plan is what is in your head - not what you put in a document).
Things change - your assumptions about the ICP change, the customers that you have sold to change, you product offering changes.
At the start of each month take a look through your territory ICP, your priority accounts, your metrics and your prospecting plan and determine if they are still valid.
Then having made any adjustments, timeblock your calendar for the coming month.
Create specific calendar events, detailing the prospecting activity that you will do during that time block.
And then follow your own plan!
So that’s it - that’s how I build out my territory plan to give myself confidence that by managing the inputs the process will look after the outputs.
See you next week!
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