A highly successful CEO I worked with once said that a salesperson’s success is 50% due to the environment they are placed in and 50% up to their talent, grit and drive. And assigning the right accounts to the right sellers is the biggest contributor to setting up an environment where salespeople can thrive. Combine this skill with a solid sales process and training, and you give your team an environment they need to succeed.
The ideal client profile (ICP) is a good start to selling success. Taking that definition and using it to prioritize accounts is even better. However, a list of prioritized accounts by itself will not help you meet your sales goals. What really matters is how you use the list — or, as one private equity operating partner puts it, how you activate it.
Luckily, there are several ways to activate prioritized accounts to drive your go-to-market (GTM) engine and fuel growth, including:
- Aligning size of ICP market to revenue planning
- Lead generation
- Account-based marketing (ABM) targeting
- Comparing your ICP to competitors
- Designing sales territories
- Aligning size of market and growth goals to the ideal size of your sales organization
- Product roadmap
In this article, the second in a series on ICPs, we will explore how you can leverage ICPs in sales territory design to win an unfair share™ of the market.
DETERMINING CAPACITY FOR SALES TERRITORY DESIGN
To design effective sales territories, start by determining the capacity for each sales role. Capacity metrics can vary, but common options include:
- Number of accounts assigned
- Existing revenues
- Potential revenues
- Company-specific metrics
Capacity should align with the selling professional role. For example, the capacity for a new logo hunter will differ significantly from that of an account manager or sales engineer. Similarly, handling large global accounts requires a different capacity model than handling smaller companies with one or two locations.
The most commonly used metric to define capacity is the number of accounts. To calculate this:
- Break down a salesperson’s time into selling and non-selling activities. Within their selling time, outline their 7 to 10 key responsibilities and estimate the time required for each.
- Next, define the time and number of accounts that can be handled by a salesperson. For example, a salespeople going after new customers typically have their time split between prospecting, administrative tasks, developing proposals, pricing and managing opportunities.
- Evaluate how account size, verticals and/or geography affect your business. These factors will influence how accounts are assigned to the right people.
If you are struggling to come up with these metrics, survey your sales team or, if you have a smaller organization, hold a workshop. Alternatively, you can also build a useful capacity model based on existing data and assumptions.
TOOLS FOR SALES TERRITORY DESIGN
With the key inputs established, you are ready to build territories. You have many tools at your disposal, such as Excel, business intelligence (BI) platforms, visual tools such as Tableau or even custom software specific to sales territory design.
At Mereo, we frequently use Excel, BI tools and Tableau:
- Excel: Ideal for sharing with outside constituents (e.g., other functional teams, partners), gathering feedback and managing individual account overrides.
- BI Tools: Useful for scaling territory assignments for organizations with more than 10 sellers. These tools can automate territory rules and account assignments.
- Tableau: Excellent for visualizing territories, such as grouping states or regions and analyzing metrics like number of accounts, revenues, and potential within each territory.
Once sales territories are built, review them to ensure their size aligns with sales quotas and overall growth goals.
ICPS IN SALES TERRITORY DESIGN IN ACTION
One past client wanted to upgrade their ICP and be able to assign the right accounts to the right salespeople. Their current ICP broadly defined target accounts as those with $50 million in revenues and 50 employees. Their sales team included about 15 new logo hunters and 15 account managers.
We helped their organization develop four ICPs — strategic, field accounts, inside sales and government segments. Using these definitions, we prioritized accounts within each ICP via a scoring formula. By surveying the sales team and aligning territory sizes with quotas and revenue plans, we built territories that supported current salespeople and anticipated headcount growth in 2025.
The result? Activating these ICPs and this territory design approach gave the company a robust roadmap for growth, identified high-potential accounts that can drive that growth, and established metrics for tracking success month-to-month.
READY TO ACTIVE YOUR ICP FOR SALES TERRITORY DESIGN?
If you have an ICP and are not seeing results, you might benefit by talking to one of our experts on how to activate this tool for sales territory design. Schedule 30 minutes with one of our revenue experts today.