How to build a territory plan and hit your quota
Use my easy template
A territory plan is an essential ingredient of success in enterprise sales as it helps you focus your efforts on the specific accounts who are most likely to buy from you in the near term.
However, many sellers begin their quarter with a plan that contains little more than their current pipe, a list of ambiguous ideas for drumming up business and the hope that marketing will bring in some hot leads. The odds are stacked against you.
Creating a solid territory plan improves your time management, customer relationships and forecasting. It also helps your boss evaluate your performance on your terms rather than theirs, which is key to managing expectations and avoiding unwanted scrutiny.
This issue covers what to put in your territory plan and includes a territory plan template you can use to build your own.
Components of a territory plan
A territory plan contains 6 sections:
Territory Overview
Ideal Customer Profile
Open Opportunities Plan
Opportunity Generation Plan
Asks for Help
1. Territory Overview
This section gives a high level snapshot of the territory you are covering and sets the context for the remainder of the plan. It should include:
Territory Description. Briefly describe the geography, industry or market segment that you are responsible for.
Market Trends. List the key trends, challenges and opportunities in the market and be sure to highlight any that set your territory apart from other territories.
Key Competitors. List the key competitors you run into, how they are positioning in your territory and their key strengths and weaknesses.
2. Ideal Customer Profile
This section defines the characteristics of the businesses and people most likely to buy your solution, ensuring you focus on high-potential prospects. It should include:
Firmographics. List the firmographic attributes of companies that align with your solution.
Technographics. Legacy tools or systems that your solution either replaces or improves.
Job titles of your champions, executive sponsors and key influencers.
Pain points that your solution addresses and be sure to describe them in the language your customers use, not your internal jargon.
Critical events. List the types of initiatives and projects that your buyers typically have which your solution improves or accelerates.
3. Sales Goals
This section lists out your quantifiable goals, including your revenue target, how much you have in your open opportunities, how much you plan to generate in new opportunities and how much you plan your pipeline coverage to be.
You want to aim for a minimum 3x pipeline coverage e.g. if your target is $100k, you want to have at least $300k of opportunities with a close date in the period that your plan covers.
It’s important to stick to outcomes that can be measured. Numbers > words because they reduce ambiguity for both you and your manager.
4. Open Opportunities Plan
This section lists your current pipeline of new logo and upsell opportunities that you are aiming to close in the quarter. Include the name and job title of each stakeholder to ensure you have the relevant people engaged and list the date and objective of the next meeting. Doing this immediately flags deals at risk due to single-threading and/or having lost control of the sales process due to not having a meeting on the books.
5. Opportunity Generation Plan
This section is similar to the previous one, only focused on prospecting. List the key accounts that match your ideal customer profile and for each account list who you think the stakeholders are based on your research and your strategy and next step to connect with them.
6. Asks for Help
This is the final section and should include the following:
Executive nudges for active opps. These are asks for a member of your exec team or board to ping the decision maker on a late stage or stalled opp to keep it moving forward or find out why its stalled. List the account, stakeholder and exec who knows them.
Executive intros to prospects. These are similar to the above only for prospects that you are trying to connect with. I have a full video lesson on how to set up warm outreach here.
Training and materials. This is the place to ask for industry-specific slides, packaging, battle cards, product training and sales coaching.
Download the territory plan template here and go build your own! And please subscribe if you haven’t done so already.