So what does a good territory plan look like?  I believe they should be:

Short: The more concisely you can express your strategies the better.

Focused: Don’t try to do too much with a account/territory plan.  Its one use is to help you identify and close business. It should be simple.

Achievable: Don’t set yourself up for failure at the start.

Measurable: You must be able to easily determine if you have been successful

Current: To be useful, you must update your plan constantly.  Things change and your plan must change with them.

Now lets take a look at the components of a well written plan:

One Page Summary: This summary should have four sections.  First in just 2 or 3 sentences it should express your vision for your territory.  That vision should be supported by some number of clearly stated objectives or goals that are in turn supported by a number of strategies.  The last section should be a list of actions.

Pipeline Visualization: One question every sales rep has to be able to answer is what does a full pipeline look like?  Once you know what a pipeline that will generate your number looks like then you must compare it to your current pipeline so you can find and fill your gaps.  This process is very important in a long sales cycle business because of the reaction time.  If your average sales cycle is six months and you don’t react to pipeline holes until the second quarter you can’t make your number!

Targeted Account List: The number of accounts on this list varies but in general this list should include the prospects in your territory that represent the best opportunity for a sale.  These prospects are where the majority of your time will be spent and most of the new entries into your sales funnel will come from this list.  Usually this list is at least 20 accounts and no more than 50.  These are the accounts that you will run specific prospecting campaigns to penetrate.

Prospect Profiles: In addition to your targeted accounts you will have groups of prospects.  To break the rest of your territory into groups you will need to create some number of Prospect Profiles.  These are pictures of what a great prospect looks like.  For example you might have a product that has worked really well for mid sized retailers with 20 to 150 locations.  Build yourself a group of these accounts so that you can run prospecting campaigns that are targeted to this group.

Territory Analysis: To be successful you need to understand what is occurring in your territory.  Are there trends that you can identify?  What are the current “hot issues”? Are there compelling events that you can leverage? This sort of analysis should be articulated in a couple of pages and will serve as background for the strategies you plan to pursue.

SWOT: Just a simple four block SWOT with key bullet points in each block will help keep your focus where it belongs.

Metrics: There have to be some key metrics that you check on a regular basis.  Maybe it’s customer touches or $ value of opportunities, or number of sales calls.  Whatever the ones you use write them down and keep a running history.  That way you will be able to judge your performance over time.

Resources: Lastly you will need to make a list of what resources you need to be successful and how you will obtain them.

When you are finished you will have a plan of 12-15 pages that can will be your key to success.  Now you have to work your plan.  Each month you need to review your progress, make any needed adjustments and plan your next actions.  Build your territory planning habits and you will find that success becomes the natural end result.

Question : So how do you stay in front of a prospect in today’s world without becoming a nuisance?

Answer : You have to bring value to every engagement.

Now that’s a lot harder than picking the phone up and asking a prospect if there is any news.  It requires that you think about each prospect contact. understand the objectives of the contact and then articulate the value you will use to support that contact.  Normally the value you bring will be information.

The easiest type of value to bring is the answer to a question the prospect has asked.  This of course means that the prospect must ask a question.  One goal I like to have in a contact is to always leave at least one question unanswered.  This gives me the perfect opening to get back in front of the customer.  Now you don’t want to foster the impression that  you don’t know your solution so be a bit careful about the questions you leave open.  They should be the type questions that would normally require the input of another person or some sort of research on your part.

As you talk to your prospects my guess is that the same questions normally repeat.  Over time if you keep a log of these questions and the point at which they arose you will be able to easily see them coming and even facilitate their appearance.  Sometimes you might get a perfect such question that you could answer now…think about it.  Sometimes you might choose to leave that question open just so you have your next reason for calling “built in”.

The idea of staying in front of a prospect will be a reoccurring theme in this blog, just like it is in the daily life of a sales rep.  If you have a specific question or situation just post a comment or drop me a mail at jim@revenuewonk.com and I will help in any way I can.

One of the most important Demand Channels is the salesperson themselves.  As  a salesperson you have a quota to make.  Your livelihood depends on it and at the end of the day it is your job to make sure you have enough demand to hit your number.  One of the best ways to accomplish this mission is to help your customers and prospect find and solve problems they don’t even know they have yet.

I think it is a three step process:

Challenge the way things are.  A great way to do this is by using third party or industry examples.  Companies like Forester and Aberdeen do a great job of providing information that can be helpful.  Your objective in this step is to create a question and hopefully a bit of fear and uncertainty in the prospects mind about the way things are.  By the time you are done with this step you should have the prospects attention and created their interest.

Paint a new picture.  Once you raise the awareness in the prospect that the problem exists you have to then show them the path to a solution.  As you paint your picture you have to get the customer to feel and see the way things could be.  This is the part of the process where you have to instill the desire to address the issue in the customer.

Provide the solution.  Now that the prospect has a clear view of the way things are and the way things could be it is time for the value.  You have to give them the solution.  When you get to this point you have driven demand.  You have  created a prospect with a defined opportunity now its time to jump right into the sales cycle and build your business case.

Of course this is not the only way for a salesperson to be a Demand Channel but it is one of the most effective.

In the past it was that great sales rep that always managed to get involved in sales cycle  before the competition.  That was important because that rep got to set the expectations and began to educate the prospect as to what could be expected from the solution.  The hunter was on the scene first and put themselves in position to drive the process and as a result won the most new business.

Another trait of this traditional hunter was the drive for immediacy.  When they engaged a client the objective was singular…sell something now.  If that objective can’t be met for some reason that lead is discarded and the traditional hunter is on to the next hunt.

Problem is that over the last few years the hunting dynamic has changed.  The old style hunter that’s out in the market trying to insert themselves into the process as early as possible will likely find a cool if not downright cold reception.   Customers today have access to information and like to do their research independently of the sales rep.  I have seen studies that indicate that sales cycles can be 60% to 80% complete BEFORE the prospect is ready to engage a sales rep and that changes the whole dynamic of hunting.

That means that a vital part of hunting today is content focused.  It’s the same concept as before.  Get your information in front of the prospect and drive the process.  In the past that was done exclusively via face to face sales calls.  Today you have to create compelling content then use and manage a variety of information channels to accomplish the task.  Now I know that when I say compelling content most of you are thinking that’s expensive, but it does not have to be.  Content can be anything from a text message to an email message to a YouTube video.  Compelling content is valuable not necessarily expensive.

In most larger organizations the Marketing Department creates some content and can even manage a lot of the pre-engagement information flow and lead nurturing.   In an organization where there is not a Marketing Department does that performs this function it is now up to the rep to manage that process.  In both cases that means changes to the traditional sales paradigm that I will talk more about in subsequent posts.

For now we will end with this thought…the trick for successful hunting in todays market is for the hunter to use content and a lead nurturing process to pave the way and then insert themselves into the process at the RIGHT time not just the earliest possible time.

At the same time you are creating jobs and profits for your own company.  The resulting growth in both companies will add more jobs and more growth to the overall economy resulting in a host of benefits for all involved.   By driving revenue you are improving the lives of all you touch and that is indeed a noble purpose.  When training sales people I always tell them that the most important sale is to themselves because if they don t believe they can’t paint the right picture for the client.  This sale starts with the profession itself…done properly it is the most noble of endeavors.

Years ago I read a study on purchasing agents and their buying tendencies.  One of the questions was… How many calls does it take before you buy from a new rep?  The answer was seven calls.

A few weeks later I read another study, this one on sales reps.  One of the questions on this study was… How many calls do you make on a new account before you give up?  The average was four.

What does that tell you about how much new business an “average rep” drives?