We’re approaching mid year. And your territory plan from Q1 is getting smacked in the face.
Reps have come and gone, you’ve got new plays to run, you’ve got to handle an ICP tweak (or more)—the list goes on.
The complaints about account quality and quantity are starting to bubble up.
It's fine. No plan ever survives contact with reality. But it means it’s nearly time for everyone’s favorite mid-year ritual: The Account Refresh. (Refresh. Replace. Top-off. Swap. Whatever you want to call it.)
Here’s how to go about it.
1. Stop
Reps say they don’t have enough accounts. I say trust but verify. Look at which accounts reps engage. If you don’t know this, you won’t know what to adjust. This is the easiest way to call BS if you’ve got a “there’s nothing to work” complaint.
2. Drop
Resist the urge to just add more accounts. Consider what you can take away, starting with unworked accounts. If a rep hasn’t truly engaged in 6 months, why is it in their name? However, *never* remove accounts where there’s meaningful engagement[1]. If a rep works it, they keep it. Unworked accounts are a different story, though.
3. Roll
It’s time to give reps some new accounts. This depends on your model.
3a) Static Territories (geo or vertical) - The options aren’t great. Pick one: a) find new accounts, b) recarve c) relax the territory restrictions. Maybe you find a trove of new accounts, maybe not. Most people don’t want to do a disruptive recarve. That leaves relaxing the restrictions. It makes sense. Territories are never perfectly balanced. Some reps crush it and other reps starve. You can steal from an empty territory, tinker with inbound, split up a big territory or reassign a few accounts here or there. Not great, but it's what you've got.
3b) Named Accounts - You probably have some accounts in reserve you can assign out. Reassign accounts that haven’t been covered.
3c) Dynamic Books - There’s no mid-year refresh. Distributing accounts is just another day.
One more thing…
Why do we do this to ourselves in the first place? If a “refresh” is right mid-year to make sure reps have the right accounts to work, why wait? Some orgs go quarterly, but why stop there? Why not just follow drop the static territories do this continuously? That way reps always have a great book of accounts to work without the imbalances. They keep the ones they’re working and dispense with ones they can’t make progress on. They get great new accounts on an ongoing basis. This is why I believe so strongly in Dynamic Books.
I’ll leave you with this. You can achieve most of the above with spreadsheets, repurposed automation tools and a bunch of work. Or, you can do it all with Gradient Works. Your call.
[1] “Meaningful engagement” varies but it’s *not* tossing a couple of emails at one contact in an automated sequence. Just because you tried twice to get someone’s attention from across a noisy bar doesn’t mean you’re in a committed relationship.
