How to successfully plan your sales territorySimple and practical approach to build an initial plan for

your business - designed for new sellers

By Camilo Rojas - @camilo_rojas

High Level Process• Prepare. Customer, Play, Routes,

Competitors

• Establish target. Target = Quota * 1.15

• Establish pipeline targets. Pipe target = Target / Win Rate

• Assess current pipeline.

• Identify Pipeline Gaps. Gap = Pipe target - Current Pipe

• For each gap, establish a territory plan. Gap = Plays * Customers * Routes

• Consolidate plan on an execution planExecution = Customer * Action * Responsible * Dates

First, prepare…

Understand your customers• Analyze previous year results.

• Cluster by industry if possible

• Evaluate sell cycles

• Understand financials and key business drivers

• Agree on coverage model with customer set and brands

• Know renewal dates for S&S

• Discover competitor footprint and relationship

• References documented

Customer Industry Key driver Footprint S&S aniv Competitor

Customer 1 Telco Rev Growth BPM 01/05/14 Oracle …

Customer 2 Banking Risk contain ECM 20/03/14 HP …

Customer 3 Retail Margin + MM 15/07/14 SAP …

Customer 4 Telco Churn - NAA 01/02/14 Cloudera …

Understand your sales plays• Review your sales plays available.

• Review the business needs addressed with the play

• Understand industries that best applies to them. Find the average sell cycle. Plan your average sell ticket

• Be aware of dependencies, appliances, special services

• Leverage accelerators, references and pre-sales assets

• Document your sales plays and land them to your territory

Plays Industries Avg $ Sell cycle

Play 1 Telco 250k 90 days

Play 2 Banking 100k 60 days

Play 3 Retail 300k 120 day

Understand your competitors• For each one of the plays

selected do your homework understanding their products, sales strategies, silver bullets.

• Subscribe to their newsletters

• Assist to their marketing events

• Keep up on the IMAZ competitive information for tactics

Understand your routes• For selected plays map

your BP’s

• Evaluate their tech, sales, marketing, services ability

• Review previous year performance

• Consider SI’s, ISV’s, VAD’s, internal services, etc.

Enable routes for plays• Plan with your BPR the

deals that you need your BP to be ready.

• Work together on a plan to enable them from a sales, tech sales and services perspective

• Make sure the BP has IBM “readiness” to sell the business

Second, build your plan…

First establish your objective• Understand the past. Clearly

assess what was the business for the previous year. Segment by route, play, product, industry. Establish your win rate.

• See how you did against your competition. Measure by quantity of sales won / lost, revenue won / lost.

• Clearly understand the growth requested by your plan. Segment the objective by route, play, quarter.

• Target to make 115% each quarter. Even if you miss, you will be close to plan.

Target = Quota * 1.15!!

Example!Quota 1’000k Target 1’150k

Establish your pipeline targets

• With target establish your pipeline targets. Ideally separate for each one of your sales plays.

• Review each quarter for target pipeline

Target Pipe = Target / Win Rate!!

Example!Last Year win rate 1/5 deals won Win rate 5x 0.2 !Pipeline target 1’150/0.2 5’750k

Assess current pipeline• Check your current pipeline

• Make sure you have real, controlled pipeline

• Segment current pipeline by play, sales cycle, pipe age, deal size, volume of deals

• Leverage pipeline standard reports they have most of the info, weekly. Contact your marketing leader for this info.

• This should be a biweekly practice, this shows the health of your business.

Pipe Validated Qualified Age Volume

Play 1 1150 600 65 3 opps

Play 2 1600 1400 80 5 opps

Play 3 1400 1000 120 6 opps

Total 4150 2000 88 14 opps

Identify Pipeline GapSubtract your target pipeline with your existing pipeline by play. Alternatively by

customer

Target Pipe Validated Pipe Gap

Play 1 1450 1150 300

Play 2 2500 1600 900

Play 3 1800 1400 400

Total 5750 4150 1600

Establish a territory plan• Work on a matrix to

understand the play coverage in your customer accounts.

• Identify pipeline potential for each account

• Mark where the competition is incumbent. Make a plan on how to attack them.

• Make sure your total prospecting plan covers your gap.

Play 1 Play 2 Total

Client 1 100k 700k 800k

Client 2 500k SAP 500k

Client 3 Oracle 300k 300k

Total 600k 1000k 1600k

Consolidate an execution planShare it with your team, get them aligned, ask for help

early

Play Rev Activity Responsible Date Outcome

Client 1 Play 1 100k Briefing Rep 1 01/03/14 VisionCVE TSS 1 15/03/14 Qualify

PoC Tiger 1 30/03/14 Tech Qua

Propose Rep 1 15/04/14 Verbal

Negotiate Rep 1 20/04/14 Close

Sign & Book Rep 1 28/04/14 Happiness

Play 2 700k Exec meet Rep 1 02/03/14 Vision

… … … … … …

Third, and the most important step. !

Execute your plan.