Territory Plans and Fantasy Football

It’s that of year again for American football fans. The Super Bowl is upon us and those fans who played Fantasy Football just wrapped up another season. A 6-month period of researching hundreds of players prior to the big fantasy draft in August and then analyzing players stats, matchups, injury reports and bye weeks EVERY week for 17 weeks to ensure you have the best lineup each Sunday. Not to mention the countless texts and discussions with your friends. My wife and I have participated in a few FF leagues over the years and have always had a lot of fun.

And it’s that time of year again for sales professionals. You just wrapped up your 2017 and came back from the holiday break with a $0 on the board and a new or revised territory of accounts. With that, your manager has asked you to prepare a detailed Territory Plan, a plan that you will present in a week or so.

So where am I going with this? 

Fantasy Football is fun, I get it. And Territory Plans are not, understood. However, think about how successful you would be if you spent as much time (or more) time analyzing your territory throughout the year as you spend analyzing your fantasy football team during football season. Seriously, you’re in sales so the more time you spend with your best accounts and the less time with your window shoppers, the more money you will make. With that, you are not a real GM of an actual football team, it’s called Fantasy Football for a reason.  

How do you figure out which accounts you should be focusing on? By putting the time in up front and throughout the year to analyze your territory and assess where you should be spending your time.

Below are some general guidelines to help ensure you have a thoughtful plan of attack for your territory:

• Your territory plan is a living breathing document, not something you update once per quarter to get through a QBR with your manager. Update your plan as often as you can, as new events or developments occur. Event-driven activity and analysis is a key to success in sales.
• Keep your accounts in three buckets. Your A, B, and C accounts. 

“A” accounts are high priority and you should give most focus to these with a customized plan of attack for each account based on your research. Utilize marketing and your SDR’s for support.

For your “B” accounts, these are good accounts so work more with your marketing department and your SDR’s to ensure these are getting attention. 

And your “C” accounts should be for marketing support with some SDR oversight.

As far as the actual analysis of your territory and how to determine which are A, B, or C accounts:

• If your company provides analytics for you about your accounts, some sort of scoring methodology based on certain factors, use this info as a baseline and adjust based on your research. In addition, if there are notes and activity logged in your CRM about your accounts, read all of this but take it at face value and don’t make assumptions based on this information.
• Go to the website of each account and read their current news and press releases. Sign up for email alerts on these pages, too. Yes, their website. I know it’s 2018, but this is still the place to get the clearest picture of a company. We’ll get to social which is also critical, later.

Are they launching a lot of new products, attending conferences, providing industry thought leadership? Are they making a lot of hires (a sign of growth)? Do they have a lot of videos and cool demos? How long has their senior leadership team been there? If they are actively marketing and branding their products then they may be at a stage in their lifecycle where they are spending more money.  Do they have an impressive list of flagship clients and testimonials? Do you have any clients in common? Also, some of the information you gather here and from other sources (listed below) should also be used to get in the door with your target contacts (separate topic).

• If your company doesn’t subscribe to a news or social monitoring platform, sign up for Google alerts to follow your companies.
• Follow your companies on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram. You are on these platforms much more than websites. I would say at least once per day I will be on one of these apps during off hours to see what my friends are up to, and I’ll see something posted by a target company or prospect of mine and I’ll take a screen pic of that on my phone and email it to myself to remind me to reach out to that company the next day. Pretty effortless.
• If the company is public, look at their last few earnings reports and read their last annual report. Has their stock been trending up or down? If a company is underperforming they are either cutting budgets or they could be doubling down. The CEO will talk about this during the earnings call and you can either listen to this call or read a transcript via the website or a google search.
• If you have a territory of small to mid-size accounts, go to www.crunchbase.com and look up how much funding the company has received over the years. If they have only received an initial seed round they are probably going to be tighter with their cash and tough to sell. If they are post Series A or B, they should have potential. Reminder, this is great intel but don’t make absolute assumptions.
• Use LinkedIn to get a sense of how many employees each account has, where they are located, their recent hiring trends. Then dig deeper and look up their leadership team on LinkedIn and especially your target contacts. See if you have common connections you can potentially leverage to get you in the door. How long has your target decision makers been there? Where were they prior to joining their current company and are any of those prior companies’ clients?
• Should you follow your target contacts on social media? I would only follow them once you have established legitimate contact with them and only on LinkedIn and Twitter. 
• Check Owler.com to see who your prospects competitors are and see if any of those companies are clients. Decision makers will take you more seriously if a few of their competitors are using your solutions.
• What clients are in the same city as each prospect? Look to leverage the Account Managers who manage those clients and see if their clients can help you get in the door with an endorsement.
• Where did your target contacts go to school? Maybe someone on your management team is a fellow alumnus of that school.

If the above sounds like a lot of work or information overload, I would argue that you can never have enough intel on the companies in your territory. And with social media and alerts, information is served to you immediately on any device you are using, day and night. It’s a lot less work then it used to be.

Lastly, the top salespeople on my teams would consistently be those who spent the most time entrenched in their accounts. If you do the work, the results will follow. If you don’t, then exceeding your quota will become just like your starting lineup on Sunday, A FANTASY.