Territory Planning for Exponential Growth

The model of territory planning as taught to me is one generally based around drive time, target accounts, and where I am going to potentially spend my 21 or so days in the field.  If you're anything like me, you sit down at the beginning of a month, quarter, or year and color code on a spreadsheet or calendar where you will be on what days.  It looks pretty, and in your mind it works.  Then, out of nowhere, 30 minutes into your call block it all goes awry.  Your (insert type of amazing prospect/customer here) picks of the phone and wants to schedule on a day that isn't color coded periwinkle for the geographical zone he or she is in.  So you book it, maybe say now that its a flex day, and move on.  Within a few hours of calling your schedule went out the window and you are driving all over creation.

The flipside of that is sticking strictly to a call route where you basically schedule your business meetings at the same time on the same day to probably talk about the same things.  This works great for a lawn care guy, the people who cut my dogs' nails, and when I get my haircut (in theory).  The challenge for sales, however, is you now have ultimately left no room for the customer in this scenario.  This is all about you and not the customer.

I suggest everybody try this a new way - my way.  Of course my way is the best way as I am the one writing this post; however, hear me out.  What if you're focus on territory management was that to gain time back into your schedule so that you can find new business?  What if it was a strategic focus on how to make your appointments count, obviously, but it was based around the amount of time you spend with an account versus their contribution to your business.  Then all the remaining time you can accumulate is put toward prospecting, learning your craft, strategic planning, etc.  Let me share some simple scenarios:

Lets say we have 20 days in a month so every single day is worth 5% of your business.  Simple start.  Lets say you have a customer that makes up 10% of your business.  If you see that customer and that customer only in one day technically that day has been a success because you freed up one more day in the month (10% of your business - 5% of the month) to just prospect.  Now seeing that customer only that one day every month probably isn't how it goes.  You might take the morning to visit their facility which is only 2.5% of your month for 10% of your business.  That is a great investment of time that frees you up to do other value adding activities.

So that's a big customer, what about the little ones?  The ones that only send us a little business but require so much of our time.  Who here hasn't had a customer that is about 1% of our business but wants 10-15% of our time?  There is something interesting about that. Recently I pulled data from a team a managed and added up all the appointments in 4 categories: A accounts, B accounts. C accounts, and D accounts.  What I found was the extreme vast majority of time, over 70%, was spent with people who either never sent us business or so infrequently it barely registers.  So with these little ones you have three options.

Option 1 - Spend exactly the amount of time with them as their business represents. They might get mad, they might request more of your time, or they might not even notice.  However, the truth of the matter is that you shouldn't be spending any more time with them than what they can contribute to your business as that's not a sound policy to be successful.

Option 2 - Fire the customer.  Well, not to their face.  Just move on to other accounts that can and want to partner with you.  Set a reminder on your calendar for 6 months down the road and go visit them again to see if anything has changed.  3 of the largest accounts I have closed all came from this method.  Was it because I showed that I am important and can't play games?  Maybe.  Was it because they were not at a place to buy and instead of letting the relationship get stale I gave them space?  Maybe.  Honestly, there is no telling, but what it did was allow me to focus on other business driving activities.  The funny thing about Option 1 and Option 2 is that when you do either of these and you free up time literally any other activity you do is going to grow your business more than what you're currently doing.  Planning events, strategic account planning, discussing with your peers or management new vertical markets to penetrate.  All of those are better off than continually spending time with somebody not giving you busines.

Option 3 - Grow the business.  This is what we want to do and what I believe most people are doing with the time wasters.  The one thing I would suggest here is that you set a kill date.  Set a % of your business you want to see them at, a % of the time you're willing to spend to get them there, and a date they need to get there by.  If it doesn't happen by then use the other options.

These are just a few examples of how to do it, and yes it uses math which puts off some sales people.  Honestly, it is an extremely simple method to planning a territory and making the most out of your time to grow the right kind of business that suits you, the customer, and your company.

Obviously this is just the tip of the iceberg and there are a lot more variables to discuss.  If you want to go through this way of territory planning with me or would like me to write more about it in detail just let me know.

Thanks for reading,

Steve