How the best do it

How do the best companies handle territory and segment design once there are dozens of reps?

The short answer

They design territories from data and then defend the design politically. Accounts get scored on multi dimensional signals, size, industry, technographics, growth triggers, not just postcode, and the carve is optimised so expected opportunity per rep is roughly equal rather than account count being equal. Field patches are also optimised for travel time, because hours in a car are hours not selling. The operating discipline that separates the good from the rest is a fixed annual cadence, a published set of rules for what happens to in flight deals when a patch moves, and rep input collected before the design is locked. Then they measure the design itself: not just attainment, but how evenly attainment is spread.

Go deeper, your way

4 hand-picked resources, 4 link-checked. Pick how you want to dig in.

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Why we picked it Territory design treated as a fairness problem: every rep should have an equal shot at quota, which means balancing account potential and workload, not just drawing lines on a map. Includes the segmentation models to choose between.

Sales Territory Planning Best Practices

From Everstage 14 min read

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Why we picked it The headcount question answered as arithmetic: revenue target divided by revenue per rep and capacity utilisation, with ramp time and attrition built in. Use it before you sign off next quarter's hiring plan.

Sales Capacity Planning

From Everstage 12 min read

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The same ground, at another level

How comp, quotas and territory reads from a different seat.

I have been handed a comp plan. How do I work out what I will actually earn? Ignore the OTE headline and find four things: the base, the quota, what percentage of a deal you get, and when you get paid. Multiply your realisti... Breaking into GTM 4 resources → How do I set quotas that most of the team can actually hit? Set them top down and bottom up, and treat the gap between the two as information rather than a negotiation. Top down is the revenue target divided... Doing the work 4 resources → How do I build a comp plan that pays for the strategy we actually have this year? Write the strategy in one sentence first, then make the plan pay for that sentence and nothing else. If this is a new logo year, pay heavily on new... Leading a GTM team 4 resources →

People also ask

I have been handed a comp plan. How do I work out what I will actually earn? Ignore the OTE headline and find four things: the base, the quota, what percentage of a deal you get, and when you get paid. Multiply your realisti... Breaking into GTM 4 resources → What do OTE, pay mix, accelerator, draw and clawback actually mean? OTE is base plus variable if you hit exactly 100 percent of quota, nothing more. Pay mix is how that splits: closing roles are usually around 50:50... Breaking into GTM 3 resources → I am a founder writing my first sales comp plan. What is the simplest thing that works? One page, one number, one rate. Base plus variable at roughly 50:50 for a closer, a single quota on new ARR, a flat commission rate, and an acceler... Breaking into GTM 4 resources → What is a fair quota for my first rep when we have no history to go on? Start from cost, not from ambition. The common anchors are quota at four to six times OTE, or David Sacks's rule of 10 where quota is about ten tim... Breaking into GTM 4 resources → How do I set quotas that most of the team can actually hit? Set them top down and bottom up, and treat the gap between the two as information rather than a negotiation. Top down is the revenue target divided... Doing the work 4 resources → How should SDR, AE and customer success comp actually differ, and why? Pay variable in proportion to how much of the outcome the person controls. An AE controls the close, so around 50:50 with a real accelerator. An SD... Doing the work 4 resources →

Also in Starting Up

The same ground, over in Co-founders, team & legal, our Starting Up track.

Do I actually need a co-founder, or can I go solo? You don't strictly need one, but the data says teams outlast solos: complementary skills, shared load, and someone to argue you out of bad calls al... 3 resources → How should co-founders split equity fairly? For most early teams, split close to equal, an even split signals you see each other as true partners, and long-term contribution rarely matches wh... 3 resources →
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