Named account list vs geo territory?

Working with our VP of Sales on a new territory strategy as we start to scale the team for the first time and looking for people's thoughts on the best way to do it.


His preference is a focused list of 100 named accounts for each rep to work supplemented by a round robin of inbound/sdr leads within a much larger geographic area. I've been pushing for more smaller more manageable geo territories and segmented into "enterprise/non-enterprise" by employe size (these are the two types of reps we have) where reps will still communicate who their top targets are but be given freedom to do outbound across any other company in territory while still pointing marketing/sdr teams in the direction of companies that look good.


Any thoughts on either approach, other approaches, or things we should make sure to take into consideration?

🔎 Prospecting
👑 Sales Strategy
☁️ Software Tech
9
poweredbycaffeine
WR Lieutenant
9
☕️
Here is how we do it in my org:

Segemented by headcount: SMB (0-250), MM (251-1,000) and ENT (1000+)

From there we give each rep, based on their territory, a list of 100 accounts at a time, supplemented by inbound leads.

When they are down to 25 accounts left in their list, we reload with 100 more.

Why do I feel this is more effective? Reps get overwhelmed when it comes to identifying the right companies to go after. Eliminate choice and suddenly you have things narrowed right down to the activities and target they should be working.
payton_pritchard
Executive
1
RSM
Nice, something very similar to this seems like what we'll end up with.

When a rep gets down to 25 from 100 accounts, what does that mean exactly? Is an account being taken off the list because you won/lost an opp, put it through some sort of outreach cadence and didn't get a response, or something else?
poweredbycaffeine
WR Lieutenant
3
☕️
They've worked through them and feel they need more to fuel activity. We focus on 1-2 contacts per account rather than blasting the entire org, so if they see their cadences getting slow/dry, we give them more fuel.
Diablo
Politicker
0
Sr. AE
We take almost like this approach. 
1nbatopshotfan
Politicker
2
Sales
This is tough to answer more thoroughly without knowing a few things. 
Are their advantages for sticking to a geography based model? I.E. there are enough buyers in Dallas for you Dallas rep and they’d benefit from being part of the local fabric. Or, is it better to divide by vertical, I.e someone sells to manufacturing and someone sells to med device etc? Then dividing by enterprise and vertical makes sense. 

A previous company I was at was very strict on regions and the main reason was that the buyers all floated in the same regional groups and it made sense to have strong relationships locally. That may not matter as much for your product. 
dwightyouignorantsale
Politicker
1
Account Executive
We primarily do geographically based plus revenue ranges. Enterprise is $250M+, Midmarket is below. Our sales ops team took all of our good accounts in salesforce, broke it out by region, and then each rep was given a certain geographical area based on the amount of equal accounts they could assign. That way it ends up being *mostly* fair.
CuriousFox
WR Officer
0
🦊
Geo seems easier?
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