Sales Territory Planning: The Five Minute Territory Plan & Template

The five minute sales territory plan

Between sales kick-off season approaching and another year beginning, there’s a lot of talk about self-sourcing pipeline, prospecting strategies, and territory management planning. We believe there’s nothing better than old school, back to basics, sales territory analysis, planning and prospecting. Here’s a short talk outlining how to get your team embracing territory planning as a path to create demand.

Imagine what would happen to your business and pipeline if every seller documented their own territory plan and then video recorded a short and thoughtful five minute version of it? We call this the “Five Minute Territory Plan.” Contrary to what you’d think, if it’s short, relevant, and accessible. Feedback is very, very positive:

I’ve found recording my sales territory plans to be such an illuminating experience. It helped me identify gaps in my strategy, evaluate what I was saying and why I was saying it. I feel I’m better for it and looking forward to doing more”. – Ben

Turn territory planning into an interactive experience for your sales teams by making everyone part of the process and accountable for results. I believe our quota carrying, revenue generating sales executives need to own self-sourcing pipeline. Territory planning is the way to reinvigorate it.

Here are the secrets to making “territory planning and prospecting” a revenue generating peer activity appreciated versus criticized.

1. Have vision and leadership to make it part of the sales culture
2. Make territory plans relevant, short, and accessible to share best practices
3. Do sales territory planning quarterly or even monthly

Vision and leadership make it happen

Companies that embrace the idea of video recording territory planning with Sales Enablement Platform on a regular basis, with peer reviews, are seeing tremendous increases in self-sourced pipeline and improvements in new hire time to ramp.

Think about it. Imagine if every new hire had access to stack-ranked video recordings of territory plans grouped by tenure. What would happen to your team’s time to first deal and time to ramp metrics? The power and value of crowdsourcing is incredible. We all know that some of us are great at planning and others aren’t so great.

Making territory planning a team sport is a chance to get everyone to learn how to plan like those who do it best. It takes vision to turn crowdsourcing territory plans into culture. It takes work to align teams on expectations. It takes discipline to make it stick.

Make the plan relevant, short, and accessible

Here are the basics of a territory plan proven to create pipeline and generate revenue fast. Start by sharing a territory planning template that’s relevant and short. Document the facts of the territory and goals in the first slide. Turn the territory plan into a collaborative business review.

What’s my quota? What’s my quota stretch goal? What’s my closed business YTD? What’s my gap? How much pipeline do I have today? What’s my pipeline gap? What are my goals for the year?

Then, move into top prioritizing accounts to prospect. In one slide, list out the names of the top accounts and explain why they are chosen (relationships, industry fit, target profile). For each, in one sentence, be clear and focused on the outreach strategy.

On the next slide, create an opportunity map and make sure opportunity plans are thorough.

It doesn’t take much to know if there is a plan in place. What’s the compelling event? Why now? What’s the strategy to engage with a champion and economic buyer? What’s the mutual success plan? Why no? We’re not doing deep detailed reviews.

Finally, for the last slide, close out with strategies to build pipeline.

Don’t forget that here in Silicon Valley, we’re living in a 3X or even 5X pipeline ratio world.

Putting “pen to paper” on these territory stats makes it super clear what needs to get done to earn a spot on the beach celebrating club.

That’s the flow of the five slide and “Five Minute Territory Plan” template.

Territory planning cadence

Given the sales territory plan template is short, forward thinking leaders are building monthly and quarterly territory planning cadence. The short plans get sellers to focus on strategy and execution versus too much time filling out slides that aren’t relevant. We want to see more sellers take the time to be thoughtful about their plan and business.

What we love most about this process is getting everyone to limit their territory planning to five minutes. Less is more. Less slides and less words is hard.

We’ve learned when territory planning video recordings are five minutes or less (and accessible), sellers will invest the time to watch up to fifteen peer territory plans. If you want to learn more about Account Planning, here’s another blog you can read.

You can scale Territory Planning and Account Planning with our Sales Coaching Huddles. Click here to learn more and start a free trial.