---
title: "Practical Territory Design"
episode: 9
podcast: "The LeanScale Podcast"
publisher: "LeanScale"
guest: "Cameron Legge"
guest_title: "Engagement Manager, LeanScale"
date_published: 2023-05-30
date_modified: 2026-07-22
duration: 00:15:14
word_count: 2571
topics: ["revenue-operations", "sales-leadership", "gtm-strategy", "enterprise-sales", "outbound-sales"]
canonical_url: https://leanscale-knowledge-hub.netlify.app/podcast/cameron-legge-territory-design/
source: "LeanScale Podcast Knowledge Hub — https://leanscale-knowledge-hub.netlify.app"
license: "Free to quote and cite with attribution to The LeanScale Podcast."
---

# Practical Territory Design — Full Transcript

> Episode 9 of The LeanScale Podcast, with Cameron Legge.
> Published May 30, 2023 · 00:15:14 · 2,571 words.
> Machine-transcribed and **not diarized** — speaker attribution is inferred, so verify
> attribution against the audio before quoting a specific person.
> Structured breakdown: https://leanscale-knowledge-hub.netlify.app/podcast/cameron-legge-territory-design/

## 00:00 — Cold open: what fair territories really buy you

**[0:00]** Fair territories means you're maximizing the use of your sales resources. So if you have somebody who has a really, really good territory, and they're doing really well, and somebody who doesn't have a good territory, well, if you made them fair, in the end, overall, the system should produce more.

## 00:28 — Welcome to The LeanScale Podcast

**[0:28]** Welcome to The LeanScale Podcast, where we talk about everything RevOps. Thank you for listening.

## 00:39 — Meet Cameron Legge — why is territory design so hard?

**[0:39]** Today we're going to be talking about territories. I have Cameron Legge here with me to help me go through this with everybody. Cameron, you've done a ton of territory design projects with our customers and your sales positions in the past. So I'm really excited to hear how you approach territory design, and then leave everybody with some real practical tools that they can use to design better and more efficient territories. Where I want to start is, why is it so hard? Territory designing is not something where the job is ever done, and it's not something that's really easy to do. But what makes it so challenging?

**[1:23]** Yeah, and as you mentioned, just to start things off, this is something that we do all the time at LeanScale. It seems like even recently, it's becoming more and more of a topic that we're leaning in with our customers and advisory around design. So I think this is really relevant. So happy we're diving in here today on this episode. Well, and that's because a lot of companies are restructuring their teams. They're trying to do more with less. Territory design is a good way to do that, right? So I think that's probably what's driving the uptick of redesigning territory so much right now.

## 01:55 — Rep anxiety and the fairness problem

**[1:55]** Absolutely. That's a great point. To answer your question, why is territory design considered so challenging? I think the main thing is around the fairness of each territory that you're designing. And sales, whether it's a sales leader that's tackling this territory design, or an ops team that's in-house, or somebody like LeanScale that's advising you, we all have anxiety around territory imbalance, creating territories where sales reps are getting upset because they feel like a rep across the aisle has more to go after, or they're just getting more on their plate to take out bats.

**[2:36]** That's something that we all have anxiety about, pissing off sales reps for lack of a better way to put it, which causes a whole host of problems, right? Those are key positions in your growth engine and your revenue engine that you're going to want to relatively keep happy and pleased and enjoying the process of working within a territory. So you're not causing things like attrition and bringing on new reps and the ramp and all the stuff that we know we're trying to reduce from an operational standpoint. Those are the things that just keep us up at night when it comes to territory design.

## 03:11 — How much sophistication do you actually need?

**[3:11]** And then I also think there's a layer to the assumptions of what territories need to be. I know if you ask people whether it's in a GTM capacity or a sales leader capacity, their mind immediately goes to extremely sophisticated territory design, whether that's coming from experience and where they've been, or just some general assumptions of what they think territories need to be to be successful. And I think we're ready within this episode to unpack some of the level of sophistication that's required. Oftentimes, it depends on where you're at in your growth stage and what your sales team looks like.

## 03:48 — Why it comes down to data

**[3:48]** And then I think the other aspect of making it challenging is making sure that you have the data. So that's something that we're focused on at LeanScale every day, is building out the tech to make sure you have that data and you're capturing the data that you're going to need to build intelligent territories for your sales team to just continue to drive revenue. Yeah, and I want to double click on something you said. So when you talk about fairness, of course, there's issues where if you recruit somebody into the team and you put them in a poor territory,

## 04:19 — Fairness as resource efficiency

**[4:19]** you may experience attrition, or if you have somebody who's been on your team and you take away some of their territory, there are attrition concerns and there's concerns of the morale of the team and how well they're doing. And maybe this is my ops mind talking, but also fair territories means you're maximizing the use of your sales resources. So if you have somebody who has a really, really good territory and they're doing really well and somebody who doesn't have a good territory, well, if you made them fair, in the end, overall, the system should produce more. So I don't want to take away from the human side of it. Absolutely.

## 05:00 — The five segmentation buckets

**[5:00]** We don't want to put people in unfair situations, but also from a pure business perspective, fair territories mean you're being very efficient too. So what are some ways to develop territories and make those territorial cuts? Yeah, I'll dive into a few of the main buckets that we feel like are good for segmentation into territory design. So the first one, and when I mentioned assumptions in my opening monologue there in answer to your question, the immediate assumption typically goes to geographic. How can I get reps in seats in the right regions of whether that's international regions?

**[5:41]** We know them well, domestic regions, right, more of an east-west, or if you want to cut the US in four quarters. Or we see things like time zones and looking at states. So definitely geographic is one of those main buckets. So that main assumption of what a territory could and should be is definitely one of those buckets that you can look at and evaluate. Another one is your product, right? So do you have multiple products? Are your customers going to be best served by having a rep that's really deep in the weeds and deep in knowledge around that product or that specific service? And having that specialized focus can pay off dividends.

**[6:22]** We know in the sales process, it's amazing to work with a sales rep that really knows the product well and can address questions right on any step or any meeting in the sales process. So that's certainly one as well, as well as looking at industries or verticals. So I'll use a plain example. So let's say you're in your product serves the restaurant industry. You may have a different sale between a fast food restaurant to a fast casual restaurant to a sit down restaurant. So all those sales may look different. And that's just for example's sake. You know, shout out to all the B2B tech restaurant companies out there.

## 06:59 — Firmographic tiers and named accounts

**[6:59]** But that's just an example of looking at what kind of industries and verticals your product or service is going to serve. And then we'll move into more of the firmographic, which is definitely a key one. So really being able to tier leads and things that are coming into the system as well as, you know, what your sales reps are going after on an outbound motion basis by an enterprise, a mid market, an SMB type sale. We know each of those comes with their own challenges. And we look at those separately, even outside of territory design, but making sure you're designing territories to put the right reps into serving the right prospects.

**[7:40]** We know an enterprise sale and the amount of multithreading it takes and getting the right stakeholder buy in is going to look different from an enterprise to more of an SMB sale. So having the team and sales group itself organized by those firmographic tiers is extremely important. And then from there, it can be more of a round robin. And so one thing we've implemented recently for more of a less sophisticated or more basic territory design is even looking at more of a named accounts approach from an outbound perspective. And then from an inbound perspective, you know, you're looking at more of just a fair round robin through those channels.

## 08:20 — Recap of the buckets

**[8:20]** So those are some of the main buckets that we look at of how to start territory design. Yeah, I like those a lot. I like those a lot. So just to recap, we've got geographic, product or service, industry vertical. I see the industry vertical one. I think often I throw like government in there too. So like government or financial institutions, they have just completely different selling cycles and processes you need to get used to if you're selling into those verticals. Firmographic and then, you know, all this fails round robin or find some randomization way to just make sure it's equitable and fair.

## 08:56 — The design process: data, data, data

**[8:56]** So those are some tools. So you have a couple of tools in your bucket to start cutting up territories. How do you begin to sit down and start designing? What's what's the process you follow when you're designing territories for your customers? Yeah, it comes down to data, data, data. And I'll say it again, data. So it's about the data gathering process. So let's look at historicals as long as your business and your ICP is relatively maintained or staying the same.

**[9:27]** Let's look at SQLs that you've generated. Let's look at closed one deals that have come through and let's start to look at them by some of those segmentation and tearing buckets, as we just mentioned about five or six of them. Let's look at those and let's start to dig into the data. And if it's something that you may feel like you missed in those process, there's definitely value in going back and looking and starting to do some data population and data backfill on some of those things. So you can start to feel more confident about the territories that you're about to design.

## 10:02 — Gathering internal stakeholder feedback

**[10:02]** I think another layer to this tactically, I know we like to get into the tactics here is get feedback from internal stakeholders. If you're designing a sales territory for the first time, if that's the stage you're at with your sales team, talk to the reps themselves. What do they think would be a good way to design territories for their sales team? Talk to product. Talk to the product team. What's on their roadmap? What do they feel like is going to be most efficient in serving eventual customers?

**[10:31]** Even talking to marketing, what are some of the messaging that they're going out with? How are they targeting or setting up campaigns to specific demographics or certain criteria of organizations? I think those are some of the big things where from a data gathering perspective, get that data, it'll make you more confident in the territories that you're designing. Yeah, and if you're early in the process, like you were mentioning, you may not have a lot of sales data, you may not have a lot of pipeline creation data yet, or maybe enough to where you feel comfortable.

## 11:03 — Early stage: make comfortable assumptions

**[11:03]** Just feel comfortable making some assumptions. So based on what you have seen, what's worked, what's not worked, take the data dump from Zoom info or whatever other data tool you're using, throw it into Salesforce or HubSpot, and make sure you can start to at least maybe map out where the potential universe is. And I think that's a good way to start. Order some pitfalls. Order some things that you have seen where you thought you had a good plan and it turned out to be a disaster. Maybe not you personally, but maybe you saw somebody else's plan not work out.

## 11:34 — Rollout pitfalls and holdover plans

**[11:34]** Yeah, yeah, I'll do a quick one here. I think one of the major pitfalls is when you're rolling out these territories, certainly there's going to be a level of reevaluation, right? Certainly as part of an annual process and looking towards the following year and seeing what worked, what didn't, and how we can adjust territories and design better territories in the year following. But I think when you're ready to roll out of territory, which I think anytime is a good one, certainly there's some more calendar breaks that make some more sense, right? If you're going into a new quarter, hey, let's roll these out then or rolling into a new month.

**[12:12]** But I think the big thing that I've seen from a missed perspective is having the right holdover plans for reps is extremely important because you're going to roll these out and be really excited about what you designed. But unless there's clear criteria for what reps can and can't do to hold on certain organizations that they've been working with from a prospect perspective, that's certainly one of the major pitfalls we've seen when you just don't think about that territory roll out in a full 360-degree view and some of the trickle-down effect of rolling that out.

## 12:46 — What works best for B2B SaaS?

**[12:46]** So I think that's one of the major pitfalls. But I think as we wrap things up here, Anthony, I'll ask you, we went through some of the different buckets and tiering and segmentation. What do you think works the most in terms of our experience and certainly your experience in doing territory planning for B2B SaaS companies? Yeah, that's a good question. I always like starting where you started. So meet your prospects where they are. So whatever makes sense in the buyer journey, I would use that as the inspiration to start.

## 13:19 — Anthony's default: firmographic, then time zones

**[13:19]** But if you're talking about nine times out of 10 what works for a typical B2B SaaS company, I start with firmographic. So I think the selling motion of an enterprise sale versus a high-velocity SMB sale is just completely different and you have very different people selling into those roles. I think everything else could potentially be coachable and trainable. But the level of experience you're going to need on the enterprise side is just something that is worth differentiating right out the gate.

**[13:55]** After firmographic, I like to go geographic. But my style of geographic, especially now, I mean, most people are working from home or at least distributed in some way, you know, it's not like everybody has a major HQ to go visit anymore. I like to distribute geographically across time zones, because that's what prospects need the most. Are you available during my business hours and can I connect with you then? And then outside of that, it really depends on the business. Do you need a differentiation on your product? If it's a single product, maybe not.

## 14:29 — Don't over-cut — wrap up

**[14:29]** Are the use cases across industries that different? If they are, then maybe start to subsegment that way. And then all those fails, I like keeping bigger general buckets of territories and then doing a round robin within that territory or naming accounts within a bigger territory. I find if you try to cut it too many ways, you end up with some dry patches and you end up with some people who have better territories than others. And it just doesn't end up being very efficient. Thank you for listening to this episode. If you like the discussion, please like share and subscribe to wherever you listen to podcasts so you never miss a new episode.