Territory Optimization Increases Sales Productivity

Opportunity  |  A $600 million privately held software company had recently been acquired by a private equity firm that expected their new acquisition to double its growth rate and to do so profitably. The VP of Sales noted that salespeople were inefficiently crisscrossing the US to cover their accounts as employee turnover in the sales team was approaching 40%.

Approach |  Axiom helped the company maximize sales opportunities for its customers and prospects:

• Sales leadership classified Enterprise accounts as “central buy,” “de-centralized buy” or “holding company.”
• Customer vertical and size segments were analyzed and reconstructed.
• We used historical transaction data to identify product penetration and conversion rates by industry, organization-type and employee count.
• This data was applied to a universe of 19 million customers and prospects (from Dun & Bradstreet) to estimate overall sales potential.
• Our team used a combination of account ownership rules, sales potential values, and territory mapping software to optimize a set of 200 territories.
• A web-based tool was developed to allow field sales management to make iterative account reassignments.

Results 

• 2,500 accounts were moved from Enterprise to Mid-Market – this provided Mid-Market sales reps an opportunity to call on valuable customers and prospects that were not being targeted by Enterprise reps.
• The time to complete the account assignment process was shortened 50% as a result of using the new territory assignment tool.
• Revenue increased 10% in each of the first two quarters following the segment and territory changes.