Amidst a shifting landscape in the world of B2B sales, Sales Leadership executives must make a crucial decision: to place teams in charge of geographic territories or to instate the account-based selling (ABS) model. There are strengths and weaknesses inherent in each approach, and a company’s decision will depend upon the nature of the business, the market it serves, and its strategy for growth. These two models’ distinctions are crucial for sales management and company adoption.
Territory-based sales management sets reps to work in a specific area where they can develop localised relationships and knowledge of the marketplace. Account-based selling is the opposite — concentrating on a selected handful of high-value accounts and building relationships with multiple stakeholders over time. Sales management is the key to identifying which model fits best based on company objectives and customer behaviour.
Operational Structure: How Sales Teams Are Organised
Operational structure is what distinguishes territory-based and account-based sales models. In traditional territory sales management, each rep owns an area of geographic jurisdiction. This allows for personal touches, FaceTime and market insight. It especially resonates for industries in which local presence and community links play a role in the decision to buy.
On the other hand, account-based selling is a shift in the sales organisation structure from region-based to account-based management. Sales squadrons typically have a variety of roles — Account executives, CSMS, and marketing partners — all crewing the same ship and are all focused on penetrating and expanding into a set list of strategic accounts. This model will require increased internal coordination and collaboration.
Sales Management in a territory model is all about coverage, travel efficiency, and avoiding overlap. It involves balancing work between regions and a fair distribution of opportunities. Account-based sales management, on the other hand, puts an increased focus on team alignment, strategic planning, and long-term related history management for every account.
The choice of structure affects hiring and compensation, training and daily execution. Territory models are potentially easier to scale in early-stage companies, whereas account strategies are more relevant for companies targeting enterprise customers with more sophisticated needs. “Ultimately, sales management needs to balance resource investment and design trade-offs in picking the proper structure.
Customer Engagement Strategy
“There is a massive difference between those two when you think about what’s going to engage with the customer,” sales management says. Reps develop a sweep in a territorial system—sweeping is about broad relationships. In a region, the focus is often on volume and velocity. Customers may converse with you for less time, but more often, they value your quick service and hometown ties.
And account-based selling turns engagement into a profoundly personal and multi-touch journey. Sales Management leads teams to research every account they are targeting, learn the internal politics, and properly message the decision-makers. It’s more consultative, with longer sales cycles and deeper relationships.
Customer needs and complexity should be considered in the sales model. Territory sales can work well for transactional products or high-velocity markets. For solution offerings of high value, account-based selling earns trust and closes bigger deals.
In both models, technology as a good is positive. CRM and sales enablement tools help with efficient territory management, and ABM platforms and intent data contribute to better account targeting. Sales Management needs to arm its team with tools and enablement to help them execute the adopted strategy.
After all, customer engagement is the key to success. Relationship-driven sales management—whatever the model—will foster loyalty, repeat business and, in the end, growth.
Sales Performance Metrics and Measurement
It is related to the sales performance measure, which substantially differs in territory and account-based selling, and, therefore, sales managers need to redefine KPIS. Standard metrics for a territory model include geographic coverage, leads and meetings volume, and regional revenue growth. These aids Sales Leadership in assessing efficiency, penetration, and rep productivity for individual reps within a region.
Performance metrics are more strategic in account-based selling. Sales management monitors account engagement, stakeholder coverage, deal velocity across named accounts and customer lifetime value. In such cases, performance indicators such as account penetration rate and influence mapping supersede raw lead volume.
Sales management must ensure that the metrics and the selling motion are aligned. A rep in a territory model might be measured based on net-new customers, while measurements for an ABS rep include account expansion and cross-sell opportunities. It can cause a perception of clouds and underachievement.
Technology is a factor here, as well. Sales leaders must use analytics and dashboards that show performance at individual and team levels. Multichannel touch and content usage tools can benefit those seeking to achieve accurate measurement and tracking for ABS.
The aim is not just to measure activity but to investigate impact. Whether it is centralised or decentralised, Sales Management that connects KPIS directly to business results will enforce accountability and process improvement.
Scalability and Long-Term Strategy
Scalability is key when deciding whether to pursue territory-based or account-based selling for your business. Sales leadership must determine which model will scale, grow their team, and adapt to customers over time.
Territory sales management is often a more scalable approach early on as you grow. It allows businesses to expand geographically and enter new markets quickly. Reps can easily be sent to cover new territories without overhauling internal systems. However, as the deals get more complicated, this construct becomes harder to apply consistently and align.
Account-based selling is more front-end resource-heavy, but once developed, it scales well. High-potential accounts can be reached worldwide, regardless of their geographic location, through sales management. It’s ideal for companies serving big-enterprise customers, where longer lifetime value warrants longer sales cycles.
Hybrid systems are now widely used. Sales Management can use a combination of geography-based coverage for SMB and account-based strategies for target enterprise accounts. This variety will better serve to satisfy different buyers’ needs, and on the other hand, optimise resource allocation.
The secret to scale is a system. Documented processes, clearly defined roles, and investing in data integration and collaboration technology are imperative for sales management. Training and aligning marketing and customer success with sales is also critical.
Conclusion
Both territory-based sales and account-based selling provide unique benefits. Still, the right choice will depend on your company’s objectives, the resources and skills of your company, and the anticipated target audience. The right model is selected, implemented and optimised thanks to its Sales Management counterpart.
Sales management can align its strategic decisions with tactical execution by knowing how the two models function, differ in customer engagement, measure performance, and scale. The art isn’t in choosing but knowing how to use each effectively — or, often, blending the two for maximum impact.
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Frequently Asked Questions
Territory-based selling: Assign reps to individual areas and concentrate on building the local ecosystem. On the other hand, ABM identifies and targets a few high-value accounts, which often require personal engagement across multiple high-level decision makers. Territory models focus on market coverage; account-based models focus on strategic depth and enduring relationships. One or the other, or a combination of both, is chosen by sales leadership depending on product complexity, deal size and corporate goals — hybrid approaches may also be employed.
Territory-based Sales Leadership is excellent for companies that want to grow their regional presence or sell products at a high volume with shorter sales cycles. It is effective in industries where face-to-face contact, local market knowledge and quick transaction times are key. Sales Leadership enjoys smoother resource distribution and faster scaling at startups or companies experiencing rapid growth. This approach enables reps to create local credibility and the most coverage in specifically defined geographic areas.
Account-based selling (ABS) allows sales leadership to concentrate horizontally on high-value targets for deeper, more personalised relationships, communication, and bigger deals. It promotes sales, marketing, and customer success by working together across departments to reach the right stakeholders within each account. This is especially true in B2B, where sales cycles can be long and decision-making is complex. The returns to sales management include greater customer retention, bigger deals, and better sales alignment to enterprise goals.
Engagement in territory sales is broad and frequent, but less personal. Reps are there to maximise volume and touchpoints. Conversely, account-based selling equates to deep, strategic engagement with fewer, larger accounts. Another role of Sales Leadership is to ensure the ABS team focuses on research-oriented accounts, personalised outreach and making friends with people for the long term. That decision is based on the company’s target audience—territory for transactional sales, and account-based for strategic partnerships.
Local Sales Leadership traditionally monitors sales specifics like revenue by area, number of leads, meetings, and new customers. Account-based sales management considers account engagement, penetration rate, deal velocity, and customer lifetime value key metrics. Every model has different KPIS, aligning with how they drive sales. Sales leadership uses these metrics to analyse efficiency, set targets, and confirm reps are each working on the most effective activities for their configuration.
Yes, most places do a hybrid type to include depth and coverage. Sales leadership can delegate reps for territories to build market coverage (count) and set aside an additional team to pursue high-value accounts in ABE. This cohesion provides adaptability, optimal resource utilisation, wider market availability, and retention of key accounts. Hybrid models are particularly well-suited to companies with multiple customer segments or changing sales objectives.