I’ve reviewed territory plans for 100s of reps, and 95%+ make the same mistake in how they define their “top accounts.”
They look at:
- the company-defined ICP
- Number of employees
- Revenue
And prioritize off of that data. What they end up with are often great accounts… but not the best accounts for them.
I think AEs should focus more on “AE/account fit” than “company ICP/account fit.”
AE/account fit means you:
- Understand the account’s business model
- Know detailed use cases for that type of account
- Have strong customer stories from similar accounts
You are most likely to find AE/account fit in accounts that are similar to customers you manage, accounts you have closed, or accounts you are in a sales cycle with. What you learn in conversations with those accounts become gold when reaching out to and working with similar accounts.
If I were starting over as an AE today, I would want to spend my time on accounts that had great product/market fit + great fit for me. Product market fit would be similar to customers using our solution, and good fit for me would be similar to customers that I understood well.
Here’s the prompt I would use in ChatGPT/Claude/etc. to find these accounts:
“I’m a sales rep for [company]. These are a few companies that are a great fit for our solution:
[Company one], [company two], [company three], [company four], [company five].
Follow these steps:
1) Research my company’s solution
2) Analyze patterns across my customers (industry, size, tech, growth, challenges plus anything else you see valuable)
3) Find 50 lookalike companies matching my ICP
4) Provide company names and URLs”
The magic in this prompt is the companies you select – pick accounts you are already working with to some extent, or that you understand really well.
I’m sharing this today because real-time territory management has never been more important. With tariffs, global economic uncertainty, and general “unease” in most C-Suites, last month’s great account may be a terrible one today.
When I heard about the new Clay + Gong integration, my first thought was how it could support territory management at scale based on conversations today, not data from a year ago.
Gong captures what buyers are saying about their pains, priorities, and objections. Clay analyzes those conversations by region, segment, and persona.
Put them together – and you get live heat-maps of what’s heating up, and what’s gone cold. This will allow you to adjust your GTM strategy in real-time, and focus where your value prop still hits.
If you are an AE, hopefully this email gives you some ideas of how you can find/work your ideal fit accounts.
If you are a sales/revops/GTM leader, hopefully this email gets you thinking about how to adjust your territory strategy.
Thanks,
Kyle
