Getting Started

Distribution is all about putting the best accounts into the hands of your reps (as opposed to the reps having to do their own prospecting). In this guide we will talk about what are the most effective ways to distribute accounts and how to choose one that works best for your circumstances.

Benefits of distribution

• Focus - allows you to focus your reps’ efforts on the best accounts (the accounts that are most likely to convert / accounts that are most valuable for business to close). Getting the team to target quicker.

• Rep Efficiency - because the accounts have already been identified for them (and ideally enriched with the data they typically research before outreach), the reps save time on their prospecting.

• Predictability - practising distribution allows you to understand how many accounts are necessary for reps to obtain their quotas. It is invaluable when trying to reach predictable revenue ("if we hire a new rep, what revenue we can expect?").

Although there’s many different ways you can distribute accounts to your reps, broadly speaking there’s two major approaches:

• Named Accounts Distribution

• Queue Based Distribution

Named Account Distribution

Named Account Distribution is the most common way to distribute accounts. The end goal is for reps to have a specific number of the accounts in their name. The count of the accounts assigned to each rep is defined by the number they need to hit their quota. It is typically used when you have a larger team and/or they work within specific territories.

Pros	Cons
Focuses reps & allows you to manage which accounts are being worked on first.	The exact number of accounts that a rep might need to hit the quota is difficult to determine (especially if you don’t have a lot of historical data) - if the rep has too little accounts it might cause them to miss the quota.
When the ratio of the accounts in your target market and the number of accounts you have to distribute is low, it allows you to distribute the accounts fairly (no single rep having all the best accounts in their name).	Depending on how you construe your territories, the reps in smaller territories might be working on lower quality accounts - conversely there might be high quality accounts that are not being worked on.

Queue Based Distribution

Queue Based Distribution is much more flexible than the Named Accounts approach. Instead of selecting accounts and assigning them to reps, the reps have access to a queue of prioritised accounts. Each rep can pick the accounts they want to work on depending on their capacity at the moment. When the rep assigns themselves with the account it removes it from the queue.

Pros	Cons
Easy to set up (you don’t need to know exactly how many accounts each rep should get, have strictly defined territories & balance the quality of accounts between the reps).	Encourages reps to hoard best quality accounts.
The reps have more control over what accounts they choose to engage with (meaning you don’t have to nail the prioritisation).	The accounts that are not the “best” quality might initially be completely ignored.

How to select the best approach?

Criteria	Named Accounts	Account Queue
Number of reps	Many	Few
Territories	Strictly Defined	Loose / No Territories
TAM/SAM Size to Rep Ratio	Low	High
Confidence in number of accounts needed to hit quota	High	Low
RevOps Resources Available	True	False

Recycling / Redistribution

It is part of the nature of sales that the majority of the leads that we distribute won’t engage. We need to therefore ensure that the accounts are redistributed at some cadence. A lack of redistribution, or the wrong cadence of redistribution is the biggest cause of failure in the long term.

Regardless of which approach you’re using to distribute the accounts in the first place - the rules for redistribution are the same. You need to define:

• Cadence (usually tied to cadence of goals for reps - i.e. quarterly).

• Rules for accounts to be removed from reps name (i.e. lack of activity for 30 days, specific disqualification reasons).

• Rules for accounts available for redistribution (i.e. haven’t had activity for the last 90 days, new contacts available etc.)

How do you validate that distribution worked?

The goal is to enable reps to hit their quota (however, they won’t be able to just hit their quota because the distribution has been done well - it will only increase their chances).

The main metric of whether the distribution has been successful is how many of the accounts have actually been worked on by the reps. Additionally, you should understand:

• How many accounts have been disqualified by reps due to poor fit.

• How many accounts reps sourced themselves.

The impact of distribution on sales performance:

• Comparing the performance after the distribution to the pre distribution performance.

  • Reps’ productivity (aka the number of accounts / contacts engaged).

  • Pipeline created (# and value of opps).