Theory vs. reality
Every territory design guide (including ours) makes the process sound orderly: define objectives, audit performance, build your data foundation, calculate workload indices, model scenarios, validate, implement. Seven clean steps.
In practice, territory redesign is one of the most politically charged, operationally complex initiatives a revenue operations team can take on. Reps fear losing their best accounts. Managers protect their teams. Finance wants higher quotas. And the data you need is never as clean as you want it to be.
This post shares the real lessons from territory redesigns: what actually happens, the decisions you'll face, and the things nobody warns you about.
The trigger: why redesigns actually start
Territory redesigns rarely start because someone read an article about territory optimization. They start because something breaks:
The hiring trigger. You've grown from 15 to 40 reps over 18 months. The original territory plan was designed for 15. You've been splitting territories ad hoc every time someone new joins. What remains is a patchwork of inconsistent boundaries, overlapping assignments, and unclear ownership.
The attrition trigger. Three reps left in one quarter. Their territories were temporarily absorbed by neighbors. Those neighbors are now overloaded, their performance is declining, and the "temporary" assignments are six months old.
The performance trigger. Quota attainment varies from 40% to 180% across territories. Your CRO asks: "Are we a territory design problem or a talent problem?" The answer is usually both, but you can't fix the talent problem until you fix the territory problem, because you can't tell which reps are underperforming vs. which reps have impossible territories.
The GTM shift trigger. The company launches a new product, enters a new market segment, or shifts from inside sales to field sales. The existing territory model wasn't designed for the new motion, and leads are routing to the wrong reps.
Whatever the trigger, the redesign starts with leadership acknowledging that the current state isn't working and committing to change.
Phase 1: The discovery you didn't expect
The first phase of any redesign is data gathering. Here's what you'll actually find:
Your data is worse than you think
Every territory redesign starts with optimism about CRM data quality. That optimism dies fast:
- 30-40% of accounts have missing or outdated address data (critical for geographic territories)
- Industry classifications are inconsistent ("Software" vs. "Technology" vs. "SaaS" vs. blank)
- Employee count is either from the account's founding year or completely fabricated
- Account ownership in the CRM doesn't match actual territory assignments (it hasn't been updated since the last rep change)
- Activity data varies wildly by rep (some log everything, some log nothing)
The lesson: Budget 2-3 weeks for data cleanup before you start modeling. Enrichment tools (ZoomInfo, Apollo, Clearbit) can fill gaps, but someone still needs to validate and reconcile.
The informal territory map
Every sales team has two territory maps: the official one and the real one. The official map says Rep A covers the Southeast. In reality, Rep A has three customers in Chicago because they came with the rep from a previous role. Rep B "doesn't do healthcare" even though their geographic territory includes the region's largest hospital system. Rep C is working a deal in Rep D's territory because "they have the relationship."
These informal agreements accumulate over years. They're not documented. When you start designing new territories, you'll uncover them — and every one is a potential conflict.
The lesson: Interview reps and managers before modeling. Ask: "Tell me about any accounts or relationships that don't match your official territory." You'll uncover 10-15% of accounts that need special handling.
Performance data doesn't tell the whole story
Raw revenue by territory is misleading. A territory that produced $2M last year might have had:
- A single whale deal that won't repeat
- A rep who's been there 5 years with deep relationships (new rep won't replicate)
- A legacy customer on an old contract that's about to churn
- Inbound leads from a one-time marketing campaign
Similarly, a territory that produced $500K might have been vacant for 3 months, had a ramping rep, or lacked marketing investment.
The lesson: Normalize performance data before using it for territory design. Strip out anomalies, adjust for rep tenure, and look at multi-year trends rather than single-year results.
Phase 2: The modeling decisions
How many scenarios is enough?
The territory design framework says to model 3-5 scenarios. In practice, you'll build 8-12 before finding one that works. Here's why:
- Scenario 1 optimizes for geographic balance but creates account-quality imbalance
- Scenario 2 optimizes for revenue potential but creates workload imbalance
- Scenario 3 balances everything but requires 4 more reps than you have
- Scenarios 4-8 are iterations trying to find a compromise
- Scenarios 9-12 accommodate political realities (more on that below)
The lesson: Don't try to find the perfect scenario. Find 2-3 good-enough scenarios that represent different tradeoffs, present them with the tradeoffs clearly articulated, and let leadership choose.
The "good enough" workload balance
Your workload index will never be perfectly balanced. Some territories will be 10% above average, others 15% below. That's fine. The goal isn't mathematical equality. It's ensuring no territory is so imbalanced that a competent rep can't succeed.
In practice, achieving +/- 15% balance across all territories is realistic. Achieving +/- 10% usually requires compromises that create other problems (splitting natural account clusters, creating awkward geographic boundaries, separating related accounts).
The lesson: Set your tolerance band at +/- 15-20% and accept that 1-2 territories will sit at the edges. Perfect is the enemy of deployed.
Named accounts: the 80/20 problem
In most redesigns, 15-20% of accounts generate 80% of the complexity. These are named accounts, strategic accounts, or accounts with complicated ownership histories. Every one of these needs a special decision:
- The account that spans 3 geographic territories (HQ in New York, manufacturing in Ohio, R&D in California)
- The account being actively pursued by two reps who both claim the relationship
- The customer who has a personal relationship with a specific rep and will be upset by a change
- The account that technically belongs in Territory A based on geography but is in the same industry vertical as Territory B's focus
The lesson: Create a named-account exception list. Handle these 15-20% individually outside the systematic territory model. Document the rationale for each assignment. Then build routing rules that account for them.
Phase 3: The politics
Territory redesign is the most politically sensitive initiative in sales operations. Here's what you'll face:
Reps who lose accounts
No matter how balanced your new design is, some reps will lose accounts they consider "theirs." This triggers loss aversion, the psychological reality that losing something hurts more than gaining something equivalent.
A rep who loses a $200K customer will be upset even if they gain $300K in new opportunity. The lost account is real and valued. The gained opportunity is theoretical and unproven.
How to manage it:
- Give reps a 30-60 day transition period to close active deals in their old territory
- Provide transition comp: if a deal in a transferring account closes within 90 days, both the old and new rep get partial credit
- Acknowledge the discomfort directly. Don't pretend it's a pure improvement for everyone
Managers protecting their teams
Sales managers will advocate for their reps. That's their job. But in a redesign, this often means lobbying for the status quo or for assignments that favor their team at the expense of overall balance.
How to manage it:
- Present data first, proposals second. When managers see the workload imbalance in their own teams, they become more open to change
- Get manager input during the validation phase, not after the decision. People support what they help create
- Make the criteria transparent. If everyone understands that territories are balanced by workload index and potential, it's harder to argue for special treatment
Executive sponsors
A territory redesign without executive sponsorship will die in committee. You need a CRO or VP Sales who will:
- Communicate the "why" to the team
- Make the final call on contested account assignments
- Hold managers accountable for implementing changes
- Absorb the short-term disruption for the long-term gain
The lesson: Don't start a territory redesign without explicit executive commitment to see it through.
Phase 4: The implementation
The rollout announcement
How you announce matters as much as what you announce:
- Context first: Explain why the redesign is happening. Share the data that shows imbalance. Connect it to the team's experience ("you've told us territories are unfair — here's the proof and the fix")
- Collective benefit: Frame it as revenue the team is leaving on the table, not as individual winners and losers
- Specifics second: After the context, share individual territory assignments. Give reps time to review before asking them to respond
- Transition details: Dates, deal protection rules, comp bridging, routing changes. Be specific about logistics
Routing and CRM updates
The territory redesign isn't done when the map is approved. It's done when:
- CRM account ownership is updated for every affected account
- Lead routing rules reflect new territory definitions
- Pipeline is reassigned or split according to transition rules
- Reporting dashboards reflect new territory boundaries
- Quota assignments are updated to match new territory potential
- Comp plans are adjusted if territory changes affect earning potential
This system update work typically takes 1-2 weeks for a mid-sized team. Don't underestimate it. A new territory map with old routing rules causes chaos.
The 90-day review
Set a mandatory review at 90 days post-implementation:
- Are leads routing correctly to new territories?
- Have any account ownership disputes surfaced?
- Is the workload balance holding up against actual activity?
- Are reps in new or expanded territories ramping as expected?
- Did any edge cases emerge that need additional routing rules?
This review catches issues before they become entrenched problems. It also demonstrates to the team that territory design is an ongoing discipline, not a one-time disruption.
What nobody warns you about
The performance dip
Expect a 1-2 quarter performance dip after a major territory redesign. Reps need time to learn new accounts, build new relationships, and develop pipeline in new areas. This is normal and temporary. Leadership needs to be prepared for it and not panic.
The data project underneath
Territory redesign often exposes — and requires fixing — fundamental CRM data quality issues. What starts as "redesign territories" becomes "clean up 10,000 account records." Budget for this. It's unglamorous but essential.
The second redesign
Your first redesign gets you from chaos to structure. It won't be perfect. Plan for a refinement cycle 6-9 months later, once you have performance data under the new model. The first redesign fixes the obvious problems. The refinement fixes the subtle ones.
It never ends
Territory design isn't a project with a completion date. It's a quarterly operational cadence. The companies that treat it as ongoing discipline outperform those that redesign once and forget about it.
The bottom line
Territory redesign is hard. The data is messy, the politics are real, and the implementation details matter as much as the strategy. But the payoff is significant: 2-7% revenue improvement, better rep retention, fairer comp, and more accurate forecasting.
The difference between organizations that succeed and those that stall isn't the quality of their territory model. It's the willingness to push through the messy middle — the data cleanup, the political conversations, the detailed implementation work — to get from a broken territory plan to a balanced one.
That's the work. And it's worth doing.