Carve Pumpkins, Not Territories

Take the terror out of territories.

It’s annual planning season AND it’s almost halloween. That means it’s time for a friendly reminder.

Here’s an account coverage secret that drives unreasonably efficient B2B sales teams. They toss the high-stakes, once-a-year geographic carve and use dynamic books instead.

Instead of carving fixed patches, assigning them to reps and telling the reps to figure it out, teams that use dynamic books do the following:

1️⃣ Ruthlessly define ICP and tier accounts.

2️⃣ Keep segmentation (SMB, MM, Ent, etc) but drop geography.

3️⃣ Do a bottoms-up analysis to calculate how many accounts reps can actually work at once. (Usually ~100 accounts, or fewer depending on segment.)

4️⃣ Assign the best accounts until you max out rep capacity. Leave the rest in a ready pool for marketing nurture.

5️⃣ Let the reps cook. They’ll either turn accounts into customers or find out a reason they can’t make progress.

6️⃣ If a rep can’t make progress, let them return the account to the pool with clear guardrails.

7️⃣ Top off the reps’ books with the next best set of accounts available from the ready pool.

8️⃣ Hold reps accountable for covering their books. If they don’t, retrieve and redistribute the accounts they’re not working.

🔁 Repeat 1-8 throughout the year.

📈 Watch pipeline increase¹.

No once-a-year carve trying to goldilocks your territories, no empty territories, no imbalances, just efficient account coverage that dynamically adapts to market conditions.

There really is no better way to run an inside sales motion in 2025.

If you want to learn more about how the model works or how to use Gradient Works to implement it, hit me up.

1. We've seen adoption of dynamic books do things like increase pipeline by 16% and drive more total meetings even after a 50% headcount reduction.