Know-How Exchange : Other

I think that might be the worst way to split a territory. But if you wanted to you could total up the revenue/potential from all the letters and keep picking off the top until you get 1/3 or 1/5. It it all comes under AAA then that is all that person gets.

Michael

Open up a phone book and split the book into 3 equal sizes, and that would be your split. Or otherwise get a list of businesses in alphabetical order and break into roughly equal sizes.

That said, I agree with the others that there likely is a more efficient split. Maybe by geography (so that if you use outside sales, they don't have as large a territory to travel around). Or maybe by industry, so each sales person can focus on and learn how to best approach that specific industry.

I would sure like a lot more information. Are these salespeople in the field, or are they inside salespeople? Do you expect your salespeople attend networking events? Google handle social media related inquiries, when a company name might not be known? How expensive is your product or service? How long is your sales cycle? Will salespeople be given leads, or will they be expected to find their own leads? Will your salespeople be largely on commission or on a base salary? How innovative is your product... do you have to spend a lot of time educating your potential customers? How important are industry specific referrals? Is your company well known in the London market? If you determine that you will segment by company name... what method will you use to determine the official company name? How will you be tracking all this... do you have a CRM system in place? you currently have any sort of plan to handle split commissions? do you have comprehensive and exhaustive lists of the businesses in your target market? You mention this is for small businesses... do you have a different policy for larger businesses, and have you made a clear delineation between large and small businesses?

I'm shooting in the dark here... I don't really understand your product or market or sales philosophy... but if I were managing a sales/marketing effort alphabetically, I would maintain a central comprehensive database, and I would ask salespeople to get preapproval to work on each account. I would have them temporarily "own" a limited number of accounts similar to the way that a person might check books out of the library. Eventually I would attempt to migrate to a system where marketing findings leads and sales closes leads... and I would attempt to migrate my salespeople away from letters of the alphabet and towards vertical markets.

This sounds like a fun project... I'd be happy to spend a half-hour with you by phone (no charge) to talk about this a bit further if you would like.