One of the most overlooked parts of go-to-market strategy and territory design are Account Assignment Models. Choosing the Account Assignment Model that is right for your business can be the difference between hitting your revenue goals and missing plan.
Below, we explore the most common Account Assignment Models, the key differences between them, and considerations for deciding which is right for your business.
Table of Contents
- What are Account Assignment Models?
- What are the key differences between Account Assignment Models?
- How to decide which Account Assignment Model is the right one for you?
- Automating Account Assignments
What are Account Assignment Models?
Account Assignment Models are the way that accounts are distributed to your team to be worked. In most revenue organizations, SDRs and Account Executives are given or assigned specific accounts for them to focus their time and energy on.
Account Assignment Models dictate not only who is working which account at any given time, but are a key piece in crafting your organization’s entire go-to-market strategy. Unfortunately, there isn’t a one size fits all approach when it comes to Account Assignment Models.
In the next section, we will cover the most popular account assignment models and the key differences between them to help you decide which is the right one for your org.
What are the different types of Account Assignment Models?
While there is an endless number of potential ways that accounts can be distributed, most organizations adopt one of the three most common Account Assignment Models below:
- Fully Distributed
- Holding Tank
- Fishing Ponds
Fully Distributed
In a Fully Distributed account assignment model, every account within your Total Addressable Market (TAM) is divided up and assigned to a unique owner. More common among earlier-stage startups, a Fully Distributed model offers one of the simplest approaches to account assignments.
Key benefits of Fully Distributed assignment model
With a Fully Distributed account assignments, in theory, no stone is left unturned. Because every account has an owner, there is no question who is responsible for each account. When a new MQL is created, it can be immediately routed to the appropriate owner.
The simplicity of this model makes it an easy choice for startups.
Challenges of Fully Distributed assignment model
However, there are some key challenges with a Fully Distributed account assignment model.
- Prioritization of key accounts becomes difficult
- Inconsistent targeting
- Imbalances can persist
- New accounts outside of the CRM
It’s typical to see the vast majority of accounts in a single rep’s book without recent activity or even without activity at all. Instead, name brands and more recognized logos are prioritized due to recognition bias.
One of the byproducts of a Fully Distributed assignment model is large differences in how each individual rep prioritizes and works the accounts in their book or territory. Rather than having a single, consistent view of what accounts make up the Ideal Customer Profile and work from a single source of truth for account scoring or tiering, many reps end up creating their own internal scoring or prioritization process.
As the go-to-market team starts to grow, it is common to begin seeing more imbalance across reps in a Fully Distributed assignment model. More tenured sellers can end up owning the vast majority of accounts creating inequity across the entire team. New sellers looking to ramp are oftentimes left with the scraps because the top accounts are already accounted for.
Without tight rules of engagement and enforcement, speed to lead, equitability, and performance can start to become even bigger pain points.
Holding Tank
As companies begin to mature their overall territory process, it is common to shift from a Fully Distributed model to the Holding Tank model.
With the Holding Tank model, individual sellers are able to focus on a narrower set of pre-selected accounts. In the meantime, sales managers or revenue operations teams become responsible for the assignment of accounts from the Holding Tank to individual reps.
Key benefits of the Holding Tank assignment model
The Holding Tank approach requires greater alignment between sellers and Revenue Operations as the vast majority of accounts are no longer in the hands of sellers. Communication on which accounts are being assigned to which sellers and at which frequency are critical to avoid issues.
One of the biggest benefits of the Holding Tank is spotting issues becomes significantly easier. When book sizes are limited, it becomes
Challenges of the Holding Tank assignment model
Some of the same challenges with the Fully Distributed model still persist with the Holding Tank model, while others are even more exacerbated. Depending on the size of your account list, it’s very easy for the Holding Tank to be even more unwieldy.
Rather than an individual seller navigating a massive number of accounts, in the Holing Tank model the onus is typically shifted to RevOps to manage. One of the worst case scenarios is to end up with a Holding Tank filled to the brim with high-quality ICP accounts that are showing engagement and are ready to be sold to.
Some of the risks of the Holding Tank model can be mitigated through better Account Targeting, Book Navigation, and a rock solid Disqualification Process.
Fishing Ponds
Building on the Holding Tank model, Fishing Ponds takes the Holding Tank model one step further by creating more, smaller pools of accounts to select accounts from. That can be individually crafted to better suit a team or even down to the individual level.
Key benefits of the Fishing Tank assignment model
In more mature organizations, there can be an intentionally wide difference in the accounts that are being pursued by each team. Smaller Fishing Ponds makes navigating and finding new accounts to work even more manageable for sellers.
Instead of having to sort through all possible accounts in their TAM, sellers can sift through a much smaller list and start to dive even deeper into the most relevant data points and signals for each account. By limiting the time spent on account targeting and selection, sellers are able to spend more time personalizing outreach and hitting more channels of engagement with their outreach.
Challenges of the Fishing Tank assignment model
One of the potential downsides of Fishing Ponds is the increased complexity with managing multiple Fishing Ponds. Routing rules and approval workflows need to be in place to ensure accounts are placed in the appropriate Fishing Pond.
Additionally, cross-collaboration can be more challenging in this model than in the Holding Tank model since the number of reps touching these accounts is a lot lower.
How to decide which Account Assignment model is right for you?
When it comes to Account Assignment, unfortunately there isn’t a clear cut winner for every organization. Instead, the pros and cons of each model should be weighed against the goals, maturity, and operational effectiveness of the business.
While there are not hard and fast rules, it is typical for most organizations to follow the Account Assignment Lifecycle Model.
Fully Distributed -> Holding Tank -> Fishing Pools
Companies often start with Fully Distributed assignment model when building out their sales process and CRM for the first time. In the earliest days, most orgs only have an idea of what their Ideal Customer Profile is and sellers may be testing a wide range of messaging across different types of accounts and buyer personas.
As the number of accounts, opportunities, and team size starts to grow, many make the switch to a Holding Tank. This can coincide with starting to get more clear with the types of customers you want to be targeting and
Finally, while not a requirement, many orgs find themselves moving towards a Fishing Pond model as their go-to-market teams start to become segmented more by the company sizes they target, geos, or industries. Limiting the pool of accounts for reps to filter through allows them to spend more of their time focusing on versus account selection.
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Deciding which account assignment model is right for your business can be a headache. Book a demo with AccountAim to explore which model might be right for you.
