Podcast
October 24, 2025
Episode 64: The Hidden Lever: Why Territory Management Defines GTM Success
Territory management is the hidden lever behind GTM success. Learn how data, fairness, and AI are reshaping territory design.
In this episode of the RevOpsAF Podcast, host Matthew Volm, CEO and Founder of RevOps Co-op, sits down with Ralph Gootee, Co-founder and CEO of TigerEye, to break down one of the most under-discussed yet mission-critical topics in revenue operations: territory management.
Most companies think of territories as an annual admin task—something to update in Salesforce and move on from. But as Ralph explains, territory design is one of the most powerful—and dangerous—levers in any go-to-market (GTM) strategy. Done right, it accelerates revenue growth, improves fairness, and retains top sellers. Done poorly, it creates inequity, political fallout, and pipeline chaos that even the best reps can’t fix.
Ralph’s perspective is uniquely informed by his journey from co-founding and scaling PlanGrid (acquired by Autodesk for $875M) to now building TigerEye, an AI-native platform that gives sales, marketing, RevOps, and finance leaders instant answers to complex business questions through a conversational interface. His dual lens—as both an engineer and executive—makes him the rare leader who has seen territory design from the ground up and from the boardroom.
Ralph’s first exposure to the pain of territory management came not from a RevOps dashboard—but from real-world chaos. At PlanGrid, a construction software company born in San Francisco, growth came fast and unevenly. “We started in the Bay Area, so every major project there was already running PlanGrid,” he recalls. “That territory was gold—every building, every crane, every GC knew us.”
But the imbalance that came with that “home court advantage” quickly became apparent. One rep on the West Coast consistently hit 10x quota, while others in newer markets struggled to gain traction. The imbalance wasn’t about talent—it was about opportunity. “Our best rep was incredible,” Ralph says, “but he also had every big account in our home city. Once we realized that, we had to break the territory apart.”
The solution? PlanGrid moved from a geographic model to a hybrid approach that combined regional coverage with named account ownership. Ralph and his leadership team carved out ten named strategic accounts—companies like DPR and Whiting-Turner—and reassigned the rest of the region to new sellers. The impact was immediate. The rep kept his most strategic relationships, the new sellers gained room to grow, and overall revenue skyrocketed.
“It was painful at first,” Ralph admits. “No one wants their territory sliced up. But once we showed the data—why we were doing it, what the opportunity looked like—everyone saw that it was fair. That’s the power of transparency.”
Why is territory design so hard? Because it’s not just geography—it’s optimization. Ralph, a former radar engineer, compares territory allocation to solving a complex algorithm.
“I used to build radar systems,” he explains. “You’d have two sensors looking at the same object and need to make sure they knew they were seeing the same thing. That’s an optimization problem. Territories are exactly the same. You’re balancing pipeline, account volume, and revenue potential while making sure no one gets unfair advantage.”
Most organizations, he notes, skip the math entirely. Instead, they rely on spreadsheets, static account lists, or worse—gut feel. “We’ve seen companies still using the same territory maps they made five years ago,” Ralph says. “Even a basic optimization algorithm like an auction model can dramatically improve equity and efficiency. But most teams never apply that level of rigor.”
The result? Reps get uneven workloads, leadership misjudges performance, and resentment builds. “When your highest performer leaves because they feel cheated out of good accounts, that’s a million-dollar problem. And it happens all the time.”
For more on this topic check out the blog post Why Territory Management Breaks as You Scale (And How to Keep It Fair).
Territory changes are one of the few operational shifts that can make a top rep quit overnight. “We’ve lost reps over territory moves,” Ralph admits. “You have to manage it like a political campaign—show your data, tell your story, and build buy-in early.”
He recommends three principles for reducing blowback:
Without that collaboration, territory changes devolve into finger-pointing.
“If your sales leader has a map behind their desk that no one else can see,” he warns, “you’ve already lost control of the narrative.”
For more on this topic, check out the blog post The Curse of the Constant Shuffle: Why Territory Changes Haunt Sales Teams.
In a remote and digital-first world, do physical regions still matter? Ralph’s answer: absolutely—but only as part of a hybrid framework.
For enterprise or mid-market teams, a blend of geo-based coverage and named account assignments remains the gold standard. “Named accounts belong with your most experienced, relationship-driven reps—the ones who can maintain seven-figure relationships,” he explains. “But geography still matters for building trust. If you’re working Florida during hurricane season, that affects when and how you sell.”
As companies mature, Ralph suggests layering in industry segmentation once product-market fit is clear. “When you start seeing real traction in one sector—say, government or healthcare—that’s when you carve out vertical ownership. Start broad with geo, then refine with industry and account tiers as you scale.”
The end goal is balance: equity for reps, coverage for leadership, and predictability for finance.
Ralph tells a cautionary story from his time as an executive—one that many operators will recognize. “We had a sales leader who kept the only copy of the territory map behind his desk. Literally a physical map with names drawn on it in Sharpie. If you wanted to know who owned what, you had to ask him.”
That opacity, he says, is a massive red flag. “When visibility disappears, so does trust. And when reps stop trusting the process, you start losing your best people.”
Other warning signs include:
“Transparency and documentation are non-negotiable,” Ralph adds. “If your sellers can’t see why or how territories are drawn, you’ve created shadow politics that no comp plan can fix.”
For more on this topic, check out the blog post Scary Territory Stories: The Frankenstein Territory in Sales and RevOps.
When Ralph evaluates a company’s GTM coverage model, he starts with three diagnostics:
He also recommends integrating marketing attribution data to detect under-nurtured regions. “Sometimes your reps aren’t underperforming—they’re under-supported. When marketing isn’t investing in certain geos, pipeline suffers no matter how good the rep is.”
As the conversation widens, Ralph reflects on what makes a RevOps leader truly valuable to the C-suite. “Great operators don’t just clean data or build dashboards—they understand the North Star metrics driving the business and align their work to those.”
At modern SaaS companies, that means understanding both top-line growth and profitability levers. “If you can explain how your initiatives—territory rebalancing, quota setting, comp design—impact revenue efficiency or gross margin, you’re a strategic partner, not a ticket-taker.”
He adds that the best RevOps teams now own far more than systems. “At Google and Meta, the revenue operations teams run vendor management, analytics, even parts of data engineering. They’re not just supporting sales—they’re orchestrating the revenue engine.”
And in 2025, Ralph argues, every operator needs to develop an AI strategy. “It’s not enough to experiment with ChatGPT,” he says. “The best RevOps leaders are building agent ecosystems—different AIs specialized for comp, forecasting, territory planning, and GTM analytics. The human stays at the center, but AI is the new scaffolding.”
“The worst answer is ‘I don’t know how AI affects my business.’ The second worst is thinking AI will fix everything.” — Ralph Gootee
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For more resources on territory management and design, check out the TigerEye blog, Podcast, and event calendar.
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