August 26, 2025 • 18 mins
Here's a question about sales territory disputes that'll make your head spin: What do you do when overlapping territories and shared relationships turn your sales team into a collection of lone wolves fighting over who owns what?
That's the exact predicament faced by Kayla Lujan, VP of Sales at Down to Earth Landscape and Irrigation, in Orlando, Florida. Her team manages defined territories, but their business model creates inevitable crossover with HOA managers who oversee multiple properties spanning across different reps' territories.
As she put it: "I've really seen the team kind of lose focus on working as one or team selling and more of … a what's mine versus working together."
If you're nodding your head right now, you're not alone. Territory disputes are one of the most destructive forces in sales organizations, and they're costing companies their collaborative culture and their best deals.
The Psychology Behind Sales Territory Wars
Salespeople are wired to win. And when territories overlap, that competitive drive turns inward, creating internal battles that hurt everyone.
I learned this lesson the hard way when I was a VP of sales managing local and regional account executives. We had big regional accounts sitting in local territories, and the fighting was relentless. Local reps would work around the system, hide opportunities, and go through back doors to protect "their" accounts.
The result? We lost major deals because the wrong person with insufficient skills was working them solo, or we'd win the business only to have explosive commission disputes after the fact.
But here's what shocked me most: When we gave people the choice between money or credit on the ranking report, they fought harder over the credit than the commission. They'd forgo 100% money but wage war over who got recognition for closing the deal.
That tells you everything you need to know about sales psychology. It's not just about money—it's about winning, recognition, and status.
The Real Cost of Territorial Thinking
Territory disputes create uncomfortable team meetings and destroy your sales effectiveness in three critical ways:
Lost Deal Value: When the wrong rep works a deal alone because they're protecting their turf, you lose the collective expertise that could close bigger opportunities.
Relationship Damage: Customers get confused when multiple reps approach them without coordination, making your organization look disorganized and unprofessional.
Top Performer Exodus: Your best salespeople get frustrated with the politics and infighting, leading them to seek opportunities at companies with better team cultures.
The companies that figure this out win big. The ones that don't hemorrhage talent and revenue to organizations that actually know how to build high-performing sales teams.
The Solution: Strategic Commission Pools and Clear Ownership
For Kayla's HOA challenge—and similar overlapping territory situations—here's the framework that actually works:
Assign Relationship Ownership: The rep with the core relationship (the HOA headquarters contact) owns account retention and expansion. They're responsible for keeping that account long-term and get compensated accordingly.
Create Local Opportunity Roles: Local reps in each territory focus on building relationships with on-site contacts—facility managers, groundskeepers, community center staff. They get compensated for new project acquisition and spot opportunities within their geographic area.
Implement Commission Pools: Instead of fighting over who gets what percentage, create a commission pool for each major account. The pool gets divided based on roles and contributions, not territorial claims.
Force Up-Front Agreements: Here's the crucial part: Make involved parties agree on commission splits before any work begins. Post-deal disputes are exponentially harder to resolve than pre-deal agreements.
The Leadership Mindset Shift
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:05):
This is the Sales Gravy Podcast. Hi. I'm
Jeb Blunt, best selling author of fanatical prospecting,
objections, sales EQ, and inked, and I'm here
to help you open more doors, close bigger
deals, and rock your commission check.
This is the Sales Gravy Podcast,
and this is Wisdom Wednesday where you drive
the agenda. Because on this segment of the
Sales Gravy Podcast, you bring your biggest sales
(00:26):
challenges and Jeb Blunt delivers his best answers.
And those answers, they come straight from the
trenches because Jeb's not just teaching sales, he's
out there prospecting, closing, and leading sales teams
every single day.
Before we jump in, I wanna let you
know about our upcoming release of the LinkedIn
Edge. Jeb wrote this book with Bryn Tillman.
It's an incredible book that you need to
have in your library right now. The LinkedIn
(00:48):
Edge is going to be released on October
6 on Amazon at anywhere that you buy
books. Alright. Let's take that next caller.
Alright. Next up on the show is Kayla
Luhan from Orlando,
Florida, a VP in sales
who has been recently stalking me on LinkedIn
because I see you everywhere. I I don't
think you're stalking me, but I see you
(01:09):
everywhere.
So what what's going on, Kayla? Hi, Jeff.
I'm really excited to be here. Thank you
so much for having me on the show.
I am the VP of sales at Down
to Earth Landscape and Irrigation based here in
Orlando, Florida.
I've been in my role for,
gosh, a little almost a year, give or
(01:29):
take, so I'm definitely still learning. And my
question for you today,
I'm managing teams that have defined territory lines.
However, there really tends to be some crossover
with relationships
or past history on opportunities.
And as we get into our busy bid
season, I've really seen the team kind of
(01:49):
lose
focus on working as one or team selling
and more of kind of, like, a what's
mine
versus working together.
So as a sales leader,
how can we tackle challenges
like this while maintaining
that good strong sales culture?
Oh, the the age old question. How do
I get these lone wolves to treat each
(02:11):
other like a team? That's right. Yeah. If
I had the answer to this, by the
way, I'd I'd be living on an island
off in The Caribbean all by myself.
Because I have the same problem in my
own team. We we get territorial.
We work with people on
how we can split commissions,
and it still gets territorial because salespeople,
by their nature, want to win. I remember
(02:31):
I'll go back to my days when I
was a vice president of sales.
And just to give you an idea of
how important the winning part is, we had
this split between local account executives
and regional account executives.
And the problem is is that those territories
would overlap, and in a lot of cases,
there'd be a big regional account sitting in
someone's local territory.
(02:52):
But the local sales reps wanted to keep
it all to themselves. They didn't wanna tell
anybody about it. They would work around the
system. They would get in the back door.
The problem with that is you'd lose some
really big deals because you had a person
who didn't have the talent, skill, or experience
level working on a big deal, and we
would find out it after the fact. And,
of course, the regional account executive would be
really, really mad.
(03:13):
Or they would close the business, and now
we have the conundrum of, hey. This person
just closed the business.
And the regional account executive is saying, no.
That's mine. I get the commission on that.
And you're like, well, you didn't even work
on it. And so you now you're in
a a pickle.
So what we did was we basically set
up a split. The split was this. You
can choose
either money or credit.
(03:34):
So in other words, you get the commission
for it or you can get the credit
on the ranking report for it.
Now this is what was shocking about this
experiment. When people have the choice between money
and credit, they fought over credit. They fought
over, did I actually close the deal? You
mean, you think how ridiculous that is. You
earned a 100% of the commission. You're walking
away with a big old check,
(03:55):
but you will fight to the death over,
did I get credit for it? And that
just tells us a lot about incentives. It
tells us a lot about the mindset of
salespeople
and the conundrum that you're dealing with, which
is I've got relationships and territories
that overlap. How do we all work together?
And I I don't have an answer for
that question
because it really does come down to what's
(04:17):
gonna be unique for your business. It's gonna
be something that you're gonna have to work
through all the unintended consequences of every little
lever that you pull to try to get
people to work together.
The easiest solution that we have in our
business is split commissions. When two people are
working on a deal, in a lot of
cases, we need people working on a deal.
And we have a a saying in our
(04:38):
company. We win as a team. We say
it over and over and over again. The
fist fights ensue, but we say it, and
we keep saying it because I think in
leadership, sometimes you just gotta repeat yourself and
repeat yourself and repeat yourself until you're blue
in the face, and then you get up
and you repeat yourself some more. We win
as a team, and we reward that through
praise, through telling people they did a good
(04:58):
job, and through recognition.
But it still doesn't take away the pain
of who gets what in the deal.
And the only way that we know how
to do this in our world because there's
just no two projects, there's no two trainings,
there's no two clients that are exactly alike,
is we force the two parties that are
working on a deal or the three parties
working on a deal to have a conversation
(05:19):
upfront
and come to an agreement on what that
splint's gonna be before it ever hits the
commission sheet. Yep. And I you probably experienced
that you have fights after the fact. Those
are a whole lot harder to clean up
than a fight before the fact. So one
suggestion for you, if you're having issues like
that, is you force your party, the parties
(05:39):
involved, to come up with a a solution
on their own, or you're gonna play King
Solomon and you're gonna create the solution and
nobody's gonna be happy.
That, again, goes back to repeat, repeat, repeat.
Real quickly on the territories and the overlaps,
can you help me understand, like, specifically from
a context standpoint,
what you're dealing with? Give me a specific
(06:00):
example.
Yeah. So here in Central Florida in the
Orlando area, I actually have,
five sellers.
I mean, this is a it is a
large territory,
a large market. The specific challenge is is
so we sell a lot to HOAs, homeowner
associations,
and that main POC that we're working with,
(06:20):
that manager,
typically manages properties across
all of Central Florida.
So it overlaps with multiple reps, and that's
where I kinda get that that fighting internally
of, well, that's my manager
even though that manager may have something outside
of that specific seller's territory. Good.
At one point in my life, I ran
national accounts
(06:41):
for a Fortune 200 company. It was a
great job. We had the same problem. Like,
you have a national account. They got a
national headquarters,
but they got locations
all over the place. And those locations
are overlapping into other territories.
The way that we work through that is
we would assign the headquarters to the rep
(07:01):
that had the relationship. So you've got a
relationship. You're managing this account out. The account's
gonna cross in different territories,
but you've got the core relationship.
Your primary role is to retain that account.
And if you don't retain that account, you're
gonna be in a lot of trouble,
and that's what we pay you for. So
you get paid for retaining the account and
expanding the relationship.
(07:22):
That makes a lot of sense where you've
got one POC
who's running multiple properties and a HOA,
and those relationships are gonna be super important
for retaining those accounts over time.
The problem is is that one person who's
running that headquarters, they can't be all the
places all the time. So you need your
local reps that are in those territories to
go out and reach into those communities where
(07:44):
there may be another contact locally on-site at
the clubhouse or the community center or what
have you, and have that relationship with them
about all the little things that are happening
every single day.
So the way that we would compensate that
is that we would pay direct commissions
on and however you compensate bonuses or what
have you to those individuals
for the actual work they were doing locally
(08:05):
for new projects or new opportunities,
this would we wouldn't be paying them a
commission for, say, an ongoing contract that was
signed at the central level. Right? So that
we signed a contract, and you'll see you
have an ongoing maintenance contract for landscaping or
for irrigation with those homeowners associations.
But we would pay that individual for going
out there, building relationship, and picking up all
(08:26):
those spot projects. I saw one this morning
in my community where we have a a
pretty,
militant homeowners association.
But I saw that local, landscape company that
works with them working on a specific project
that seems like it was brand new that
wasn't part of the normal irrigation. And I'm
sure you probably have things like that where
you're selling little things all all along. So
in that case,
(08:47):
the local rep gets some compensation
and reward
for having relationships
at those locations with the people on-site,
the groundskeepers, facility managers, what have you, that
are driving that. They get paid for picking
up new things.
And if there's a contract tied directly to
that to that community,
they get paid to be part of the
(09:08):
renewal process with that. And the person who
has the headquarters,
they get compensated for retaining and expanding that
account and working with the other reps. So
you gotta look at it as a pool
of commission if because you can't double pay
people. Right? So I'm sure that your owners
or your CEO would probably have a a
connection over this, but you just create a
pool. And so this is how much commission
(09:28):
there would be anyway, and this is how
we're gonna split that commission up based on
your role. You wanna make sure that the
person who has the headquarters
is incented to work with the other people
to go out and build it out because
they get a piece of the action for
all the expansion.
And the local people have an incentive to
work with the headquarters rep because the headquarters
rep, when they need to get something through,
(09:49):
is gonna have the relationship
to be able to get contracts through or
get projects approved or get POs approved, get
payment approved, that type of thing. And it
has to work as an ecosystem.
And the only way to do that is
headquarter rep, local reps, commission pool, and then
everybody gets a piece of the pie. And
that pie, by the way, could be, going
back to my old days, it could be
(10:10):
credit versus commission
depending on how your people wanna work. With
only five people, the credit thing is probably
not nearly as important as it is in
a organization. We have a thousand salespeople, and
everybody is jockeying to get on the top
of top tier and go to Presidents Club.
Does that make sense, or did I miss
anything in this? No. That makes that makes
perfect sense.
That's what I would think about doing. As
(10:31):
a new VP, I'm just curious before we
take off. What are some of the other
things that you struggle with? And that that
might actually be good for some of the
listeners here who are thinking about
how do I get promoted, or how do
I get a job like Kayla's. What are
some things that maybe surprised you as you
moved into this role that you weren't expecting?
That there's no training.
(10:53):
Right? I went from being in a a
direct seller many years ago into a regional
role. I was a regional for for three
years, and, you know, the only thing that
changed was my individual sales goal went away,
and then I had a team goal. Right?
There was, like, no
clear onboarding process. And then the same thing,
you know, happened when I went into the
VP role. And I think, you know, one
(11:14):
of my biggest challenges,
you know, now is I'm still managing a
group of direct sellers. So I have
six direct reports, but then I also have
a South region where the regional who replaced
me,
is managing nine people. So I guess I'd
love your advice on what, like, mindset
shifts or habits do I need to adopt
(11:36):
now as a VP
to lead effectively
at this level that I'm at now? I
love your conundrum and your predicament because you
are trying to live in two different places
at the same time. It's really no different
than salespeople who try to sell and lead
at the same time. There are days when
I'm sure that you feel almost schizophrenic
as you start working through the processes.
There's a couple of things that I would
(11:57):
say to you is, one,
make sure that you understand that you are
now in the executive suite
and that as you were growing up through
your career and you got to be VP
of sales all the way through your career,
you advance because you're really good at getting
things done. Like, you're great at selling. You're
great at knocking things out. I I guarantee,
and maybe I'm wrong. When the boss came
(12:18):
to you and said, hey. We need something
done. We need somebody to work in this
project. You go out. I'll take it. Right?
So your entire role was getting things done.
Now
you're in a world where when you're playing
the role of VP of sales, you're in
a get things done through other people, and
you're usually getting things done through other people
that are a couple of layers below you.
So now you're in a role where you're
setting more vision for where you wanna go,
(12:40):
and you're thinking strategically,
and you're thinking about how does this connect
into the bigger business plan.
The first time I was in a role
like yours, I think the biggest mistake that
I made
was I felt like my entire world was
go sell and go grow the business.
And I was dedicated, and I was driven
for it, but I didn't understand that there
(13:01):
was a link between me and the rest
of the business. And that link was their
operations managers. There's a CEO. There's a COO.
There's a CFO.
All of these people are running PNLs, and
they're trying to grow the business as well.
And I needed to be a part of
those conversations versus the guy that's coming in
out of the field holding a trophy up,
right, that I went out and shot and
(13:22):
said, look, everybody. Look how great we are.
We're killing everything.
And that was disconnected from the greater conversation.
I had this conversation just recently with a
sales leader. So I was playing golf with,
and he he may be able to listen
to this. You know, he's got this driving.
He grew up doing things. He's the greatest
salesperson in the world,
but he got disconnected from the leadership group
(13:43):
because he's out in the field making things
happen.
You wanna make sure that you're scheduling quality
time to spend
with your operating managers, your CEO, your CFO,
your COO.
You wanna make sure that you are thinking
strategically how does what am I doing connecting
with the purpose of the business, the objective
of the business, the business plan. You wanna
(14:03):
make sure that you under clearly understand the
p and l and how decisions are made.
Then at the same time, you've gotta be
an umbrella
for the sales team. Right? You gotta protect
them because nobody on the leadership team, if
they're in operations, has a clue how to
sell, although all of them have an opinion
about what you do, and they all think
it's a lot easier than it really is.
(14:25):
So building those relationships and creating that coalition
and being part of that leadership group is
a crucial part of your long term growth.
And as you continue to move through the
the organization
or or another organization to which I'm clear
that you're gonna be able to do, I
mean, you've got everything that it takes and
all the talent that it takes to do
that. But don't lose sight of you've moved
(14:46):
into a different role, and you do need
to step in both places at the same
time. But I would say that's what the
biggest mistake I see with new VPs. They
either go too strategic
and they leave the tactical,
or they are all tactical and no strategic,
and they don't get a good balance in
there that that allows them to create great
relationships
and coalitions inside the organization. So long term,
they're able to accomplish their objectives.
(15:08):
Yeah. That's great advice. I I tend to
be automatically tactical because that's what I've always
been. So I do I gotta work on
that balance a little bit and make it
make it more even, so that's great advice.
Thank you. You know, if we were gonna
pick a person that we were gonna hire,
a person who gets stuff done or a
person who thinks about getting stuff done, we're
gonna go for the person who gets stuff
done because you can learn how to think
(15:29):
about getting stuff done. But if all you
do is think and not do, that's a
bigger problem. How familiar are you with, Mike
Weinberg?
Oh my gosh. So familiar. I got all
his I your books and his books right
next to each other on my bookshelf. Okay.
Yes. Very good. So a couple have you
been to one of his events?
I haven't. No. Okay. So one one of
the things I would suggest is go to
Weinberg's website and sign up to one of
(15:50):
his events. They have them up in Atlanta,
and they're one day events, and it's all
focused around sales leadership. And I think that
would be a really good opportunity for you.
And, also and folks, everybody who's listening and
watching this as a gratuitous plug, but Kayla
set me up for this. The outbound conference
is coming up in 2026.
We'll be announcing the location. We signed all
(16:11):
the contracts and everything. So we're announcing location
in a couple of weeks, but we will
have one day of that conference that's gonna
be an outbound leadership summit, and it's built
for people like you. So it's built for
executive sales leaders who are coming in, and
we're gonna have some of the top speakers
and minds
in sales leadership,
and we're gonna bring everybody together in that
(16:31):
space.
So great for your salespeople and great for
leaders. And it's the first time we've ever
done a pure leadership summit, but I think
that's gonna be something that you're gonna wanna
put on your long term plan. That'll be
November 2026, but you wanna put that on
your long term plan as something that you'll
use to then move up an an even
further level in sales leadership.
(16:52):
Awesome. Thank you so much for your time.
I greatly appreciate it. Have a good one.
Bye.
If you've got a question for the show,
go to sales gravy dot com forward slash
ask. That's salesgravy.com/ask
and submit your form. Let's drop this thing
up with a final thought. Kayla's challenge is
the classic territory overlap versus team selling dilemma.
(17:12):
Here's the play that works in the real
world.
Assign a headquarters owner, empower local territory partners,
and split rewards by role upfront.
Put it in writing before the work begins.
Create a commission pool tied to the total
value of the relationship.
The HQ owner is paid to retain and
expand the account, and the locals are paid
(17:33):
to surface projects, handle site level relationships, and
drive renewals.
Build the habit of pre commitment agreements.
If multiple sellers touch a deal, they negotiate
the split before it hits payroll.
Then reinforce the culture with a simple drumbeat.
We win as a team. Recognize shared wins
publicly,
measure cooperation,
(17:54):
not just bookings, and hold everyone accountable to
the standard.
When roles are clear, incentives are aligned, and
expectations are agreed to in advance,
turf wars fade, and revenue always grows. And
remember,
when you're tired, you're hungry, and you're ready
to go home, always make one more call.
This is Jeblen Junior, and we'll catch you
(18:14):
next time on the Sales Ravey Podcast.
This is the Sales Gravy Podcast. Hi. I'm
Jeb Blunt, best selling author of fanatical prospecting,
objections, sales EQ, and inked, and I'm here
to help you open more doors, close bigger
deals, and rock your commission check.
This is the Sales Gravy Podcast,
and this is Wisdom Wednesday where you drive
the agenda. Because on this segment of the
Sales Gravy Podcast, you bring your biggest sales
(00:26):
challenges and Jeb Blunt delivers his best answers.
And those answers, they come straight from the
trenches because Jeb's not just teaching sales, he's
out there prospecting, closing, and leading sales teams
every single day.
Before we jump in, I wanna let you
know about our upcoming release of the LinkedIn
Edge. Jeb wrote this book with Bryn Tillman.
It's an incredible book that you need to
have in your library right now. The LinkedIn
(00:48):
Edge is going to be released on October
6 on Amazon at anywhere that you buy
books. Alright. Let's take that next caller.
Alright. Next up on the show is Kayla
Luhan from Orlando,
Florida, a VP in sales
who has been recently stalking me on LinkedIn
because I see you everywhere. I I don't
think you're stalking me, but I see you
(01:09):
everywhere.
So what what's going on, Kayla? Hi, Jeff.
I'm really excited to be here. Thank you
so much for having me on the show.
I am the VP of sales at Down
to Earth Landscape and Irrigation based here in
Orlando, Florida.
I've been in my role for,
gosh, a little almost a year, give or
(01:29):
take, so I'm definitely still learning. And my
question for you today,
I'm managing teams that have defined territory lines.
However, there really tends to be some crossover
with relationships
or past history on opportunities.
And as we get into our busy bid
season, I've really seen the team kind of
(01:49):
lose
focus on working as one or team selling
and more of kind of, like, a what's
mine
versus working together.
So as a sales leader,
how can we tackle challenges
like this while maintaining
that good strong sales culture?
Oh, the the age old question. How do
I get these lone wolves to treat each
(02:11):
other like a team? That's right. Yeah. If
I had the answer to this, by the
way, I'd I'd be living on an island
off in The Caribbean all by myself.
Because I have the same problem in my
own team. We we get territorial.
We work with people on
how we can split commissions,
and it still gets territorial because salespeople,
by their nature, want to win. I remember
(02:31):
I'll go back to my days when I
was a vice president of sales.
And just to give you an idea of
how important the winning part is, we had
this split between local account executives
and regional account executives.
And the problem is is that those territories
would overlap, and in a lot of cases,
there'd be a big regional account sitting in
someone's local territory.
(02:52):
But the local sales reps wanted to keep
it all to themselves. They didn't wanna tell
anybody about it. They would work around the
system. They would get in the back door.
The problem with that is you'd lose some
really big deals because you had a person
who didn't have the talent, skill, or experience
level working on a big deal, and we
would find out it after the fact. And,
of course, the regional account executive would be
really, really mad.
(03:13):
Or they would close the business, and now
we have the conundrum of, hey. This person
just closed the business.
And the regional account executive is saying, no.
That's mine. I get the commission on that.
And you're like, well, you didn't even work
on it. And so you now you're in
a a pickle.
So what we did was we basically set
up a split. The split was this. You
can choose
either money or credit.
(03:34):
So in other words, you get the commission
for it or you can get the credit
on the ranking report for it.
Now this is what was shocking about this
experiment. When people have the choice between money
and credit, they fought over credit. They fought
over, did I actually close the deal? You
mean, you think how ridiculous that is. You
earned a 100% of the commission. You're walking
away with a big old check,
(03:55):
but you will fight to the death over,
did I get credit for it? And that
just tells us a lot about incentives. It
tells us a lot about the mindset of
salespeople
and the conundrum that you're dealing with, which
is I've got relationships and territories
that overlap. How do we all work together?
And I I don't have an answer for
that question
because it really does come down to what's
(04:17):
gonna be unique for your business. It's gonna
be something that you're gonna have to work
through all the unintended consequences of every little
lever that you pull to try to get
people to work together.
The easiest solution that we have in our
business is split commissions. When two people are
working on a deal, in a lot of
cases, we need people working on a deal.
And we have a a saying in our
(04:38):
company. We win as a team. We say
it over and over and over again. The
fist fights ensue, but we say it, and
we keep saying it because I think in
leadership, sometimes you just gotta repeat yourself and
repeat yourself and repeat yourself until you're blue
in the face, and then you get up
and you repeat yourself some more. We win
as a team, and we reward that through
praise, through telling people they did a good
(04:58):
job, and through recognition.
But it still doesn't take away the pain
of who gets what in the deal.
And the only way that we know how
to do this in our world because there's
just no two projects, there's no two trainings,
there's no two clients that are exactly alike,
is we force the two parties that are
working on a deal or the three parties
working on a deal to have a conversation
(05:19):
upfront
and come to an agreement on what that
splint's gonna be before it ever hits the
commission sheet. Yep. And I you probably experienced
that you have fights after the fact. Those
are a whole lot harder to clean up
than a fight before the fact. So one
suggestion for you, if you're having issues like
that, is you force your party, the parties
(05:39):
involved, to come up with a a solution
on their own, or you're gonna play King
Solomon and you're gonna create the solution and
nobody's gonna be happy.
That, again, goes back to repeat, repeat, repeat.
Real quickly on the territories and the overlaps,
can you help me understand, like, specifically from
a context standpoint,
what you're dealing with? Give me a specific
(06:00):
example.
Yeah. So here in Central Florida in the
Orlando area, I actually have,
five sellers.
I mean, this is a it is a
large territory,
a large market. The specific challenge is is
so we sell a lot to HOAs, homeowner
associations,
and that main POC that we're working with,
(06:20):
that manager,
typically manages properties across
all of Central Florida.
So it overlaps with multiple reps, and that's
where I kinda get that that fighting internally
of, well, that's my manager
even though that manager may have something outside
of that specific seller's territory. Good.
At one point in my life, I ran
national accounts
(06:41):
for a Fortune 200 company. It was a
great job. We had the same problem. Like,
you have a national account. They got a
national headquarters,
but they got locations
all over the place. And those locations
are overlapping into other territories.
The way that we work through that is
we would assign the headquarters to the rep
(07:01):
that had the relationship. So you've got a
relationship. You're managing this account out. The account's
gonna cross in different territories,
but you've got the core relationship.
Your primary role is to retain that account.
And if you don't retain that account, you're
gonna be in a lot of trouble,
and that's what we pay you for. So
you get paid for retaining the account and
expanding the relationship.
(07:22):
That makes a lot of sense where you've
got one POC
who's running multiple properties and a HOA,
and those relationships are gonna be super important
for retaining those accounts over time.
The problem is is that one person who's
running that headquarters, they can't be all the
places all the time. So you need your
local reps that are in those territories to
go out and reach into those communities where
(07:44):
there may be another contact locally on-site at
the clubhouse or the community center or what
have you, and have that relationship with them
about all the little things that are happening
every single day.
So the way that we would compensate that
is that we would pay direct commissions
on and however you compensate bonuses or what
have you to those individuals
for the actual work they were doing locally
(08:05):
for new projects or new opportunities,
this would we wouldn't be paying them a
commission for, say, an ongoing contract that was
signed at the central level. Right? So that
we signed a contract, and you'll see you
have an ongoing maintenance contract for landscaping or
for irrigation with those homeowners associations.
But we would pay that individual for going
out there, building relationship, and picking up all
(08:26):
those spot projects. I saw one this morning
in my community where we have a a
pretty,
militant homeowners association.
But I saw that local, landscape company that
works with them working on a specific project
that seems like it was brand new that
wasn't part of the normal irrigation. And I'm
sure you probably have things like that where
you're selling little things all all along. So
in that case,
(08:47):
the local rep gets some compensation
and reward
for having relationships
at those locations with the people on-site,
the groundskeepers, facility managers, what have you, that
are driving that. They get paid for picking
up new things.
And if there's a contract tied directly to
that to that community,
they get paid to be part of the
(09:08):
renewal process with that. And the person who
has the headquarters,
they get compensated for retaining and expanding that
account and working with the other reps. So
you gotta look at it as a pool
of commission if because you can't double pay
people. Right? So I'm sure that your owners
or your CEO would probably have a a
connection over this, but you just create a
pool. And so this is how much commission
(09:28):
there would be anyway, and this is how
we're gonna split that commission up based on
your role. You wanna make sure that the
person who has the headquarters
is incented to work with the other people
to go out and build it out because
they get a piece of the action for
all the expansion.
And the local people have an incentive to
work with the headquarters rep because the headquarters
rep, when they need to get something through,
(09:49):
is gonna have the relationship
to be able to get contracts through or
get projects approved or get POs approved, get
payment approved, that type of thing. And it
has to work as an ecosystem.
And the only way to do that is
headquarter rep, local reps, commission pool, and then
everybody gets a piece of the pie. And
that pie, by the way, could be, going
back to my old days, it could be
(10:10):
credit versus commission
depending on how your people wanna work. With
only five people, the credit thing is probably
not nearly as important as it is in
a organization. We have a thousand salespeople, and
everybody is jockeying to get on the top
of top tier and go to Presidents Club.
Does that make sense, or did I miss
anything in this? No. That makes that makes
perfect sense.
That's what I would think about doing. As
(10:31):
a new VP, I'm just curious before we
take off. What are some of the other
things that you struggle with? And that that
might actually be good for some of the
listeners here who are thinking about
how do I get promoted, or how do
I get a job like Kayla's. What are
some things that maybe surprised you as you
moved into this role that you weren't expecting?
That there's no training.
(10:53):
Right? I went from being in a a
direct seller many years ago into a regional
role. I was a regional for for three
years, and, you know, the only thing that
changed was my individual sales goal went away,
and then I had a team goal. Right?
There was, like, no
clear onboarding process. And then the same thing,
you know, happened when I went into the
VP role. And I think, you know, one
(11:14):
of my biggest challenges,
you know, now is I'm still managing a
group of direct sellers. So I have
six direct reports, but then I also have
a South region where the regional who replaced
me,
is managing nine people. So I guess I'd
love your advice on what, like, mindset
shifts or habits do I need to adopt
(11:36):
now as a VP
to lead effectively
at this level that I'm at now? I
love your conundrum and your predicament because you
are trying to live in two different places
at the same time. It's really no different
than salespeople who try to sell and lead
at the same time. There are days when
I'm sure that you feel almost schizophrenic
as you start working through the processes.
There's a couple of things that I would
(11:57):
say to you is, one,
make sure that you understand that you are
now in the executive suite
and that as you were growing up through
your career and you got to be VP
of sales all the way through your career,
you advance because you're really good at getting
things done. Like, you're great at selling. You're
great at knocking things out. I I guarantee,
and maybe I'm wrong. When the boss came
(12:18):
to you and said, hey. We need something
done. We need somebody to work in this
project. You go out. I'll take it. Right?
So your entire role was getting things done.
Now
you're in a world where when you're playing
the role of VP of sales, you're in
a get things done through other people, and
you're usually getting things done through other people
that are a couple of layers below you.
So now you're in a role where you're
setting more vision for where you wanna go,
(12:40):
and you're thinking strategically,
and you're thinking about how does this connect
into the bigger business plan.
The first time I was in a role
like yours, I think the biggest mistake that
I made
was I felt like my entire world was
go sell and go grow the business.
And I was dedicated, and I was driven
for it, but I didn't understand that there
(13:01):
was a link between me and the rest
of the business. And that link was their
operations managers. There's a CEO. There's a COO.
There's a CFO.
All of these people are running PNLs, and
they're trying to grow the business as well.
And I needed to be a part of
those conversations versus the guy that's coming in
out of the field holding a trophy up,
right, that I went out and shot and
(13:22):
said, look, everybody. Look how great we are.
We're killing everything.
And that was disconnected from the greater conversation.
I had this conversation just recently with a
sales leader. So I was playing golf with,
and he he may be able to listen
to this. You know, he's got this driving.
He grew up doing things. He's the greatest
salesperson in the world,
but he got disconnected from the leadership group
(13:43):
because he's out in the field making things
happen.
You wanna make sure that you're scheduling quality
time to spend
with your operating managers, your CEO, your CFO,
your COO.
You wanna make sure that you are thinking
strategically how does what am I doing connecting
with the purpose of the business, the objective
of the business, the business plan. You wanna
(14:03):
make sure that you under clearly understand the
p and l and how decisions are made.
Then at the same time, you've gotta be
an umbrella
for the sales team. Right? You gotta protect
them because nobody on the leadership team, if
they're in operations, has a clue how to
sell, although all of them have an opinion
about what you do, and they all think
it's a lot easier than it really is.
(14:25):
So building those relationships and creating that coalition
and being part of that leadership group is
a crucial part of your long term growth.
And as you continue to move through the
the organization
or or another organization to which I'm clear
that you're gonna be able to do, I
mean, you've got everything that it takes and
all the talent that it takes to do
that. But don't lose sight of you've moved
(14:46):
into a different role, and you do need
to step in both places at the same
time. But I would say that's what the
biggest mistake I see with new VPs. They
either go too strategic
and they leave the tactical,
or they are all tactical and no strategic,
and they don't get a good balance in
there that that allows them to create great
relationships
and coalitions inside the organization. So long term,
they're able to accomplish their objectives.
(15:08):
Yeah. That's great advice. I I tend to
be automatically tactical because that's what I've always
been. So I do I gotta work on
that balance a little bit and make it
make it more even, so that's great advice.
Thank you. You know, if we were gonna
pick a person that we were gonna hire,
a person who gets stuff done or a
person who thinks about getting stuff done, we're
gonna go for the person who gets stuff
done because you can learn how to think
(15:29):
about getting stuff done. But if all you
do is think and not do, that's a
bigger problem. How familiar are you with, Mike
Weinberg?
Oh my gosh. So familiar. I got all
his I your books and his books right
next to each other on my bookshelf. Okay.
Yes. Very good. So a couple have you
been to one of his events?
I haven't. No. Okay. So one one of
the things I would suggest is go to
Weinberg's website and sign up to one of
(15:50):
his events. They have them up in Atlanta,
and they're one day events, and it's all
focused around sales leadership. And I think that
would be a really good opportunity for you.
And, also and folks, everybody who's listening and
watching this as a gratuitous plug, but Kayla
set me up for this. The outbound conference
is coming up in 2026.
We'll be announcing the location. We signed all
(16:11):
the contracts and everything. So we're announcing location
in a couple of weeks, but we will
have one day of that conference that's gonna
be an outbound leadership summit, and it's built
for people like you. So it's built for
executive sales leaders who are coming in, and
we're gonna have some of the top speakers
and minds
in sales leadership,
and we're gonna bring everybody together in that
(16:31):
space.
So great for your salespeople and great for
leaders. And it's the first time we've ever
done a pure leadership summit, but I think
that's gonna be something that you're gonna wanna
put on your long term plan. That'll be
November 2026, but you wanna put that on
your long term plan as something that you'll
use to then move up an an even
further level in sales leadership.
(16:52):
Awesome. Thank you so much for your time.
I greatly appreciate it. Have a good one.
Bye.
If you've got a question for the show,
go to sales gravy dot com forward slash
ask. That's salesgravy.com/ask
and submit your form. Let's drop this thing
up with a final thought. Kayla's challenge is
the classic territory overlap versus team selling dilemma.
(17:12):
Here's the play that works in the real
world.
Assign a headquarters owner, empower local territory partners,
and split rewards by role upfront.
Put it in writing before the work begins.
Create a commission pool tied to the total
value of the relationship.
The HQ owner is paid to retain and
expand the account, and the locals are paid
(17:33):
to surface projects, handle site level relationships, and
drive renewals.
Build the habit of pre commitment agreements.
If multiple sellers touch a deal, they negotiate
the split before it hits payroll.
Then reinforce the culture with a simple drumbeat.
We win as a team. Recognize shared wins
publicly,
measure cooperation,
(17:54):
not just bookings, and hold everyone accountable to
the standard.
When roles are clear, incentives are aligned, and
expectations are agreed to in advance,
turf wars fade, and revenue always grows. And
remember,
when you're tired, you're hungry, and you're ready
to go home, always make one more call.
This is Jeblen Junior, and we'll catch you
(18:14):
next time on the Sales Ravey Podcast.
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