Beyond the Territory Plan: Your First 90 Days in a New Sales Role
Setting yourself up for success requires more than just building a strong territory plan.
In many sales roles, particularly those with longer sales cycles, it can take months before you've had enough time to close deals.
I think of this as the "Before Closing" period - You can't yet point to a revenue number as evidence that you're succeeding. So over your first 90 days, you need to consider other signals that keep you on track.
There are two things to have in mind when you start a new role:
Revenue Generating Activities - Are you focusing your time on the things most likely to eventually produce results?
Your Reputation - Do your manager and colleagues believe you're learning, progressing and likely to succeed?
Focusing on what drives revenue is ultimately the main goal. What worked at a previous company may not work as well here. Whilst sales skills will always be transferable, the playbooks and go-to-market can vary. You need to quickly understand which activities are most likely to move you towards revenue, and prioritise your time accordingly.
Alongside that, you need to consider the perspective of your manager, leadership and peers. Don’t underestimate this. You want to build trust within your organisation that you are capable. This doesn’t mean self-promotion, this means building relationships and learning how to navigate the company internally. You can leverage this to support your sales activity in the short term, and open opportunities in the long term.
Getting both of these right gives you the best route to delivering against target and building your support network.
💡 Step Up Sales Principle
Great salespeople have strong technical sales capabilities, but also good judgement; knowing what to focus on, what can wait, and which people and resources can help you succeed.
So in order to focus on revenue generating activities and building your reputation, these are the areas you can focus on in practice:
What minimum information do I need to know to be able to operate in the role?
What are the priority activities for driving revenue?
Which colleagues should I be connected with to help me?
How do I build trust and credibility with my manager?
1) What minimum information do I need to know to be able to operate in the role?
Calls, meetings, demos, business development, sales admin - all core things you will be doing in some capacity. Your knowledge of the product/market and the company’s internal processes will build over time.
To start well, you need to figure out what are the most important things to learn. Being able to properly build a quote or order form will be important at some stage, but it’s no use now if you haven’t got any opportunities. You can learn that later.
Instead, the focus should be on gathering knowledge that allows you to focus on selling. You don’t need to be an expert in what you offer, just enough to know how/who to prospect to and enough to run a discovery call.
I've always found that creating a simple "cheat sheet" is enough to get going confidently: the common challenges of my target personas, the questions I might ask to explore them, and how our offering can help. Less is more until you gradually build your knowledge organically.
Whilst your company may have some onboarding resources to support this, I’d encourage you to think about simplifying it into your own version, informed by your own style.
“Aim to simplify what you need to know to progress quickly to being able to do your role confidently.”
One note to remember is that every company and role has different expectations. If you are in a fast-moving environment, you may need to get going with sales activities on day one. In others, typically more strategic roles, you may have much longer to build knowledge and prepare. Adjust your pace based on this, but the goal is the same: what is the minimum I need to know to operate effectively?
2) What are the priority activities for driving revenue?
Don’t assume that what worked in your last role will work here. One of your first jobs is to figure out what activites lead to revenue in this environment.
If you are joining a company with a proven go-to-market, you may find that this is well established. Talk to successful reps. Look at data. Ask RevOps. Look backwards through won deals. Understand where pipeline comes from, who tends to champion successful deals, what makes opportunities progress.
Quickly building insight into what activities are delivering the most progress towards your target is critical to stay on track.
“Top sales people have the conviction to focus on activities that drive revenue”
In most cases, there will be a mix of approaches, but focusing on what likely gives the biggest return is always a good starting point.
Note - this doesn’t mean you should completely take this information for granted. Explore other options, especially if you have a particular strength. Use what you learn as a guide, not gospel.
✅ Exercise - Find the answers to these questions (with data where available) to support how you prioritise your sales activities:
What sources are your sales peers in the same/similar role consistently finding leads from?
What role is the most common champion in deals, and how do you find them? (also consider deal speed and size)
What next steps after discovery calls consistently lead to opportunity progression?
The outcome is you know who to target as a preference, where to engage with them for best response, and a simple way to consistently progress deals. As you settle into the role, you can learn and refine, but this starting point alone gives you a solid base to focus on.
3) Which colleagues should I be connected with to help me?
Going through 1 and 2 above will naturally put you in contact with peers around you. Be intentional with this though, and go out of your way to connect with contacts in different departments.
The simplest way to do this is to look at the typical sales cycle and who you might cross paths with along the way.
Start with people likely to be involved in the deal itself, like solutions engineers, product experts and business development. I’d extend this further into marketing, IT and legal resources, as well as identifying senior leaders who might be pulled into deals.
The goal isn’t to start putting them to work, but to build an understanding of what they do and how they could help you down the line. When you do need their support, it's much easier if you've already built the relationship and understand how they operate.
4) How do I build trust and credibility with my manager?
When I worked at a small software vendor, the sales leader hired two account executives at the same time to focus on our SMB/mid-market. I was quite suprised as we hadn’t had much growth in that area, instead focusing more on enterprise.
The outcome was that one of them was kept on after the probation period, the other was let go. Without getting into a debate about the rights and wrongs of this scenario, the salesperson who stayed on had done a great job of building trust with the manager.
Even though results weren’t perfect, he’d shown he was doing the right things. The manager could advocate for him, and still felt he’d come good over time.
The AE told me he was involving and communicating with his manager as often as possible. This always stuck with me and reinforced the importance of making that effort. Show you are being proactive by sharing what you’ve heard from other departments, ask for feedback, share some successes you’ve had. This isn’t meant to be forced, it’s about connecting with your manager in a professional way.
A great way to start this off is to ask early what their expectations are. Something simple like "What would make you look back after 90 days and feel I'm on track?"
Ultimately, your manager wants to know they made a good hire and that you are on the right path. They will advocate for you in the short term, and enable you to do better in the long term.
📌Key Takeaways
You can only do so much in your first 90 days, so focus on getting the basics right and refine over time.
Prioritising revenue generating activities is critical, but you need to figure out which are the most impactful ones.
Developing connections with your peers and manager not only helps you progress sales, it builds your reputation.
Recently made a step up?
I occasionally help salespeople who are finding their feet in a new role, free of charge in my spare time. If you'd value an experienced second perspective on where to focus, get in touch.