The CFO sees Agache. Sales sees LVMH. Who is the real customer? Read the Analysis
Why manual territory planning fails, how “Orphaned Accounts” create commission disputes, and how to fix your data foundation for scalable ABM.
Imagine this: Your top Enterprise Rep in New York, Sarah, has been nurturing a relationship with the HQ of a global logistics giant for six months. Meanwhile, your Mid-Market Rep in London, Dave, unknowingly closes a deal with a small subsidiary of that same giant.
This isn’t a “people problem.” It’s a data hierarchy problem. Without accurate Parent-Child relationships in Salesforce, you are building territories on quicksand.
Without hierarchies, Marketing sees 5 separate small companies with “Low Intent.”
No one qualifies for outreach.
With hierarchy, the system sums up the score.
5 “Low Intent” subsidiaries = 1 “High Intent” Enterprise opportunity.
Run campaigns targeting the entire corporate family.
“We see your UK, French, and US teams are looking for solutions.”
Most organizations define territories by geography or employee size. But corporate structures don’t follow map lines. When Salesforce doesn’t know that Company A (subsidiary) is owned by Company B (Global Ultimate), it treats them as strangers.
This leads to Territory Overlap, where multiple reps attack the same corporate wallet from different angles without coordination.
The Solution: Ultimate Parent Assignment
Territories should be assigned based on the Global Ultimate Parent. Even if a subsidiary is in Texas and the HQ is in Germany, the “Global Account Owner” should govern the strategy, ensuring a unified customer experience.
Check the territory planning checklist
Compensation plans often rely on rigid rules. If the data says a deal closed in “Region: West,” the West Director gets paid. But what if the influence came from the East Coast HQ?
Deal Stealing Accusations: Managers spend hours mediating disputes instead of coaching.
Double Payouts: To keep peace, companies often pay both reps, inflating CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost).
A clean hierarchy allows for “Split Crediting” logic. You can programmatically attribute x% to the closer and y% to the Global Owner, because the data links them together.
Manual “Parent Account” Fields Relying on reps to manually select the correct “Parent Account” leads to error rates over 40%. They simply don’t know the legal structure of their prospects.
Data Decay M&A (Mergers and Acquisitions) happens daily. A static hierarchy built last year is obsolete today. Native Salesforce has no mechanism to auto-update relationships when a company gets bought.
The “Ultimate Parent” Field Missing Salesforce has standard hierarchies, but it lacks a native, calculated “Global Ultimate Parent ID” stamped on every child record, which is essential for Territory Assignment Rules.
Delpha automatically builds and maintains accurate Account Hierarchies, ensuring every rep knows exactly who owns what. No manual entry required.
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