IBM pointed 13,000 salespeople with two models instead of territory folklore

In 2004 IBM set out to raise the productivity of its global sales force with operations research rather than another reorganization. Territories and account coverage had historically been set by management judgment, so effort drifted away from where future revenue actually was.

IBM Research built two systems. OnTARGET applies analytical models to identify new sales opportunities at existing accounts and at companies that were not yet customers, and was rolled out to over 13,000 sales representatives worldwide. The Market Alignment Program (MAP) optimally allocates sales resources across market segments using field-validated estimates of future revenue opportunity, becoming an integral part of IBM's sales model.

IBM estimates the combined initiatives' business impact at hundreds of millions of dollars annually. The work was a finalist for the 2009 Franz Edelman Award and was published in Interfaces.

Score every account, then move reps to the score

The dull method is re-shuffling territories on gut feel; IBM measured opportunity per segment first.

Field-validated revenue estimates kept reps from dismissing the model as a lab product.

Delivery through internal websites put the model inside daily workflow, not in a binder.

Impact is stated and measured: 13,000+ reps on the tools, hundreds of millions of dollars a year.

Sales coverage is an allocation problem: estimate opportunity per segment first, then put the people where the model says the money is — and ship it as a tool, not a memo.

OnTARGET spread across IBM's worldwide sales organizations and MAP became embedded in IBM's sales resource planning. The project was named a 2009 Franz Edelman finalist; the paper appeared in the January 2010 Edelman issue of Interfaces.