... but where is it documented?

It doesn't exist if it is not in your Rules of Engagement document

You just wrapped up annual planning, and your entire sales motion has changed. In just one month, your GTM team will switch into the new sales motion. You wish you could write it all down somewhere. A go-to resource, an FAQ document you could point everyone to.

What you need is a Rules of Engagement (RoE) document. It is tedious to write at first, but once you have all the sections in, it becomes a good checklist for all the things to evaluate during annual sales planning.

Writing your RoE

You cannot possibly foresee all the edge cases and conflicts that will come up through the year, but you want your RoE to be a good starting point.

The shorter and sweeter your document is, the better, but here are some items you should cover.

1) The GTM motion

• Segmentation criteria:

  • How are your Account Executive (AE) territories defined across your segments - Named, Enterprise, Mid-Market, SMB? How many accounts does each rep own? How often are territories re-evaluated? When and how can an account move across segments or change ownership?

  • Under what circumstances, if any, can AEs/ Business Development Reps (BDRs) prospect outside of their territories?

  • What is your spend/ revenue threshold for Account Manager (AM) support? What about for Customer Success Manager (CSM) assignment?

  • What is your criteria for inbound - lead assignment?

  • How do your partnerships/ channel-sales teams liaise with direct sales?

• Swim-lanes and hand-off points:

  • When does the prospect/ customer change hands from the BDR to the AE to the AM and CSM? How long does the AE hold the account after the initial sale?

  • Who is responsible for land vs. expand, up-selling, cross-selling and the renewal?

  • What about overlay roles?

• Exceptions, edge cases and conflicts:

  • What happens if a self-serve account requests an upsell?

  • How do you treat parent/ child accounts or franchises? Are they all owned by the same rep within a segment?

  • What happens to account ownership in case of M&A? What about in case of duplicate accounts in Salesforce?

  • What happens if two reps claim ownership of the same or related accounts?

  • How do you deal with accounts which have a global presence? (This could have its own section, if meaningful enough!)

2) Opportunity stages

• Criteria for Salesforce Opportunities to progress through stages

  • Is it any different for New-business, Renewal and Upsell Opportunity types?

• Definition of Closed Won Opportunities

  • What actions need to take place for an Opportunity to qualify as Closed Won? (e.g. Contract counter-signed, 1st usage?)

3) Deal crediting and attribution

• Key metric definitions:

  • How is Bookings/ ACV defined?

  • How is your key revenue metric defined? (ARR, MRR, Invoiced Revenue?)

• Crediting methodology:

  • How long does an AE get credit for the new logo sale?

  • How are AMs credited for renewals and/or upsells?

  • Under what circumstances do you split deals across two reps?

• Attribution during temporary account coverage, and other special situations:

  • What happens to Accounts and Opportunities (both Closed Won and Open) when a rep leaves the company, gets promoted or goes on parental leave?

4) Incentives policies

• New hire policies:

  • How many months of protection/ ramp do new hires get to onboard into their new roles? How does this vary by role? What about for transfers/ promotions?

• Quarter close/ payout processes:

  • What are timelines to finalize monthly/ quarterly payouts?

  • What happens in case of issues/ escalations?

Rolling out your RoE

Writing your RoE is just half the battle. You will want to get buy-in from GTM leadership so you can roll-out your RoE in partnership with them.

Work with your sales enablement team to condense your RoE into trainings that you can periodically reinforce with your sales teams.

RoE documents are often living, breathing things, that you might want to update as and when new types of conflicts emerge. At the very least, you will update it after annual planning, ahead of the kick-off of your new fiscal year.

What have your experiences been writing, rolling out and defending your RoE? Are there topics you wished you had added? Would love to hear about your experiences!