It’s officially the season for pumpkin spice lattes, warm sweaters, wool socks and territory planning. That magical time of year when every revenue leader is juggling forecasts, budgets, and an unhealthy amount of caffeine. And while most teams are scrambling through spreadsheets, territory spreadsheets, and more spreadsheets, the best teams are quietly doing something else:
They’re pre-building 2026 territory and account books right now. Not in January, not during SKO week, and not after a frantic round of internal politics. They’re focused on it right now.
Why? Because they know by the time January hits, reps need clean books, clear coverage, and a territory model that actually sets them up to hit their goals. Territories still make or break your revenue plan, especially as the market is tighter, teams are leaner, and RevOps is being asked to deliver more with less.
In this edition of The RevOps Rocket, we’re diving deep into:
Traditional GTM planning has always been a mess, it’s manual, political, slow, and steeped in outdated models. We’ve written about that before in our July 2025 issue, where annual planning “creates a chaotic game of approvals, budget fights, and last-minute redraws,” and where 35% of teams still plan revenue manually and only 22% feel confident in their data.
2026 is shaping up to be even more intense. Markets have cooled, boards want efficiency, and growth targets aren’t going down. Want to guess the #1 pressure point we’re seeing?
Territories. But not just sales territories, territories and account books for the entire revenue org. As new business gets more and more expensive, organizations are putting more resources toward retaining and upselling existing customers. Territories for Customer Success and Account Management are becoming just as critical.
Across hundreds of teams, here’s the pattern:
Or, put more simply:
Bad data compounds and bad territories multiply it. Good data compounds and good territories accelerate it.
That’s exactly why leaders are rebuilding their territory logic right now, before 2026 rolls over and the scramble begins.
One of the most puzzling conversations I have regularly is RevOps trying to update their territories and account books for the upcoming year without first focusing on how their ICP has evolved over the past 12 months. This is why so many orgs end up with wildly uneven books, one rep sitting on triple the TAM of another, or a patch full of low-fit accounts that never convert.
We’ve covered the evolution of account scoring before, especially how traditional models are slow, brittle, and expensive to maintain, and how AI-driven scoring models remove months of manual work by analyzing fit, spend potential, and revenue probability.
And if you caught our deep dive into Weighted TAM earlier this year, you know:
Weighted TAM = Fit × Revenue Potential
It’s the single best lens for building equitable territories today. We’re seeing consistent results for teams that incorporate Weighted TAM into territory design are seeing:
This needs to be your foundation before a single territory line gets drawn.
We’ve also talked a lot about the concept that fair ≠ equal. In our territory planning guide, we defined it clearly:
“A fair territory isn’t about giving everyone the same number of accounts, it’s about giving everyone the same opportunity to succeed.”
And in our AI-focused territory edition, we emphasized that equity comes from data-driven modeling, not gut feel or maps drawn like it’s 1998. Equitable territory models are now blending:
The best teams are using clustering + machine learning to identify natural groupings of accounts, something that manual spreadsheet slicing simply cannot do.
We called out a hard reality earlier this year: “Your beautiful 60-page revenue plan collapses instantly if territories are late.”
Late territories lead to delayed pipeline creation, rep frustration, and even increased customer churn when post-sales territories aren’t effectively rolled out on time. This usually hits in mid - February through early March when leadership starts asking, “Why isn’t anything moving?” All the way back in our April 2025 newsletter we highlighted that territory changes are the #1 cause of rep dissatisfaction and the #1 driver of early-year revenue drag.
High-performing teams are doing the following right now:
Focusing on these things now leads to the difference between a smooth SKO rollout and three months of disaster cleanup.
AI is giving smaller RevOps teams an unfair advantage (and helping them outperform much larger teams). It’s also enabling the transition from a months-long revenue planning process to designing, building, and iterating in minutes.
AI is already taking over the “heavy lifting” parts of territory planning, from data cleaning, account scoring, and TAM calculation to capacity modeling, cluster analysis and assignment simulations. The combination of AI, ML, and intelligent design is changing territory planning from “AI assistance” to automated territory design with human QA.
At Territories.ai, we think this is exactly how it should be. Territory planning is math, but trust in territory design is human. Let AI handle the math and RevOps handle the story.
Here’s where we see things heading fast:
Annual “big bang” rollouts are disappearing.
AI will adjust territories every quarter in bite-sized, painless shifts.
Using performance data + product mastery + industry familiarity to build rep-specific patches.
(You’ve already seen this trend emerging in our territory guide.)
Expansion is too important to be a side thought.
Everyone is moving beyond firmographics.
Reps will increasingly expect “show me the data” justification for their patches.
AI explainability (SHAP, LIME) will power that transparency.
And yes… this is exactly what we’re building at Territories.ai.
We’re here, and 2026 planning season is officially upon us. 2026 is going to reward the teams that plan early, build equitably, and lean into smarter GTM frameworks.
Let’s build something your Sales, CS, and RevOps teams will thank you for.