Blog · Coverage and territory · Sales teams
How a sales leader measures the days between an account being assigned to a rep and the first logged touch, from the assignment history and the activity log: the median per rep, the accounts past a stated number of days with no touch, the effect on first-year revenue from the team's own history, and why the number is the earliest coverage signal a team has on new business.
A territory realignment assigns two hundred accounts in January. In April, sixty of them have never been called, and the accounts were the reason for the realignment. The assignment history and the activity log, joined, show how long each account waited and which rep it waited on. This guide sets out time to first touch, the per-rep view, the waiting list, and what the delay costs.
Per account:
Time to first touch = first qualifying touch date − assignment date Waiting = assigned, no qualifying touch, days since assignment past threshold
Per rep:
Median time to first touch, accounts waiting, revenue waiting
Account and rep identifiers only.
assigned accounts = touched + waiting, per rep
A touch logged against an account by a rep who was not its owner at the time is listed separately; it is often a handover call by the previous owner, and it does not count as the new owner's first touch.
Threshold 21 days. Assignments in the last quarter.
| Rep | Assigned | Median days to first touch | Waiting past 21 days | Prior revenue waiting |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| R-04 | 62 | 34 | 28 | $1.1m |
| R-11 | 44 | 9 | 3 | $60,000 |
| R-17 | 18 | 6 | 0 | |
| R-22 | 41 | 19 | 11 | $310,000 |
Rep R-04 received the most accounts and has touched fewer than half within three weeks, with over a million dollars of prior-year revenue among the waiting ones. That is a load problem or a prioritisation problem, and the rep-load figure beside it says which.
From the team's own accounts assigned in the last three years.
| Days to first touch | Accounts | Median first-year revenue |
|---|---|---|
| 0 to 14 | 410 | $48,000 |
| 15 to 42 | 380 | $31,000 |
| 43 to 90 | 220 | $19,000 |
| Over 90 | 140 | $9,000 |
A description, not a proof, and stated as one. It is the figure that gets the waiting list worked.
No assignment history. Every account looks assigned on creation and reassignments vanish. Turn field history on.
Any activity counts. An automated sequence email touches every account on day one.
Company median only. Rep R-17 at six days and rep R-04 at thirty-four average to something that describes neither.
Waiting list without value. Twenty-eight accounts is a number; one point one million dollars is a priority.
Mapped once, the assignment history, the activities and the ledger produce time to first touch per rep, the waiting list ranked by prior revenue, and the cost table every week. Covirage builds this from the exports as they are. The sales teams page describes the setup, and the rep load guide covers the measure that usually explains a slow first touch.
The CRM's field history on the owner field, or an assignment log where the team keeps one. Where neither exists, the account's creation date is the fallback for new accounts, stated as such, and reassignments are invisible until history is turned on.
The same definition the coverage model uses: a call with notes, a meeting, a visit. Not an automated email. The definition is written once and shared, so that time to first touch and coverage agree.
From the team's own history: first-year revenue per account, grouped by how many days its first touch took. It is a description of what happened at this team, not a causal claim, and it is stated as such. It is usually enough to change behaviour.