A sales territory map defines the sales and revenue areas that your representatives must target. Using it accurately can help you reach your revenue goals, promote growth, and find the right customers. The basic premise of sales territory mapping is geography. Some companies map out territories by color-coding or placing pins at their reps’ home bases based on zip codes or distance from their location.
Today, sales territory mapping technology enables sales staff to operate in the same geographical area but focus on specific types of customers following their needs, regardless of industry or customer. By optimizing site selection, this technology can help companies meet their business goals.
In what ways does a sales territory contribute to business priorities?
It can be overwhelming to divide your sales territories. What are the best methods to use? How can you ensure success? The following ways will help you get started, but your answers will be different for every business.
Plan for the future
What are your long-term business goals, as well as meeting quotas today? How agile and scalable is your current plan? Do you have a thriving, stable, or declining business? Plan to introduce new products? Will regulation change soon? Making smart choices for your business in both the present and future would require thinking about the answers to these questions.
Retain loyal customers while establishing new business
While attracting new leads and closing new deals is important, keeping customers satisfied is also crucial. As well as considering growth opportunities, be sure to take into account the needs of your current customers.
Be flexible
You can respond to market and operational changes with an agile plan. Make a model and test different alignments. Testing changes so that there is no disruption will enable you to become more agile.
Invest in the right tools
In the right sales territory mapping system, spreadsheet data entry can be automated, manual data analysis can be simplified, errors can be reduced, and reps can be more productive.
A sales territory map: how do I create it?
Start by identifying your business’s larger goals. Be sure to evaluate progress and make adjustments as you go along.
Defining your goals
They may include sales volume and revenue targets. Other goals may be non-financial. Essentially, they can be objectives that support long-term growth or a concomitant marketing goal, such as selling a certain amount of a specific product or acquiring specific customer segments. Your business’s larger goals should determine what you prioritize among your objectives.
Market segmentation
When you segment smartly, you ensure that you target the obvious or big deals and the entire market. The foursquare segmentation strategy is determined by four factors: industry, corporate size, geography, and customer lifecycle. Segmentation strategies should align with your objectives.
Utilize expertise and experience
Consider the newly segmented territories you will assign. Depending on your objectives, geographic regions, customer industries, account executive expertise, and many other factors could be considered. Balance is essential when it comes to defining and assigning territories.
Ensure that sales territories are fair by relying on the knowledge and software of sales managers.
Optimizing sales territory map
Having the right tools and technology is crucial to optimizing your sales territories. As sales leaders, we used spreadsheets, maps, and customer lists until advanced territory mapping software enabled us to weigh scores of variables and construct new scenarios quickly. You’ll be able to:
Analyze customer data to align territories
Using the software, you can map critical account and user data into territory designs that take your customers’ needs into account.
Distribute sales territories equitably
Your business’s most important metrics can be used to balance accounts across territories automatically. It results in an even distribution of territories.
Scaling up the change
It is no longer necessary for teams to spend countless hours importing and exporting data. By using the mapping software, new representatives and minor changes to the business can be accommodated quickly.