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Territory planning For Sales Success
Territory planning, the design of your territories, and how those sales territories are managed is crucial to sales management success. In this podcast the goal is to give you a chance to look at the territory planning process.
What is Territory Planning, Territory Design, and Territory Management?
We’re talking about the alignment of your customers and potential customers in an orderly manor to enhance your selling activity.
If your sales process requires accountability for a geographic area or vertical market, sales territories aren’t just important. There’re essential. Sales territories:
- Allow you to reduce your sales cost.
- Give your sales force defined areas of accountability and responsibility.
- Give you a data point to evaluate sales performance.
- Provide you with a structure to maximize sales coverage.
- Can improve the customer experience by providing relationship consistency.
Your sales territories also have tremendous have an impact on:
- Your ability to target key customers and prospects.
- The results of your sale efforts.
- The wellbeing and success of each of your sales people.
- The future of your company.
So How Do You Design Your Territories?
Start the territory design process by looking at your entire market. If your market is the state of Ohio. Ohio represents the whole market. Your entire territory. If you have five salespeople that cover it for you. Then you would have a minimum of five territories within your market. When you do your territory planning, look to the future. If you’re thinking of adding two salespeople. Add those sales territories now while you are going through this territory planning process? The two new territories can be worked by the existing salespeople until the new salespeople are hired.
Start By Looking At Your Base
To get this territory planning, done right, Start with your existing customer base. I like to get a picture of where my entire customers base is located. If your organization has market segments, this is a good time to look at each of those segments individually.
Look At Revenue By Account
The second step in territory planing is to look at the revenue for each of your clients. Then take a look at their future sales potential.
Are Prospects Or Market Potential Evenly Distributed?
Let’s say your ideal prospect is a company in the construction industry. Construction companies that do interiors for the commercial office buildings. How many of them are there in your market? Where are they located?
Territory Planning Means Territory Alignment
Make sure your sales territories are properly alignment. You are looking for an equal distribution of existing clients and market potential. In an ideal world, this should be in place before a sales call is made. If you are selling presently, its a good idea to get this in place now.
The Impact Of Territory Planning On Salespeople, Your Company, And Your Customers.
In territory planning, keep in mind the tremendous effect your territory design can have.
- Does the design provide an equal work load for each member of the sales team?
- Does the territory design provide for adequate income opportunities?
- Does the territory design provide a good distribution of existing accounts?
- Does the territory design allow easy travel time management?
Your goal is to provide your sales people with an energetic and motivating environment. If your territory designed doesn’t provide balance. You can destroy any motivation and good will you have built.
Territory Planning
This is a topic that deserves an entire episode of it’s own and we will do that in the future. Today I want to introduce you the topic and give you some food for thought on the subject.
Territory Planning has two parts:
- Territory Intelligence
- Territory Action Plan
The key is to have a territory design in place before you start developing your territory planning. The words territory planner and sales action plan, in most cases can mean the same thing. The idea is to learn as much about your market as possible. Then, come up with the strategy and tactics to attack it.
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