A sales territory map is a valuable resource for both sales leaders and their teams. Used correctly, sales territory mapping can help companies to distribute their resources more effectively, provide team members with crucial direction, and boost productivity.
Put simply, if your sales reps are your army, then your territory map is essentially your battle plan, defining how you’re going to pave the way for rapid growth. Unfortunately, creating the perfect map can seem like a complex process, particularly for beginners.
Today, we’re going to look at how you can map sales territories more effectively, and use your plans to generate consistent growth for your business.
What is a Sales Territory Map?
Let’s start with the basics: what is a sales territory map?
A sales territory map is essentially a guide to how you’ll distribute your sales teams across different customer segments, zip codes, and geographic areas.
Sales territory mapping is how companies ensure they’re reaching their objectives for revenue and growth in specific landscapes, by using their resources as efficiently as possible. Most of the time, territory design revolves heavily around the use of sales data. Companies take various metrics and KPIs into account to determine how customers and areas should be divided.
Although effective mapping can take time, it can also pay significant dividends. Territory mapping helps to ensure you’re focusing the right amount of attention on all of the different target audiences and groups you want to reach, increasing your chances of potential sales.
How to Map Sales Territories: Key Considerations
While sales territory mapping tools now exist to help companies cultivate the perfect plan, there are still certain factors you’ll need to address before you start making decisions for your team. Some of the most important points to consider when creating a sales territory map include:
- Business goals: What do you want to accomplish in your business right now? Are you trying to increase growth in every segment, with balanced territories, or do you want to focus on some locations more than others?
- Software and tools: What kind of sales territory mapping software can you use to help organize your teams, and monitor progress? Will you need additional tools and resources to support your teams, like sales enablement tools or training software?
- Customer personas: Who are your customers? What are their goals and expectations, and what kind of products or services are best suited to their needs? Knowing as much as possible about customer demographics will help you make the right territory connections.
- Employee skills: What kind of employees need to be assigned to each territory? What are the strengths and weaknesses of your current teams, and which staff members work most effectively together?
How to Create a Sales Territory Map
The process of sales territory mapping can vary from one business to the next. The plans you produce for your teams will vary significantly depending on the “types” of territories you need to cover, your customer segments, and even your business goals.
However, there are a few key steps you can take to improve your chances of success.
Step 1: Define the Key Types of Sales Territories
The first step in developing a robust sales territory plan, is understanding what “sales territories” actually look like for your business. There are various different kinds of territories to consider, each with their own specific strengths and weaknesses.
The most common way to create territories for your team is to focus on geographical location, assigning your sales teams to specific zip codes and communities. However, you can also look at concepts like “product territories”, which assign sales professionals responsibility for representing a specific product or service.
You can also create customer territories, which are based on specific segments of your target audience. This means one of your teams in a B2B sales business might focus on high-level enterprise customers, while another focuses on smaller businesses.
Step 2: Evaluate your Market Data
As mentioned above, a successful sales territory map is often based on significant amounts of business data. Looking at your market research will help you to create territories based on clear insights about where demand lies, and what customers in different regions need from your brand.
You can evaluate things like the industries and locations you’re currently serving, the regions in your network that are currently under or over-performing and more. Your CRM software, as well as your sales tracking data and information about your current teams will help to inform your decisions.
Based on your market data, you’ll be able to create clear goals for your territory mapping strategy. For instance, if you’re hoping to increase market share, you might create territories focused on your most lucrative customer segments. If you’re trying to increase sales in a specific area, you might focus more of your high-value sales teams on that location.
Step 3: Create Customer Segments
Grouping prospects and potential customers into different segments will help you to divide opportunities evenly throughout your various territories. During the route planning process, sit down with other team leaders and group your customers based on factors like geographic location, industry, business size, demographics, or product or service need.
Make sure you have clear buyer personas available to each of your sales teams in every territory you serve. This will help to improve sales performance, by giving your employees access to the information they need to create more effective buyer journeys.
Step 4: Use SWOT Analysis
The next step in creating an effective sales territory map, is SWOT analysis. This involves breaking down strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats among your sales reps. You’ll also look at internal and external factors that might influence the success of your territories.
Think about the specific skills and strengths of your sales leaders, and try to match professionals to territories based on their abilities. It’s also worth thinking about how you can diversify your sales teams, to create more balanced territories.
For instance, you might have one person on a territory team that excels at building rapport with customers, and another that’s excellent at closing deals. Use the strengths of each team member to balance out the weaknesses of others.
When it comes to assessing opportunities and threats, think beyond your sales teams. Ask yourself if there are any underserved regions or untapped markets you can access. Determine whether there are high levels of competition in specific territories that might pose a challenge to your teams.
Step 5: Define and Assign Sales Territories
Now you have your market data, customer segments, and SWOT analysis, you can start to map territories for your teams. Using the information you have, create balanced groups of professionals, targeting the specific areas or segments in your target audience.
If your goal is to create comprehensive business-wide growth, then you’ll want to make your territories as balanced as possible. Ensure the number of accounts in each territory is manageable, and reasonable for your employees. It’s also worth thinking about the resources your team members are going to need to increase sales in each region.
When assigning sales territories, equip each sales manager in your business with the metrics and KPIs they’ll need to monitor to determine whether their efforts are successful.
Step 6: Take Advantage of the Right Tools
As mentioned above, the right sales territory mapping tools can make your business processes a lot simpler. Software solutions make it easier to create and distribute territories evenly, keep track of your human resources, and minimize risks.
Plus, these tools often come with access to analytical features and reports, ensuring you can adjust your territory mapping strategy based on data-driven insights in the future.
Look for software that takes the complexity out of optimized selling, by helping you to distribute employees evenly through different regions, and keep track of sales productivity. Once you’ve implemented your sales territory maps, use the same tools to guide your decisions about how to optimize sales performance in the months and years ahead.
Make the Most of your Territory Maps
Mapping sales territories can seem like a complex process at first. However, clear, data-driven maps can be extremely beneficial to your business and your team. With well-balanced and optimized sales territories, you’ll cultivate more opportunities, and boost the productivity of your employees.
Plus, with the right resources and software, you should be able to collect valuable data that helps your company to grow in future. You’ll see quickly if an area is too large, under-served by your reps, or ineffective at driving revenue, so you can adapt your strategy accordingly.
Used correctly, sales territory mapping can significantly increase your sales revenue, and help your teams reach their goals. Want to learn more about increasing revenue? Check out the latest whitepaper from HSE for behind-the-scenes tricks and tips.
