Sales Territory Management 101: A Sales Rep's Complete Guide | Salesman Podcast

Many businesses organize their sales teams into territories based on geography, demographics, or other criteria. Your company has also decided to jump on the sales territory management bandwagon to ensure better outcomes.

But how can you ensure you continue hitting your monthly sales quota under this new arrangement?

Your experience and your prospect's willingness to buy your product affect your success, but one thing is sure you cannot simply… wing your sales territory management.

You need a territory management plan—a solid one at that.

This Salesman.org guide will lay out the basics of sales territory management and help ensure you direct your time and energy on activities that have the most impact.

What Is Territory Management?

A sales territory is a customer group or geographic area over which either an individual sales reps or a sales team has responsibility.

Each territory is defined based on specific factors, such as its history, geography, or sales potential—sometimes a combination of these factors. The ultimate aim of managing sales territories this way is to maximize sales and profits while efficiently allocating resources.

Sales territories have to be balanced. Otherwise, bad things can happen to performance:

• If your territory is being under-serviced, you and your team can spread too thinly, resulting in inadequate activity levels. As a result, you'll seek out a few leads, identify fewer prospects, and generate lower revenue.
• If your territory is being over-serviced, you'll have little work and too many team members to service a smaller area. This will increase costs and overall prices, which will ultimately lead to reduced sales.

If you want to get the most value from your prospects, you need to get your territory management right. And the best way to get this? Have a solid territory management plan.

5 Easy Steps To Create an Effective Sales Territory Plan

Below, we've created a step-by-step rundown to help you create a winning enterprise territory management plan template and set yourself up for sales success.

Step 1: Familiarize Yourself With Your Target Territory

The first step when managing a sales territory is to analyze your current and potential customers thoroughly. Think about what your customers have in common, including:

• Their location
• Their purchasing behavior, i.e, the product or offering they buy from your business
• The pain points your product or offering solves for them
• The events that cause them to buy—or not to buy—your product

Also, figure out the needs of the market that are not currently being fulfilled. This analysis will tell you how to position your products or services uniquely, giving you an edge over your competition.

Step 2: Do a Self-analysis

Be aware of your strengths and weaknesses and your capacity to win business from your new prospects. This will help you develop a territory plan that plays to your strengths while improving any weak areas.

Besides your capabilities, you should also consider your organization's resources and think of ways to utilize them efficiently on your sales patch.

Step 3: Set Measurable Goals

Using the information collected from Step 1 and Step 2, develop goals you want to achieve from implementing your territory management. The goals you could measure include:

• Total income generated per month
• Number of calls every week
• Total sales closed every month
• The ratio of leads to sales closed every month

After identifying your territory management goals, it can be valuable to document them to remain top of mind. There are a few ways you can do this:

• Goal Statement: Your goal statement should address what you plan to achieve and what is at stake in your sales territory. When you put your goals on paper, it becomes concrete. Instead of wondering about objectives, you know what you want to achieve from which activity.
• Key Milestones and Deadlines: With a roadmap for approaching your prospects, you will close sales and achieve your goals faster. Break down your plan into smaller milestones to make your road to success clear. For instance, if you want to close $100,000 of new business this year, you can track progress by breaking your plan down into smaller milestones, such as $15,000 by Month 2, $32,000 by Month 3, and so on.
• Measurable Metrics: You'll need clearly defined KPIs to ensure your business goals are met in an efficient mannor. To get started on the right track, consider metrics like total sales created, leads contacted, and leads closed. Choose metrics that give you insight into productivity and can help track your progress against those goals effectively.

Your goals must be realistic and simultaneously push you to improve and grow to meet your sales targets.

Step 4: Chalk Out Your Territory Action Plan

Creating the plan is where all the action begins!

Generally, your sales manager will create a map for you to prevent any overlap between different territories and sales reps. Your job is to ensure you visit all opportunities within your region in a timely and effective manner.

Think about how often to call each account and whether the calls should be in person or by phone—or the more remote-friendly option: virtually. By planning out the nuances beforehand, you'll minimize time, effort, and money wastage and can direct your focus on converting your clients.

Put your call plans on a calendar and stick to it. This will force you to have the discipline needed to become a successful territory manager.

Step 5: Effective Record-Keeping

As you implement your territory management action plan, you should maintain an accurate and up-to-date record of outcomes in your organization's CRM. This will help you track your plan's effectiveness.

Log everything. If your data tracking starts taking too much time then invest in selling software to help.

Sales Territory Management Best Practices

Besides creating a sales management plan, you'll have to adopt a few best practices and make them a part of your daily routine to have massive sales success.

A: Create a Contact Rotation Schedule

Regularly check in on prospects to ensure they have all the information resources to move forward in the buying process. But while you do this, don't come off as too salesy and end up overwhelming them.

It's why we highly recommend creating a contact rotation schedule. Use it to determine the communication channel that works best for your specific territory and at what point in the sales process. It'll also make it easier to decide when and how often an account needs a phone call, an in-person visit, or a promotional email.

B: Don't Forget Your Current Accounts When Finding New Leads

Your sales territory management plan should have a dual focus on providing services to high-value accounts and developing relationships with potential new accounts.

High-value accounts are those guaranteed to bring in higher volume sales in shorter periods when compared to other accounts. However, while high-value accounts will help you meet your sales quotas, they aren't enough to smash through it. You'll also have to cultivate new accounts to expand the business and ensure professional growth.

C: Change With the Seasons

Customer requirements change with the seasons. Depending on the product you're selling, your territory's customer base and conditions might vary during the year.

To avoid issues, analyze your territory by looking at sales data over time. Find out:

• What product or service do people buy during different times of the year?
• When are they buying it?
• How much do they spend on them?

Based on the data, identify whether your business has slow and busy seasons. Then adjust your goals, priority level, and plan of action as needed.

D: Align Your Sales Efforts With Other Departments

You are not the only one interacting with customers. While other departments may not be talking to your buyers face-to-face, they're still interacting with your accounts.

Try to collaborate with other departments—marketing and customer service—and get them involved with your territory. Maintaining consistent interactions will help you learn valuable insights that you can apply when selling.

E: Refresh Your Sales Map

Territory management is a never-ending cycle where you must continuously evaluate, implement, assess, and improve your action plan.

Yes, this regular evaluation and improvement is a lot of work. But it'll help you achieve more tremendous success and close more deals over the longer term.

Even after you draft a strong territory management plan, nothing is set in stone. Conditions can change at any time, regardless of your industry, economy, organization. So keep measuring progress and modifying aspects of your plan to stay relevant and get your desired results.

Once you get a firm grasp over your territory, accounts, and current and potential customers, you can effectively crack the complicated code of successful treasury management. All the benefits—and bonuses—will soon follow.

Empower yourself with territory management knowledge, and manage your accounts—current and potential—the right way.