Designing Sales Territories that Work

Splitting up sales territories among sales team members is a challenging task for all sales managers.

Any imbalance risks loss of morale by those who feel “cheated,” can undermine the team’s productivity, waste resources and miss real sales opportunities. You want to do it right.

Here’s how to get sales territory management right from the start:

1. Clarify.  First know your overall revenue goal, your target clients and how you can best reach them.
2. Assess.  Then gather relevant data. Rank your customers according to how much revenue they account for as opposed to how much time it takes to service them. Use a simple spreadsheet or make a minor investment in one of the many software programs now available to help put your customers into a territory that makes sense in terms of efficiency and overall potential.
3. Continuously Improve.  Finally, review the territory assignments on a regular basis but avoid tinkering too much—customers do not want a procession of changing faces and your sales team, if good, will have invested a lot of time in developing good working relationships within their territory.

Be thoughtful about how you draw the territory boundaries…it is more complicated than divvying up a geographical map.