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Territory Management & Planning Guide

Introduction

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The best approach to successful field team management is effective territory planning that allows targeting the right customers, setting goals and priorities, and ensuring sales growth. Effective territory management is vital for field teams’ performance, so there are many things to consider prior to assigning of field reps to customers. In this paper we’ll talk about best practices to develop meaningful territories for your field teams that allow maximum use of their potential.

Territory planning is one of the most time-consuming and challenging processes for field team managers. In order to divide territories in a way that makes sense, a field team manager should at least analyze the previous data from current customers including financial data, order amounts, point-of-sale locations, and frequency of previous retail visits. This allows field team managers to identify the key goals of territory planning and create territory distribution that makes sense.

How to Effectively Manage Sales Territories?

Territory management enables you to set up and process territory assignments and to allocate sales responsibilities across your company. Efficient territory management ensures customer satisfaction and sales growth due to better coverage of your sales territories.

Eight Steps to Divide Your Sales Territories

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Deciding how to manage your sales territories is much more than drawing lines on a map or distributing the existing clients between your field reps. We offer you the following step-by-step guide to align territories in a way that makes sense.

1. Review current retail conditions. The content of this stage may vary and depends on the type of business. For new companies it is preliminary planning to identify the conditions that will help to further set up sales territories (including studying of potential clients and evaluating the resources needed to reach them, analyzing competitors, etc.). For existing companies this stage involves analyzing previous results of sales teams performance and all the information about customers (including location, order history, and time spent by field reps at stores and on the phone with customers).

2. Set up quantitative goals and think about moves to define targets. For instance if the goal is to boost revenue by 20 percent per year, the targets may include increasing the sales turnover, reaching out to potential clients, stimulating dormant customers, obtaining new customers from your competitors, improving customer loyalty, etc.

Eight Steps to Divide Your Sales Territories

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3. Choose the method of territory division. The historical method based on prior experiences and results when a field team manager estimates either sales or penetration from the previous period. The most common way of territory planning is to divide your territories by area code. This allows a field team manager to clearly define the spheres of responsibility for each field rep. The most sophisticated way of territory management is to divide territories by categorizing customers.

4. Categorize customers if necessary. There are many criteria used to categorize customers: sales space, size of retailer, store attendance, merchandise turnover, same products or similar needs. The more complicated way to categorize customers involves the use of two or more criteria simultaneously. For example, you can set up customer categories based on the order amounts they generate and the time spent servicing them.

5. Assign field reps to the customers. After your customers are placed into categories you can start to distribute territories between your field reps. The main goal of territory planning is to maximize the time spent with customers and to minimize the time spent traveling between customers' locations and visiting low-return customers. Designed territories should also have equal potential for new customers. Consider your field reps’ previous experience and personal connections to set the territories that provide the best opportunities for each field team member. Keep in mind that implementing a retail audit software solution allows companies to sort and filter clients by location, properties, and names; to easily organize field reps’ assignments; and to redistribute customers in bulk at the click of a button.

Eight Steps to Divide Your Sales Territories

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6. Schedule retail visits. This stage also includes setting up tasks and optimizing field reps’ routes to make sure you use their time in the most efficient manner. Make decisions that are relevant to established territories. If you see a certain territory has more points of sale than others, assign it to the most efficient field rep. High-return customers should be assigned to the field reps who has the highest order amounts or to those who have strong personal connections with the indicated customers. Field reps who have an opportunity to move fast for long distances should get customers in rural areas.

8. Evaluate field teams’ performance to review territories. Perform regular maintenance on the territory mapping to make sure they are functioning properly. If you see, a field rep isn’t covering a territory, you can either give him a smaller territory or assign this territory to an agent with a better performance. While developing balanced territories make sure you do not revise your territories too often, customers always react negatively to field reps turnover.

7. Monitor field teams’ performance. At this stage you should be able to see all the shortcomings of the territory distribution. Retail audit software implementation provides real-time data workflow to identify situations that require your immediate attention and to make some operational changes.

SummaryDeveloping balanced sales territories provides an efficient environment for your field reps and allows using your sales force in the most efficient manner. Poor territory management causes such problems as dissipated resources, higher costs, territory overlap, and conflicts inside the field team that negatively impact your company’s goal achievement and result in decreased customer loyalty and fewer sales.

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VisitBasis (www.visitbasis.com)territory management automation, by virtue of a retail execution software solution, simplifies territory distribution and analysis of field teams’ performance. Retail execution software also provides route optimization and automated data entry, minimizing the time needed to collect retail data.

The main goal of territory planning is to maximize the time spent with customers and to minimize the time spent traveling between customers’ locations and visiting low-return customers. Consider your reps’ previous experiences and personal connections to create the territory mapping that provides the best opportunities for each field team member. Selected territory mapping should also have equal potential for new customer contacts.

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