How do you find and fix gaps and opportunities in your sales territory?

1 Identify your goals and metrics

Before you dive into your sales territory analysis, you need to have a clear vision of what you want to achieve and how you'll measure your progress. Depending on your business model, industry, and market, the goals and metrics for your sales territory may vary. For instance, you may want to increase market share, penetrate new segments, cross-sell or upsell existing customers, or reduce churn. To track your sales territory performance, some of the common metrics you can use include revenue, quota attainment, customer acquisition cost, customer lifetime value, customer retention rate, and customer satisfaction score.

2 Segment your customers and prospects

To understand who your ideal customers are, where they are located, how they buy, and what they value, it's important to segment your customers and prospects based on their characteristics, needs, and behaviors. You can use various criteria to do this, such as geographic location, industry, company size, revenue, growth potential, buying cycle, decision makers, pain points, loyalty and referrals. Segmenting your customers and prospects will help you set the right goals and metrics for your business.

3 Assess your current situation

After segmenting your customers and prospects, you should assess your current situation and identify where you have gaps and opportunities in your sales territory. A SWOT analysis can be used to evaluate your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats in relation to competitors, market trends, customer feedback, and internal resources. Consider questions such as: what are the current and projected sales trends in your territory? How well are you covering your territory and reaching your target segments? What is the customer satisfaction with your products, services, and support? What challenges and risks do you face in your territory? What best practices and success stories can be learned from peers or other regions?

4 Develop your action plan

Based on your SWOT analysis, you need to develop an action plan to address the gaps and opportunities in your sales territory. This plan should include SMART objectives, strategies, and tactics to improve performance. For example, you may want to redefine or reallocate your sales territory boundaries, assign or recruit the right salespeople, provide training and incentives, implement or update your sales processes and tools, create or refine your value proposition, messaging, and positioning, and develop or enhance your sales campaigns. All of these steps can help you differentiate yourself from competitors and attract, engage, and retain customers.

5 Monitor and evaluate your results

To ensure the success of your sales territory, you should monitor and evaluate your results and adjust your action plan as needed. Utilize your goals and metrics as benchmarks to measure performance and compare it with expectations and targets. Additionally, collect and analyze feedback from customers, prospects, sales team, and other stakeholders to identify what's working and what's not. Ways to monitor and evaluate these results include regularly reviewing sales reports, dashboards, and analytics; conducting sales meetings, reviews, and audits periodically; soliciting customer testimonials, reviews, and referrals frequently; conducting customer surveys, interviews, and focus groups occasionally; and performing market research, competitive analysis, and benchmarking occasionally.

6 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?