How can you create a sales territory plan and budget that works for your team?

1 Analyze your current situation

The first step is to assess your current sales situation and identify your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT). You should also gather relevant data on your sales performance, such as revenue, profitability, market share, customer retention, and sales cycle length. Additionally, you should review your existing sales territories and evaluate how well they align with your customer segments, market potential, and sales capacity. This will help you identify any gaps, overlaps, or imbalances in your sales coverage and distribution.

2 Define your objectives and metrics

The second step is to define your sales objectives and metrics for each territory and your overall business. You should align your objectives with your company's vision, mission, and strategy, and make sure they are SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound). Some common sales objectives include increasing revenue, market share, customer loyalty, cross-selling, or upselling. You should also decide how you will measure and track your progress and performance, such as using key performance indicators (KPIs), dashboards, or reports.

3 Design your sales territories and budget

The third step is to design your sales territories and budget based on your analysis and objectives. You should consider various factors, such as customer characteristics, market potential, sales potential, competition, travel time, and costs. You should also balance your sales territories according to the workload, skills, and experience of your sales reps. You can use different methods to design your sales territories, such as geographic, product-based, customer-based, or hybrid. You should also allocate your sales budget according to your sales goals, activities, and resources, such as salaries, commissions, incentives, training, marketing, or travel.

4 Implement and monitor your plan

The final step is to implement and monitor your sales territory plan and budget. You should communicate your plan clearly and effectively to your sales team and other stakeholders, and provide them with the necessary tools, training, and support. You should also monitor your plan regularly and evaluate your results against your objectives and metrics. You should also solicit feedback from your sales team and customers, and make adjustments as needed to improve your sales performance and efficiency.

5 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?