How to Optimize and Manage the Territory for Your Sales Team

Rarely does a salesperson be responsible for a single customer?

Most salespeople are responsible for onboarding and servicing customers in specific areas. Sales reps have databases of hundreds of such prospects and customers whom they contact regularly.

If we organize such databases by location, industry, size and other characteristics, these become a defined group of target customers. Such a group is commonly known as sales territory.

What is Sales Territory Management?

The most useful sales territory management definition is as follows:

A group of customers spread across a geographical area assigned to either an individual or a sales team. The process of identifying, prioritizing, and calling target customers in a specific territory is known as sales territory management.

Any salesperson will agree that there is never enough time to service all customers and prospects. Nor does every customer deserves the same attention. Some deserve more attention and time because of the opportunity size.

This is why it’s important for a salesperson to know what’s the best way to allocate time and energy to an effective sales territory. And it’s important for a sales manager to track this.

The most important for salespeople to ask themselves is how to allocate their time to all of their customers in their sales territory

The Importance of Sales Territory Management

A territory management plan is more crucial to the success of a business than leaders realize. Below are some reasons:

1. Increase in Customers

If a territory is defined well and the sales calls are planned and executed well, the possibilities of increasing sales go up substantially. And with increased sales comes increased revenue.

2. Repeat Purchases

When customers get the attention they deserve because the sales team has figured out the opportunity and potential accordingly, they do more business with the company. This means that the business gets more revenue at a fraction of the marketing cost, which positively impacts profitability.

3. Improved Team Spirit

Good results come when people work as a team, follow processes effectively, and fulfill their roles in the entire cycle. Thus, when a team bonds, it gets good results which in turn, makes the team bond better. It’s a positive cycle to have working in your company because it exponentially increases employee productivity.

On the other hand, poor sales territory management can lead to the opposite of everything mentioned above. Over-serving a territory with low potential can lead to a waste in resources and time for the sales team.

Lack of sales can also make salespeople cut corners by trying to sell to anyone and making false promises to achieve their numbers. This leads to dissatisfied customers and a bad reputation for the business in the market.

How a sales territory gets managed has a huge impact on sales. Here’s why

Sales Territory Management Best Practices

Proper territory management enables salespeople to get face-to-face with as many qualified leads as possible in the finite time and resources that they have.

Here are some of the best practices for sales territory planning.

Without a clear understanding of customer potential, all customers appear the same to the sales team. The result is poor optimization of existing resources.

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