An effective sales territory
plan can make your team more productive, improve customer coverage, increase
overall sales, and reduce costs.
On the other hand, unbalanced territory plans and constant changes
in territory division can hurt productivity as well as working relationships
between clients and account managers.
That’s why it’s so important to work on your territory management
strategy, whether you’re just starting one, or updating an existing plan.
1
Define your market, analyse,
and segment existing customers.
You
should split up your customers into segments based on various characteristics
such as: industry, location, purchase history, and
whatever else is relevant to the organization.
Ask
yourself, “Who are the top customers, prospects, and leads?” Categorize your
customers into three groups.
Ø
The first group should be your best customers, or the ones who
require little effort.
Ø
This is followed by the second
group of customers: the ones who require a
bit more work, but only those you are
confident have potential revenue gain that justifies the extra work required by
sales reps.
Ø
The third group should be
customers who require a lot of work.
With these groups formed, you can decide how to best use your
resources. To discover what key trends are in your geography or market, look
over the sales data that’s already been collected. Analyse the data to find
which territories show signs of growth and then assign them to the sales reps
who would be most successful based on their strengths (more on that below).You
can also use existing sales data from previous years to better understand
buying patterns, but you'll have to do some additional research to learn why
they are purchasing (or not), when they purchase, what drives the sale to go
through, and what the conversion rates are.
From this, you’ll learn how and when to reach out to your
customers based on when they're likely ready to buy again, and how to really
drive that sale home.
2
Conduct a SWOT analysis.
Next, you should identify your sales team’s internal strengths and
weaknesses and external opportunities and threats with what is known as a SWOT
analysis.
A SWOT analysis is a process that identifies internal and external
factors that can affect the organization’s performance. When you have a better
understanding of your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats, you can
develop a stronger sales territory plan.
2.1
Strengths
Everyone brings different talent and
skills to the job, so it’s important to have a good understanding of what your
team has to offer to help them excel and reach your goals. What strengths will
you build on? What is your team good at? Where do they excel?
Consider them as a team, but also
think about sales reps' individual strengths. After all, strengths aren’t just
confined to team members; they reflect the organization as a whole too.
Knowing everybody’s strengths will
help you decide which sales reps to assign to which territory.
Potential strengths might include:
· A diverse
customer base
· An
established distribution base
·
An excellent service team
2.2
Weaknesses
Which weaknesses do you need to
respond to? Think about weaknesses among your team, but also in the sales
process.
Examples:
· A very large
geographic area
· A lack of
time to develop understanding of the products, markets, and selling process
·
Not understanding your customers' real needs
2.3
Opportunities
Are there any opportunities in your
marketplace you can take advantage of?
Examples:
· Untapped
markets
· Under-served
territories
·
Growing demand for product or service
2.4
Threats
Take a look at the biggest threats in
each territory and consider what threats in your selling environment you'll
defend against.
Some threats you may discover include:
· Competitors
fighting for the same market share
· Changes in
technology
·
New industry and regulatory standards
3
Set goals and create targets.
In order to make a successful sales
territory plan, you must create clear parameters and realistic goals for the
team as well as individual sales reps’ territories.
To do this, consolidate the trends you’ve discovered above to come
up with S.M.A.R.T (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-based)
goals and realistic targets.
Here are some questions you may ask:
How many new opportunities do you need to meet quota?
Having sales quotas are a great way to motivate sales reps, but if
you find you're not meeting those quotas, you have a problem. There could be
weaknesses in the sales pipeline, or you may need to seek new opportunities. In
order to set goals and benchmarks for the team, consider using the top-down
approach.
Using the top-down approach to sales quotas (where you set a goal
for the period and then assign sales quotas to support this goal), you can go over
the data from previous periods to get an idea of what your team was able to
accomplish in the past and what a realistic goal for the future is. This can
help you decide how many new opportunities you'll need to pursue in order to
meet that goal.
Where do most of your leads come from? Which geographical regions
should you concentrate on?
Which products or services are most profitable? Who is purchasing
them?
Which opportunities should we focus on?
After learning what it is you want to achieve, you can give your
team clear objectives for each territory.
4
Develop strategies to
accomplish your goals.
With clear customer segments and goals
in place, it’s time to create strategies to succeed.
Using the information collected so
far, you can now work out an even distribution of specific regions or markets
among individual reps.
The SWOT analysis mentioned above
gives you a better idea of how to best assign your team members’ skills and
talents to a territory.
The customer segments will help you
figure out how often different accounts should be contacted and how to contact
them.
Consider the following questions when creating your strategy:
· How will you
go through current accounts?
· How can you
leverage current successes?
· How will you
generate new leads?
· Where do you
need to improve?
·
What does your team need in order to reach their goals and
targets?
In addition, consider your resources:
· What
resources do your sales reps need in order to manage their accounts?
· Which sales
reps have the skills or connections you need?
·
Are there any external resources you can use to help?
When creating your action plan, don’t
forget to look at what your high-leverage actions are, what resources are
needed, due dates, and key milestones.
5
Review and track your
results.
The final step for a sales territory
plan is to take the time to review and track the results to optimize territory
division. This is important for measuring progress to see how the plan is
impacting sales.
You should use your plan as a guide to
produce intended results and fine-tune it on a regular basis when needed.
Things to look for as you track your sales territory plan results:
· Have sales
increased or decreased in a specific region or market?
· Are there any
disparities between sales in different territories?
· What are the
costs associated with each territory?
· Are any sales
reps struggling to keep up with their leads?
· Are all sales
reps meeting their quotas?
·
Are any markets under-served and in need of more assigned sales
reps?
The original document is “https://www.copper.com/blog/sales-territory-plan#swot ”. The initial writer of the original
document is Cole Nemeth . ©August 31, 2019 . All Rights Reserved.
