Sales
February 16, 2021

SALES TERRITORY PLANNING AND MANAGEMENT – STEP BY STEP GUIDE USING SALESFORCE

Sales Territory planning can save time and efforts for the sales team, increase overall revenue and decrease costs for the business.

An hour of planning will save hours of doing” – Dale Carnegie

We all can’t deny the fact planning is essential for a business to function and going with the flow doesn’t work. In sales, it’s veen more important and that’s why Sales team has pipeline planned, targets, individual quotas, etc.  

CRM systems like Salesforce is the backbone for any Sales team to track their progress and plan their activities on a day to day basis. If you are a Sales Manager, then you want your Sales Reps to ideally meet their targets, stay motivated and become a pro in selling to a specific territory.

Salesforce territory planning and Maps could help to a great extent and this article is all about it. Hop on and sail through it.

What is Territory Management ?

Within the Sales team, Sales Reps are assigned with certain set of accounts. These set of accounts are usually split based on certain conditions like geographic territory. With sales territory it’s easy to monitor which reps are assigned with what accounts. Also when a Sales Rep work on a territory for a prolonged time, he/she would know how to communicate with the prospects effectively in that region. Also it promotes healthy competition between the reps in meeting or exceeding targets.

Sales territory assigment

Sales Territory Management

Manually dividing the territories and assigning the area, quota to sales reps could be a nighmare to managers. With Salesforce you could do it quickly. All you have to do is use the Salesforce Maps and Enterprise Territory planning feature.

Here’s a quick video on this, have a look and read through the blog to understand how to setup this.

Sales Territory Planning Considerations

If you are heading the sales team with field and Inside sales reps, then the complexity of assigning the leads or accounts increases. You can’t assign simply based on geography and the driving time to customer’s location. It can be dependent on other factors too – like size of the company, availability and likes of customer and so on (specifically with the rise of COVID-19).

Here are a few pointers that you need to keep in mind before coming up with a Sales territory plan as such.

  • Retaining customers is equally important, if not more than acquiring customers. Ensure that the plan accomodates and allocates bandwidth for reps to concentrate on cross-sell and up-sell opportunities in the territory
  • Your reps should be comfortable and confident working in the territory. The reps need to be aware of the language, regulations, etc. You could perform some tests, gather feedback and then start implementing the plan
  • You choose the tool that’s right for you and your team.
  • You should be aware of the competition and current events, seasonal events in the territory.
  • You need to ensure that your reps or not overloaded. On the other hand, the reps should be given a chance to prove themselves and meet their quotas.
  • Your plan should be future-proof. Think of business objectives and revenue targets in the long term as well. The important part is you need to stay on top of things- continually measure and discuss progress with your team.

Salesforce Enterprise Territory Planning

You could analyze the existing customers, their territories, scale, etc and come up with a territory plan. With Salesforce’s Intelligent territory planning system, it’s a no brainer.

Before stepping in to creating a plan, you need to do the following

  • Understand the market, your competitors and existing customers and segment them.
  • Conduct a SWOT analysis of your reps, business
  • Outline business goals and revenue targets
  • Plan in a way prioritizing the segments where there is a high potential and where you are already a leader

Three important features of Sales Territory planning in Salesforce are pretty handy.

  1. Territory Management: 

You could create territories based on your business and visualize their designs.

You could also communicate about the territory design, assignment from within Salesforce to the entire team, rather than meeting them in person.

  1. Import territory in Maps:

This feature comes in handy for field sales. You could view the territories in map and then cross check the drive-time to customer’s location for a rep and assign the account to a rep accordingly.

This will save time and money for sales rep and for the business

  1. Advanced Territory Optimization:

If you have already done territory planning, you could easily scale or extend the geographies or territories. You could build different territory models based on the current scenario and need.

You could also pull reports and present to management regarding the territory performance, rep’s performance or overall business performance.

Salesforce maps

Steps to create Sales Territory Plan

This section is intended for enabling and using the Salesforce Enterprise Territory Management feature.

You may follow the below steps and refer the Trailhead if you have any further queries.

  1. Setup -> In Quick Find enter “Territory” and select “Territory settings”.Enable Enterprise Territory Management and leave the default access levels or the levels you desire for your business
  1. The feature is enabled already, now we have to setup territory type. Again from Setup -> Quick Find -> Territory type. Enter a label, description and set priority. Of course Save it.

3. Next, create a territory model. This is created to map accounts, users to territories created. So same story from Setup -> Quick Find -> Territory models. Enter label, description and save.

4. We are nearly there. Now it’s time to create territories. In Territory models -> press View Hierarchy -> Create territory -> Enter label, the territory type we created initially and repeat it for how many ever territories you need.

  1. You could view hierarchy of the territories in a tree structure


6. Lastly, you need to assign reps, accounts. Again go to View Hierarchy -> New ->  Enter name, enter selection criteria. Eg: Post code of account is equal to 94000, then it should be assigned to this territory and so on. Voila! it’s as simple as that. Just don’t forget to hit “Run rules”.

Final Thoughts

To close a sale and make revenue, a sales rep need to be aware of what accounts to focus on and when. With Salesforce, sales rep could concentrate on activities related to closing the deal and not any other tasks. It increases overall morale of the sales team too.

Keep calm and close the deal!

If you want to plan or optimize your Sales territory (or) if you have any questions please feel free to drop a comment.

About the author

Priya Ravichandran
Priya Ravichandran

Senior Consultant | Geeky Digital Marketer | Guest Content Writer

Priya Ravichandran is a consultant by day, content creator by night. Priya enjoys writing well-researched and easy-to-read business content. When she isn't typing or writing, she can be found backpacking or dancing.

Get great content updates from our team to your inbox.