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Sales - 8 min READ

How to create a sales territory plan: A step-by-step guide

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Copper Staff

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An effective sales territory management plan can make your team more productive, improve customer coverage, increase overall sales, and reduce costs.

On the other hand, unbalanced sales 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 sales territory management strategy, whether you’re just starting one, or updating an existing plan.

In this post, we'll go through how to create a sales territory plan step-by-step:

Define your market, analyze, and segment existing customers.
Conduct a SWOT analysis.
Set goals and create targets.
Develop strategies.
Review and track your results.

What is a sales territory plan?

A sales territory plan is a strategic approach to targeting the right customers, setting goals for revenue, and achieving consistent sales growth over time.

Traditionally, sales territories were divided based on geographical location, but today, they often include various industries, customer types, and other segments.

Follow these steps to create a sales territory plan:

The best way to start a sales territory plan is to first look at your customers, leads and prospects.

1. Define your market, analyze, 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.

The first group should be your best customers , or the ones who require little effort.
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.
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 in sales territory management.

To discover what key trends are in your geography or market, look over the sales data that’s already been collected. Analyze the data to find which sales 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).

Pro-tip: Learn about the best territory mapping software out there.

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.

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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.

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

Which weaknesses do you need to respond to? Think about weaknesses amongst your team, but also in the sales process.

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

Opportunities

Are there any opportunities in your marketplace you can take advantage of? This data can also be discovered using CRM software.

Untapped markets
Under-served territories
Growing demand for product or service

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

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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?

There are a number of ways to review customizable data using CRM software to discover where your leads are coming from. This can help you target areas of interest.

Which products or services are most profitable? Who is purchasing them?

Again, CRM software can automatically capture sales data and put it to work.

Which opportunities should we focus on?

Copper’s detailed reporting gives you insights into which areas of your sales territory are generating the most leads and revenue. With this information, you can better allocate resources, set clear goals for your team, and make data-driven decisions about where to concentrate your efforts.

Managing sales territories also involves staying on top of multiple moving parts, but Copper CRM makes it much easier. With Copper, you can organize your sales process in a Pipelin e to ensure no leads fall through the cracks, especially for creative agencies that frequently handle project quotes.

For example, you can set up repeatable sales stages like Project Discovery → Scoping → Proposal → Negotiation, which help your team follow a structured process. This ensures that each proposal is tracked, follow-ups are handled, and nothing gets lost in the shuffle. Copper can also keep your team updated on the status of each project, so you always know which stage your leads are in and can adjust your focus as needed.

By building a repeatable process with Copper, you’ll ensure smoother project management and more successful sales territory management.

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 in managing sales territories is to continuously review and track your results. Regular monitoring ensures that your sales territory plan remains effective and allows you to make adjustments as needed.

Key metrics to track:

Sales Growth: Are sales increasing or decreasing in specific territories?
Sales Rep Performance: Are all sales reps meeting their quotas and managing their leads effectively?
Territory Costs: Are there any territories that require more resources or adjustments in strategy?

Using CRM software can significantly enhance your ability to manage sales territories by providing real-time data and insights. With tools like Copper , you can automatically compile reports, monitor progress, and fine-tune your sales territory plan to maximize efficiency.

Use a CRM to help create a killer sales territory plan.

Many organizations use CRM software to better gather data without depleting resources. CRMs allow sales reps to access insights into your pipelines, revenue forecasts , sales goals and progress and much more.

The best part: all of this data can be automatically compiled into reports used to create your sales territory plan, freeing up more time for your sales team to focus on building long-lasting relationships within their territories.

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How to create an effective sales territory plan in 6 steps

Some experts say that the secret to sales success is a combination of skill, perseverance, and a good sales conversation starter . And they’re right—those are all important attributes for salespeople. But it overlooks what is possibly the most important factor in sales success—which happens before a meeting is even booked: your sales territory plan.

If you’re running a small business , you may wonder why you need a sales territory plan. After all, it sounds complicated—something for bigger, more sophisticated organizations.

But think of that plan as the important strategic groundwork that’s going to help you reach your sales goals. The good news is that yours doesn’t need to be complicated. And we’re here to help you create one, headache-free, for your small business or team.

Let’s break it down. In this post we’ll cover:

What a sales territory plan is
4 reasons why you need one

How to create a sales territory plan in 6 steps

Essential tools for creating the plan

Up your sales game and close more deals with conversation intelligence. ☎️

What is a sales territory plan?

Basically, it’s your strategy for how your team will target and approach prospects, leads, and existing customers to close more deals. Before you jump into your fancy sales territory mapping software , you need a battle plan:

An example of a sales territory plan from Adaptive Insights that shows things like which sales reps (and how many reps) you need, how many accounts you want to win per year, and more.

Traditionally—and as its name tells you—the sales territory plan was defined by geography. Salespeople would focus on prospects within a specific area only.

Today’s level of connectivity has changed that. You can now optimize your sales territory plan and target your leads by industry, business size, deal potential, and role too. Which, as you might guess, is much more effective than using geography alone.

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4 reasons why even small businesses need a sales territory plan

You’d never walk into a sales meeting with a prospect without having done a decent amount of prep work. Creating a sales territory plan should be no different. Here’s why.

1. It helps you target specific industries, regions, opportunities, and customers

Instead of targeting customers geographically, you can now segment opportunities by industry, opportunity, role, business size, business type, and others. This allows you to focus on meeting specific customer needs and target prospects that are most likely to buy, rather than simply playing a numbers game by trying to cover the most ground.

2. It aligns your sales team with your prospects

Every salesperson on your team will have a different set of strengths based on their experience—and effective teamwork is the key to making this work. For example, some reps may have lots of experience selling to a specific demographic, whereas others are experts in certain industries or types of products. Being able to align their efforts with a customer’s industry or specific needs means they’re going to close more deals than taking the spray-and-pray approach.

3. It empowers you to set realistic goals, track progress, and optimize your strategy

Having the latest Bluetooth headset and sales software is great and all, but setting goals are a must in sales. Having a way to track them helps you see what’s working, what isn’t, and why—and it’s essential to your success. With the ability to track your progress, you can replicate successes and easily make adjustments to areas that need work.

4. It lets you spend more time selling

Having a plan in place and a path forward means you and your team can focus on actually selling to customers that are the most likely to buy. You know who your happy customers are, you understand their challenges, and you know how to help them reach their goals. And that means more deals closed.

How do Salespeople spend their workdays infographic

Having a plan in place can help reps focus on their role, save time, and close more deals.

Now that you know what a sales territory plan is, let’s dive into how to write one in five basic steps.

1. Define your larger sales goals

Before you have a plan, you need a goal (or goals). And there are many different approaches you can take to determine sales goals. But we want to keep it simple, realistic, and easy to do without needing a 10,000-cell spreadsheet. Start with the big sales numbers and then work your way downwards. First, determine what your annual goal is, then break that into quarters, months, and even weeks.

For example, if your annual sales goal is $500K, then your quarterly goals will be $125K, and your monthly targets will be $41.7K.

If you’re not sure what your annual goal should be, last year’s sales numbers plus ten percent is a good place to start. (Of course, if things are going really well and you want to be more ambitious, you can adjust this number—and vice versa.)

Keep in mind that these numbers are just preliminary. You can adjust them later when you’ve completed the other steps and accounted for outside factors like economic conditions, seasonality, existing pipeline, and even current customers.

2. Define your market

What does your piece of the pie look like? Your market encompasses everyone you sell to.

Make a list of all the different people or industries you target. For business-to-business sales, this could be business type and size, departmental function, or roles within the organization. For business-to-consumer sales, you can segment based on demographic, psychographic, behavioral, and geographic information.

Ultimately, you’ll need to determine how to segment your customers based on the what’s relevant to your business or product.

An example of how to segment B2C customers

Defining your market lets you paint a clear picture of who your customers are. It allows your sales team to play to their strengths and address specific needs, goals, and pain points, which will differ between these different segments.

3. Assess prospect and account quality

Some customers will see tons of value in your product. The benefits are clear and it solves a big headache for them. They’re happy to buy a lot of what you’re selling, and often.

But, others may not have the same need.

Review which customers have traditionally been easy to sell to and/or seen high levels of success with your product. Then prioritize those leads and similar accounts.

4. Start mapping out the strengths and weaknesses of your reps

Some reps have a great understanding of the ins and outs of how enterprise organizations buy products and take on new vendors. Others will specialize in selling to people within a specific role, regardless of the size of the business. List all of the strengths and weaknesses of each sales rep so you have a better idea of the type of prospects they should target.

Keep in mind that it’s not about ranking them from best to worst—many sales reps who start out weak can finish strong with coaching and experience. It’s about aligning their skills and experience to where they’ll make the biggest impact and achieve the most success.

5. Assign leads

Armed with the knowledge of where your reps shine, you can now start assigning accounts. Start with the most obvious, high-value pairings where the rep has a lot of experience selling to that industry or type of individual. For example, reps who are good at closing large deals with educational institutions would be assigned leads in the educational space.

Next, assign leads to target roles. Reps who have experience working with or selling to IT managers would be assigned leads with similar titles.

Apply the same process to company size, deal size, location, and any other way you segmented your market.

How you organize this information is up to you. Some people use spreadsheets. Some use text documents. Others use illustrations and graphs. A mix of charts, maps, and tables will give you a pretty comprehensive and easy-to-absorb view of your territory plan:

6. Look for ways to improve your plan

Congrats—your sales territory plan is just about done. Your goals are more than just numbers on a page. And you can see a path to how you’re going to achieve them. But you may notice that it’s a bit lopsided. Perhaps some of your reps are carrying too much of the workload or the quotas don’t seem realistic.

The truth is, you may go through several iterations of your plan. You’ll have to move leads around to different reps. For example, giving your stronger reps leads that will be harder to close, and newer reps lower value deals where there’s less at stake. Ultimately, the numbers should be achievable for every rep. So take a step back and look at your plan objectively to make sure it makes sense.

And you’ll need to make sure you have the tools you’ll need to execute your plan. For example, do you have a business phone service, call center management system , or IVR system?

Essential tools for building your sales territory plan

With your plan in hand and a clear path to success, you’re going to need a few tools to put things into action.

Office software

Whether you’re a visual person who prefers to map out your territory plan using images and graphs or you’re the type that likes to dive into every row and column of a spreadsheet, you’re going to need office software to turn your plan into a document. Office software usually includes apps for word processing, spreadsheets, presentation decks, and email. The two most popular options available right now are probably Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace .

What’s the difference? Without diving into a feature-by-feature comparison , Google Workspace is often better for small- and medium-sized businesses who are looking for a simple, elegant solution. Microsoft 365 has more robust, enterprise-grade features that can be used for more complex businesses.

An all-in-one communications tool designed for sales teams

This may seem like a no-brainer—if you’re selling, of course you need to have a phone, email address. Perhaps you need a business phone number , a toll free number , conference call services , and contact center software , along with SMS and fax (if you’re selling in industries like insurance).

But if your reps spend any time traveling to meetings and working on the go, a traditional office phone setup isn’t going to support them very well. You’ll also be missing out on a few key features that are made specifically for helping sales teams.

Ideally, you should have a sales app that lets you make voice calls and video calls (especially useful if you do a lot of sales demos ), send instant messages to your team, and basically communicate through any channel you need. Here are a few features to look for:

Cloud support : Having a phone system or communications app that works on the cloud is much better than just using a cell phone. Why? Because your reps can receive inbound calls and make calls from their laptops or their own personal phones (without using their personal numbers)—without needing additional hardware. Plus, that same app lets you have video calls and send instant messages to your team:

Call monitoring : Ramping up new sales reps can take time and a lot of coaching. What if you could monitor your team’s sales calls quietly and listen in to what they’re saying to prospects? This way, you can help get them up to speed and get them booking meetings, pitching better, and closing deals faster.

Call recording : Every now and then, you’ll want to make an example of your agents (in the best way possible, of course). Call recording lets you capture their best calls and share them with the team, making it easier to replicate success. It’s also a good way to find opportunities for coaching. Sometimes, you’re also just required by law to keep records of calls with customers, so this feature might even be a must-have.

A customer relationship management (CRM) platform

Your team will be making calls, booking meetings, and taking notes all day long. A CRM makes it a whole lot easier to remember and track all the key details about their calls and prospects, so they can close more deals.

To make things even easier, many CRMs integrate with communications tools to keep your calls and key customer details in one, well-organized place.

Ready to start building a sales territory plan?

Making a sales territory plan may seem complicated. And in some cases, it is—whether you’re a large business with territories all over the world or a smaller business that’s just started branching out into new regions.

The key is to not overthink things. Follow these steps, and you’ll be able to identify your goals, better understand your market, know your customers—and target them without breaking (too much of) a sweat.

Originally published Mar 01, 2020, updated Sep 26, 2024

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