sales territory business plan outline

• June 24, 2024

Profitable Sales Territory Plans (7-Step Template + Examples)

• Sales Productivity , Sales Prospecting

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Sales organizations are more challenged than ever with a connected world, complex offerings, and what seems like an endless world of prospects. Without a strong sales territory plan, sales teams may feel all over the place, and as a result may not be producing the best results for your customers or your organization.

If you’re looking to maximize sales productivity and the value that your sales team brings to customers, it may be time to review and enhance your sales territory plan.

Good sales territory planning provides a framework to measure sales potential, set goals, and focus your team’s sales efforts for maximum success. It provides your sales team the guidance to properly identify and understand customers and prospects, assess and measure value, and support customers in a way that leads to loyalty.

Table of Contents

What is Sales Territory Planning   Benefits of Sales Territory Planning Factors to Consider When Planning Sales Territories 7 Steps to Writing a Successful Sales Territory Plan 5 Sales Territory Management Best Practices to Follow Essential Tools to Plan Your Sales Territories 5 Ways to Validate a Sales Territory Business Plan

What is Sales Territory Planning?

Territory planning is the process of creating a plan to ensure your sales team targets the right customers (and the most profitable ones).

Historically, most territories were broken down by geography, but in today’s connected world, sales territories can also be divided in many ways, including:

• Sales potential
• Customer type

With a clearly defined territory, sales teams can work strategically to address the needs of their assigned market. A strong sales territory plan allows you to:

• Ensure your sales team’s efforts are focused on the who , what , when , where and why that offer the strongest return on investment.
• Align salespeople to the regions, segments, and/or verticals best suited for their background and expertise.
• Partner intelligently across company teams to drive corporate objectives
• Optimize customer experience by aligning accounts with sales teams that understand their unique challenges and opportunities.
• Set the stage for long-term solid customer and market relationships.

Benefits of Sales Territory Planning

If you’re doubting the value of a strong sales territory plan, consider these inarguable benefits:

More time spent selling

A strong territory plan allows organizations to maximize their sales momentum by aligning the right sales teams to the right opportunities. Studies by industry analysts consistently show a decline in sales productivity due to factors such as extensive traveling, the need to learn and understand new segments, and administrative overhead.

With a clear sales territory plan based on geography and sector, salespeople can spend less time traveling and preparing for customer engagements and more time working directly with customers.

Better customer service

By aligning your salespeople to a set of accounts that aligns to their background, expertise, and geography, they are better able to understand customer needs and build solutions that align. With consistent territories, salespeople can build long-term relationships, leading to higher customer loyalty and repeat business.

Balanced workloads

Workload is measured in time and effort required to adequately manage all accounts in a given territory. A strong territory plan compares workloads and designs territories so that each salesperson is at full capacity, maximizing their potential.

To maximize rep production, you need to do some due diligence when it comes to assigning balanced territories.

Factors to Consider When Planning Sales Territories

When segmenting territories among your reps, you want to make sure they’re allocated fairly. To ensure this, ask yourself the following questions:

• Is the workload equally divvied up between each member of the team?
• Does the territory design provide equal compensation opportunities?
• Is there a good mix of existing and new accounts per territory?
• Does the territory route allow easy travel time management?

Once you’re able to answer the questions above, it’s time to consider:

1 | Revenue Source

Current Customers. Where are your best customers and prospects located? Geographic and industry-based clusters are the most common focus because it’s easier to get new customers in an area with existing customers. Historical sales data will become your new best friend as it’s the best predictor of future success.

A sales tracking software will give you a complete history of this data.

Inbound Leads. When inbound leads convert, focus on the demographics such as geography, industry and size. Then, build a strategy to divide them as evenly as possible across your sales force.

The focus needs to be on revenue generated from inbound leads as opposed to volume of leads.

Outbound Prospecting. Sales territory design for outbound efforts begins by first laying out the territories to work, then overlaying them with prospecting territories according to how you’re allocating salespeople.

For example, you assign two sales reps to each state (two territories) and one canvasser (one prospecting territory).

2 | Rank Your Team

Create a scorecard and evaluate your sales reps to identify who your top, middle, and low level performers are.

• How much is their quota ?
• Do they consistently achieve this number?
• How many current customers and prospects are in their funnel?
• How many viable prospects are located within their territory?

3 | Rank Your Territories

Most Profitable (Least Risky). Evaluate which of your territories are most successful and double down on what’s already working.

Most Growth. If you’re more focused on the long-term instead of the short-term, focus on territories that haven’t been worked yet. It’s likely to take longer to become profitable, but will generate greater growth over time.

Learning / New Markets. To establish yourself in a new market segment or determine if it’s viable, send a canvasser into this territory to accomplish a specific task. This will help determine exactly what’s needed to succeed in that market.

4 | Track and Measure Metrics

Sales metrics are invaluable in understanding the success of every sales team within the company, and entire sales department as a whole. They help you to spot trends and determine efficiencies, and inefficiencies, within the company.

With sales enablement platforms like SPOTIO, you can easily pull results for:

• Team performance in relation to your sales funnel
• Data from custom statuses and fields based on KPIs
• Graphs representing team performance, best time and day to knock, etc.
• The number of attempts it takes to establish contacts, get leads and make sales
• This data gives you the information you need in order to assign balanced workloads across your sales team.

Actionable Data and Insight

With the help of territory management technology, sales territory data helps you accurately evaluate sales performance. This information helps you design effective sales compensation plans and ensure your sales teams are performing at their maximum potential.

Clarify ownership in complex organizations

In organizations with large and complex sales teams, roles and responsibilities are often tangled. With effective sales territory planning, territories are made clear from the get-go, ensuring that salespeople are clear about their target audience and not creating confusion for the team or the customer.

Resilience to change and turnover

Organizational changes such as personnel loss, mergers, acquisitions, alliances, and relocations inevitably effect customers and internal teams. With a strong territory management plan, change is easier to manage.

A well-documented sales territory plan allows new team member’s to ramp up quickly and avoid confusion regarding roles and responsibilities.

Team cohesion and morale

Strong territory planning optimizes the role of the team. By assigning complimentary teams to each territory, you create and environment which allows team members to benefit from each other’s strengths, share workload, and also avoid conflict that arises from unclear territories and boundaries.

7 Step Plan to Write a Successful Sales Territory Business Plan

The next logical question is, where do you start? In this section, we’ll provide an overview of each planning step, along with key questions and suggestions. Depending on your offering, industry, company size, or various other factors, you may use some or all these steps when building your territory plan.

1. Analyze your business goals and objectives

The first step to drafting a solid sales territory plan is bringing clarity to your company’s landscape, defining organizational goals, and evaluating industry trends. This is a basic step to ground you and your team on what you’re trying to accomplish with your sales territory plan.

As you go through the subsequent process, you should continually refer back to this data to maintain a pulse on whether your plan accomplishes what you’ve set out to do.

To get the juices flowing, start by answering these key questions:

• What is your organization’s most current vision, mission, and north star objective ?
• What are the key trends in your industry or market?
• What pain do your offerings solve for customers?
• What are your sales goals , in numbers?
• What is your conversion rate? Based on this how many prospects should you have in your funnel at any given time to ensure that you’re meeting your sales goals?
• Are there specific products/services that you are selling more than others? Why?

2. Analyze your prospects and customers

The next step is looking deep into your customer base. In addition to understanding their businesses, challenges, and unique traits, it’s important to identify what makes them unique and what sets them apart from each other.

Key questions to ask yourself include:

• Who are your most profitable and lucrative prospects and customers defined by industry, region, product, etc.?
• What do these customers have in common?
• Which of your prospects or customers offers the most profound growth opportunities for your company?
• What are your customers buying today and what does this tell you about their challenges and opportunities?
• Are their industries you serve with success? Are their industries that you’ve had less success with?
• When customers and prospects object, what is the biggest reason why?

3. Determine your Total Addressable Market

Your Total Addressable Market (TAM) is the entire body of prospects and customers that fit your ideal customer profile. Traditionally, organizations use data including industry, location, size, and revenue to begin mapping their TAM.

While this is still important, technology and tooling makes it easier than ever to identify prospects within your TAM that may not be so obvious.

Using traditional and modern sources, even tools like social media, look for company and industry look-a-likes that may be a suitable candidate for your offering.

Once an ideal customer profile is solidified, the next step is to figure out how large the market opportunity is that fits the description. You may use a matrix to include a range of large and small markets which present large or small opportunities.

While estimating the size of your market used to be a struggle of guesswork and complicated calculations, there are now tools available to businesses to automate the TAM discovery process.

4. Perform a SWOT Analysis

A simple way to evaluate your position in the market is to perform a SWOT (Strengths/Weaknesses/Opportunities/Threats) analysis. Since we all have blind spots, a SWOT analysis is best performed with the help of a broader team, including other company leadership, as well as members or your sales management and sales rep teams.

• What Strengths will you build upon?
• Which Weaknesses do you need to mitigate?
• Which Opportunities in your marketplace are you suited to take advantage of?
• What Threats in your selling environment will you defend against?

In doing this analysis, you will start to see patterns that indicate areas of your business that require more or less attention for various reasons.

For example , a strength that’s also a large opportunity may need a dedicated territory. On the other hand, an area that aligns to a serious competitive threat may require special attention to protect your company’s place in the industry.

The SWOT characteristics you identify will not always be related to revenue or geography. They may be related to more obscure things like training needs of your sales team, gaps in systems and tools, or even gaps in your products themselves.

Doing this analysis will help you be aware of other ways to think about your business and territories.

5. Determine and Document Sales Territories

Based on the work you perform in the sections above, you should have an idea of how to divide your sales territories. It’s important to document these clearly, outlining details of each territory including things like:

• Geographic Boundaries
• Industry or Segment Boundaries (including any overlap and how that is addressed)
• Revenue Boundaries
• Product Boundaries
• Anything else that may be applicable to your sales organization

6. Devise an Action Plan

Similar to the SWOT analysis, devising an action plan is a group exercise that should include various stakeholders in the company, specifically the leaders of each of your identified territories. Just as well, the action plan should be built to be nimble.

In a world where market opportunities change every day, the sales territory plan should be built to follow, ensuring that your action plan keeps up with changing opportunities and threats.

Gone are the days of an annual territory and action planning session. It’s important that change management is built into the framework to ensure your teams are not caught off guard with changes.

Within each category, you should answer the following questions:

• What is the territory’s quota?
• What is the territory’s quota stretch goal?
• What is the territory’s closed business YTD?
• What is the territory’s gap?
• How much pipeline do I have today?
• What is the territory’s pipeline gap?
• What are my goals for the year?

In addition to the overall territory, you will need to spend time looking at top accounts and where they fit in your territory plan. List top accounts and explain why they are chosen (relationships, industry fit, target profile).  For each, in one sentence, be clear and focused on the outreach strategy.

Next, create an opportunity map and make sure opportunity plans are thorough. What’s the compelling event? Why now? What’s the strategy to engage with a champion and economic buyer? What’s the mutual success plan?

Finally, close out with strategies to build your sales funnel.

In addition to being responsive to external factors, action plans should be reviewed on a quarterly basis to ensure your plan isn’t going stale unintentionally.

7. Track Performance and Stay Adaptable

Once you’ve devised and implemented your territory plan, it’s important to regularly measure success in each territory and adapt as needed.

Metric reviews should happen on a regular, defined cadence such as monthly or quarterly, and should be automated using sales performance tools to avoid making this a manual, costly, and easily avoided overhead.

Measures you put in place will vary based on your unique company situation, but some important measures include:

• Gross Sales

The most obvious measurement of sales success, gross sales is the sum of all sales that a territory carries out during a defined time frame. Gross sales is a useful metric because it shows the ability of sales professionals to make sales, regardless of what the profit margin is on those sales.

Gross Profit

This is the difference between the selling price for a product and the price the business paid to develop the solution. This measurement is important for businesses that want to encourage their sales forces to focus on high profit margins rather than just sales.

• Total Unit Sales

The aggregated number of product units sold within a particular territory, regardless of price, profit or commission. This method of measurement is useful when a company mainly sells a single type of product.

Conversion rate

Conversion rate is the percentage of leads or appointments that result in a sale of some kind. Sales forces with a high sales turnover number are operating at a high level of performance.

• Total Commissions

This is the amount of money the sales representatives for the territory in question take home as personal income. Although this measurement does not directly correlate to the competitiveness or degree of success of the business itself, it is effective to use as a means of motivating members of the sales force to achieve higher numbers.

• Return Customers

A sign of true development and sustainable growth in a sales territory is the tendency of buyers in that territory to come back and buy again.

For this reason, one important measurement to make is the amount of revenue or profit coming from clients who have bought before. This amount may be expressed as a gross number or as a percentage of gross sales, gross profits or commissions. 

With each review, it’s pertinent to ask your leadership whether the data being measures indicates the need for an adjustment to your territory plans. If you’re proactively monitoring and adjusting, you will maintain a plan that keeps you relevant with your customers and industry.

5 Sales Territory Management Best Practices to Follow

Managing a sales territory is a skill that needs constant development. Moreover, you should adjust and adapt to changes in your area. With summer underway, you have half a year left to grow your business. Propeller suggests four sales territory management best practices for you to implement this week.

1. Using a call rotation schedule to keep in touch with accounts

During the strategy phase, you and your team determined how often to call on each account based on their needs.  Also, note whether it is a phone call or an in-person meeting. Put these in a CRM or a calendar to keep your schedule on track.

2. Note the seasonal account trends

Another essential part of managing sales territories you addressed when building strategy was to determine which accounts were the seasonal business. It’s an excellent idea to check in before the season arrives and reconnect, so you are in touch when the account is ready to buy.

3. Keep the focus on the long-term, account-based goals.

New business is fantastic; however, it should not distract from the goals set for the targeted account-based marketing goals you set. Teaching the team to balance new business development with account management is a vital skill for any salesperson.

4. Explore new ways to divide the leads.

Many sales territory plans are set up by geography, and the leads from that area go to that sales territory rep. However, not every sales territory plan needs to be geographical; the location of the lead is not always the best way to go.

In cases where your sales reps do not have in-person meetings, you can try dividing new leads based on account type (i.e., verticals) or the referral source. Some people divide leads based on the product in which the lead is interested or by the size of the account.

5. Look for cross-selling opportunities.

Analyze the products that an account buys and look for natural partner-products or services, i.e., the “Would you like fries with that?” strategy. Many times, customers might not realize that you offer the full suite of products and services and can make their lives easier by ordering from one supplier.

Essential Tools to Plan Your Sales Territories

Like any job, when you are planning sales territories, you need to have the right tools. The right tools will help you plan, build, and execute a sales territory plan. There is a multitude of options available.  Here are three essentials you need to set yourself up for success, improve productivity and close the best deals.

CRM: Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is a how your company keeps track of its customer information and history. Many CRM applications also offer data analysis to help companies with customer retention and account growth. CRM compile data from several sources, including live chat, social media, and email correspondence, among others.

CRM is a significant source for successful sales territory planning.

Spreadsheet: Spreadsheets are data organizers in a tab form that takes data entered in cells and leverages that into different calculations and values, including simple math as well as complex financial and statistical figures. When you have data from various sources, such as a CRM and online sources as an example, you can assemble all the data available in a spreadsheet for quick access and comprehensive analysis.

GPS: Geo Productivity Software (GPS) are software applications that combine standard geolocation and route optimization functions with CRM data to help salespeople address their most relevant and profitable account first. Moreover, the features help salespeople optimize their selling time with customers instead of traveling to and from customers.

Some of the more sophisticated systems incorporate traffic and weather in the optimization of the scheduling.

A 7-Step Template to Create Profitable Sales Territory Plans

Without a strong sales territory plan, your sales team might become disorganized. As a result, you reps may not produce the best results for your customers or your organization. This is obviously a problem. Fortunately, this seven-step template is the answer! Simply follow the process we outline below to build a profitable sales territory business plan.

1. Analyze Your Business Goals

What do you want your sales territory business plan to achieve? Answer the seven questions below to help define and understand your organization’s objectives in this area:

• What is our current vision?
• What are key trends in our industry?
• What pain do we solve for customers?
• What are our sales goals, in numbers?
• What is our current conversion rate?
• How many prospects do we need?
• Which products/services are most popular?

2. Study Your Customer Base

Now that you know what your goals are, take a moment to study your customers. When you understand this unique group of people, you can serve them more effectively.

• Who are our best customers?
• Which customer segments offer the biggest growth opportunities?
• What challenges and/or opportunities do our customers meet every day?
• Which industries are we most successful in? Which are we least successful in?
• What are the most common objections our sales reps deal with?

3. Determine Your Total Addressable Market

Your Total Addressable Market (TAM) is the entire body of prospects and customers who fit your ideal customer profile. Use this formula to determine your company’s TAM:

• (Total # of Customers) x (Annual Contract Value) = TAM

Imagine you sell machinery to manufacturers in Texas. To find your annual contract value, multiply your average sales price ($1,000) by the average number of sales you make to each customer per year (3). In this scenario, your average contract value is $3,000.

There are roughly 17,000 manufacturers in Texas. So, your TAM would be $51M, because 17,000 manufacturers multiplied by an average contract value of $3,000 equals $51M.

SWOT stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Ask yourself the following four questions to perform a SWOT analysis for your organization:

• What Strengths can my company build on?
• Which Weaknesses does my company need to mitigate?
• Which Opportunities is my company able to take advantage of?
• What Threats in the industry can my company defend against?

A SWOT analysis will help you determine which sales territories need your immediate attention.

5. Document Your Sales Territories

Now it’s time to either create or redefine your sales territories. Once you’ve taken this step, document the details of each territory to keep things organized. These questions will help:

• What location boundaries define my territories?
• What industry boundaries define my territories?
• What revenue boundaries define my territories?
• What product boundaries define my territories?
• What other boundaries will define my territories?

You’ve almost finished building your profitable sales territory plan. The next thing you need to do is outline specific data points to collect and goals to strive towards for each territory you create.

• What is the territory’s quota?
• What is the territory’s quota stretch goal?
• What is the territory’s closed business YTD?
• What is the territory’s gap?
• What is the territory’s pipeline gap?

7. Track Performance

Finally, take time to evaluate your efforts on a regular basis. That way you know if your territories are performing the way you want them to, and can make necessary changes. To make things easier on your team, commit to tracking a few key metrics, like:

• Gross Profits
• Conversion Rate

5 Ways to Validate a Sales Territory Business Plan

Measuring your progress toward your goal is a crucial part of managing sales. By looking at specific parts of your process, you can determine what is working on your behalf and, perhaps more importantly, what is not.

Here are five questions you should ask to validate a sales territory business plan courtesy of Steve Andersen, President and founder of Performance Methods Incorporated (PMI).

1. Is your growth of strategic customer relationships on target?

It is critical that the customers you focus on provide new sales opportunities and growth, so ensure you picked the correct ones.

2. Are you adding to and advancing the opportunities in your pipeline?

Systems build excellent account management, and every salesperson should have a system for developing and moving accounts through their pipeline.

3. What is your close rate on targeted opportunities?

Close rates are the number of sales you get divided by the presentations you made. For example, if you close three deals for every eight presentations you make, your closing rate (or closing ratio) is 38%. The higher your close rate on targeted opportunities, then the more valid your sales territory business plan is.

4. How accurate is the sales forecast?

The ability to correctly predict the sales your territory will produce is a vital skill for managing a sales territory.

5. Do you have the right resources deployed to help your team?

Managing resources is significant in the overall strategy of a sales team. The right resources along with the right motivating activity can be the key to success in a sales territory business plan. Ensure you have both deployed appropriately.

Sales territories tells salespeople where they can do business. Proper sales territory planning by you and your team can help them take care of business. Work with your team in a collaborative way to help them target the right accounts that give them best results and you have built a foundation for success that benefits the salesperson’s, the company’s and your bottom-line.

And who doesn’t want that?

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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

Contributors from members of the Copper team

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 A Sales Territory Plan [Guide + Examples]

What's on this page:.

A well-defined sales territory plan is essential when operating across different regions, industries, and company sizes. It helps businesses organise and optimise their sales strategies and resource allocation.

This is especially important when expanding into new European regions.

Each region has different cultures, economic conditions, regulations, business practices, and languages (24 to be exact), and each must be approached in a focused and efficient way, with tailored strategies to local nuances.

That means building a well-designed sales territory plan is key. A territory plan can help you understand these differences and ensure your company’s products, services, and messaging are positioned correctly to capture market share.

What is a sales territory plan?

A sales territory plan is the strategic process of dividing, organising, and segmenting a business’s ideal customer base and prospects into distinct territories to help maximise sales productivity and revenue. These territories group accounts based on common attributes, including geography, industry, and company size.

A sales territory plan helps businesses target the right customers and effectively allocate their resources across different regions.

It also helps teams develop targeted sales and marketing campaigns and strategies tailored to each demographic and customer segment.

This is especially important when expanding into Europe, and Cognism has adjusted and iterated its territory plan to optimise its sales and marketing strategies. Let’s look at this in more detail (from our real-life experience).

Why is a sales territory plan important?

Previously, Cognism’s territory management lacked organisation and clarity, and reps were often assigned to accounts at random. This meant there would be various finance, marketing, and recruitment companies within each segment, all of different sizes.

This would result in uneven performance and fluctuation across mid-market and enterprise segments and a lack of precision in Cognism’s outbound sales strategy .

As Jonathon Ilett , VP of Global Sales at Cognism, explained:

“We had a real lack of focus on what a good fit account looked like because we were randomising the accounts that reps were being assigned to.” 

“This meant that our reps didn’t know the correct go-to-market strategy for the right accounts, and our sales efforts were not focused on bringing in the right type of customers.”

“We hadn’t allocated our resources optimally across our market segments, and our geographic coverage strategy was unclear.” 

“We expanded into new European regions, but when we referred to a region, sales managers weren’t sure if that meant where the actual account was based, where the Account Executive was placed, or where the purchase process took place.”

This also resulted in a lack of focus on Cognism’s ideal customer profile, as sales and marketing were not focusing on areas with the highest win rates and best retention metrics.

It made the SDRs and AEs’ jobs more complex and less repeatable, as they had to continuously switch who they were selling to, which reduced efficiency, productivity and constantly altered the context of their pitches.

These common mistakes also meant Cognism’s sales teams couldn’t examine their geographical performance. Because Cognism was emerging in new regions, UK reps often sold to both DACH and the US, while US reps sometimes sold to France.

Cognism, therefore, could not understand what teams were doing well and where they saw success, as every team was selling everywhere.

As Rob Tomchick , Chief Revenue Officer at Cognism, also shared:

“The first time we rolled out tactical territories, we had random account lists that were not organised. It was difficult for our sales team to put a strategy together that they knew would be successful.”

“A rep covering the Nordic region should not be using a success story and case study from an account based in the UK.”

“If these sales territories had been set up correctly and a rep was primarily selling to software companies in the UK, they could have created a repeatable strategy, messaging and set of success stories that they knew would resonate.”

How to create a sales territory plan: 6 simple steps

Cognism knew its strategy had to be more focused, especially when expanding into European countries.

Jon explained some of the changes that were made:

“With our new model, we’ve broken our sales territory strategy down to understand the right strategy for the segments and countries we are going after.”

“We reviewed our sales history, pipeline, closed-won revenue and other factors over the past quarters and created balanced territories for each Account Executive.”

“We’ve redesigned that structure to make it much more regional; everything is now HQ-led. We believe that adding a dedicated focus to each country will allow us to increase revenue while creating industry specialisation.”

“When it comes to particular geographic territories, we can see where we’re seeing high win rates and high ACV, and then we can put our resources, budget allocation and reps into those territories.”

1. Identify which regions to target and allocate your resources

When identifying which regions to allocate resources, Cognism analysed its international conversions and inbound requests.

“We first saw what was happening organically with our business. We began to analyse what was happening through our website and where those leads came from.” 

“Some of those leads were high-intent leads and ready to purchase our data. We could see many people in Germany looking to evaluate Cognism, for example.”

“We saw a trend in revenue and knew that if we proactively invested in these regions, we could increase our growth rates, which led us to put a couple of AEs in this region. The key was to increase resources alongside demand and revenue growth.”

2. Segment your customer base

When creating your sales territory plan, you must decide how to split out where you sell.

Depending on market size and potential, you might split territories based on regions, company size and industry.

Here’s what Rob said about Cognism’s expansion into Europe:

“You have to think about which dimensions to start with. People typically look at these three constructs: geographic regions, industry and company size, including small-medium businesses, mid-market and enterprise.”

Geographical territories are the most standardised approach to sales divisions.

This approach remains relevant for several reasons, as factors such as time zones, languages, and cultural nuances still matter.

Geographical territories are ideal for in-person or remote sellers and align selling styles with regional cultures.

You might divide your territories by industry sectors if your product/service applies to specific verticals. This means salespeople become familiar with specialised buyer profiles, and industry-specific jargon becomes second nature.

You can also tailor selling processes to industry needs; that way, salespeople can develop an in-depth knowledge of unique product applications.

Rob broke down Cognism’s sales territory strategy:

“We started with geographies. For Europe, we have a dedicated GTM team in France and DACH and a mostly London-based team covering the rest of Europe.”

“Once established, you can determine revenue trends within each regional segment by looking at win rate, ACV, and retention figures.”

“Then, you can figure out how much you want to invest in growing each segment and if there are some segments you want to deprioritise.”

“We figured out that mid-market was growing the most in EMEA, so we then selected the number of AEs we wanted to invest in DACH, France and the UK and how many of those AEs should belong in MM, SMB or ENT.”

Previously, Cognism referred to regions as where the sales team member sits. Now, it is defined by where a company's Headquarters and GTM operations are located.

Cognism looks to go after the following regions:

• US HQs with EMEA operations.
• US HQs without EMEA operations.
• Extending countries.

Cognism organised the team around regional strategies. This meant they could continue executing a segmentation strategy and adjusting resource allocation based on where reps succeeded in their ideal customer profile. This empowered reps to create, iterate, and win.

When expanding into a new European region where you haven’t got a massive amount of data or revenue, it’s difficult to understand what industries you will succeed in and what your ICP will be. So, by using geographical groupings, you can focus on understanding your sweet spot for each region.

Once you’ve settled in a region with a wide range of customer types, you can identify the optimal industries to target and assign specific sales representatives to those verticals.

Reps in those verticals will specialise in a set industry and become thought leaders, resulting in a much higher win rate when competing with competitors.

Rob explained:

“When entering a new region such as DACH and France, we do not segment too much as we have only recently entered these markets.”

“We have someone covering the Nordic countries, as companies across Sweden, Finland, Norway, and Denmark tend to buy in similar ways. Here, it makes sense to have one AE with a background in the region covering these areas. That way they have situational fluency and are up-to-date with industry trends. Then it’s a similar story for Southern Europe.”

“In the US, it’s a lot easier to segment based on geography because of the different time zones and depth of the economies. It’s harder to cut the UK up geographically, so creating industry-based territories made the most sense.”

3. Create localised and tailored strategies

Once you’ve created an effective sales territory management plan, your sales and marketing teams can work together to determine the right sales tactics and messaging to push to each market and territory.

Each geographical location will have unique messaging catered to cultural and regional nuances. Adjusting your sales and marketing process to local business customs and decision-making timelines is crucial.

As Rob shared:

“If you put an AE in a scenario where they’re selling to both the US and European companies, it’s tough for them to understand how those types of companies go about an evaluation process.” 

“Culture influences how people analyse and process business value and purchase products.”

“Some cultures are wired to negotiate everything to the bone. For an AE to understand how the culture impacts processes and purchases, you need to immerse them in these regions.”

“In Europe, you have so many different cultures, so the more situationally aware the AE is of the region, the better.”

“If we have this edge over our competitors, we have a better chance of winning. This also translates into pricing. If you have an AE with accounts across Europe and the US, they won’t tailor their pricing to each customer’s situation, which would negatively impact their win rate.”

A well-designed sales territory division also means your sales team can adapt your value proposition to resonate with local cultures and regulations.

Liam Bartholomew, VP of Marketing at Cognism, added:

“In DACH, you need double opt-in consent to email someone. Therefore, the email data available in the Cognism platform isn’t compliant for them to email to.”

“Pushing how Cognism has email data in DACH wouldn’t make any sense. So focusing on phones, mobile data, and enrichment makes more sense.”

Similarly, for a US-headquartered company with EMEA operations, Cognism’s value proposition would focus on providing the highest-quality, most relevant, and compliant data in EMEA.

Contrastingly, Cognism would focus on its reliable mobile data in North America for a US-headquartered company without EMEA operations. Its competitive advantage would be its Diamond Data® and the fact that it has the best mobile numbers with the highest connection rate.

You also want to ensure your content and messaging address local pain points, interests and communication styles.

For example, when expanding into Europe, Cognism found that communication styles in Germany and Switzerland often leaned towards being more direct and to the point when it came to outbound sales.

However, a more indirect and nuanced approach is more common in France and Spain, whilst British audiences generally appreciate a process that builds on relationships. Designing a territory plan helps reps become familiar with these nuances.

4. Define your ICP

As mentioned, knowing which customers to prioritise is essential when approaching a new region or market. Here, defining your ICP is key.

Antoine Cornet , Head of Revenue Operations at Cognism, explained:

“You need to think about your ICP and run regression models and analytics to understand which technographic or firmographic components impact your win rate and ACV.”

“Hopefully, if your data is clean enough, you can identify a few factors that let you know the best account in each territory and where to place your bets. Once you’ve established those factors, you can also run analytics on the most important components and create an account score.”

When refining your ICP across each region, you might want to conduct surveys and interviews with potential customers, analyse successful competitors’ customer bases, and consider how cultural differences affect buying behaviour and preferences.

Once Cognism has expanded into a region, they determined its ICP by looking at the following factors:

• High engagement: Frequent, consistent use; adopt new features.
• Higher Lifetime value: long subscriptions, high revenue.
• Strong fit: product solves their pain points, high satisfaction.
• Efficient sales cycle: quick decisions, understanding value.
• Low churn rate: high retention, renewed contracts.
• Positive advocacy: provide testimonials and refer others.
• Strategic alignment: Share company values and be open to long-term partnerships.

5. Create an account allocation strategy

When it comes to account allocation, you want to identify and assign key strategic accounts to specific sales managers.

Here, it’s essential to ensure each salesperson has a manageable number of accounts and sales opportunities and to align account complexities with salesperson experience and skills.

Consider language skills and cultural understanding when assigning territories and accounts.

It’s essential to evaluate the value of each account within the market and prioritise each account through your sales territory plan. That way, your sales reps won’t waste their time and can optimise their efforts and resources.

Cognism ranks accounts through tiers. When it comes to initiatives such as its ABM play, Cognism can put its best chances of success in top-tier industries and accounts.

6. Understand which metrics to track and assign quota

When it comes to setting quotas and sales goals, here’s what Rob said:

“Sales targets and quota allocation starts with defining how many AEs to put in each region.”

“Before we went to this regional focus and territories, we tried to understand an AE’s average productivity and what we think is reasonable if we give them enough sales pipeline.”

“I figured out the number of AEs we should invest in each area based on that, and then I understand if the territory’s historical sales data, pipeline and revenue can support the outcome of the sales quota we are assigning. If not, we can tweak the territory to make it bigger.”

“Someone in a lower win rate territory will have to be better at sifting through a lot of pipeline and doing a lot of qualification early to figure out where to focus and win. If you don’t have as many accounts, you need to focus on higher value messaging.”

Here are some key metrics to track:

• Sales metrics: Revenue growth, customer acquisition cost and average deal size.
• Marketing metrics: Lead generation, conversion rates and brand awareness.
• Operational metrics: Customer satisfaction scores, and support response times.
• Financial metrics: Profitability by country and return on investment.
• Revenue Targets: Set realistic sales revenue goals based on market potential and resources.
• Market Share Objectives: Define the target market share for each territory.
• Customer Acquisition Goals: Set targets for new customer acquisition and account growth.
• Activity Metrics: Establish expectations for sales activities and customer engagements.

Creating a sales territory plan: Key takeaways

Creating an effective sales territory plan will help optimise resource allocation and improve marketing and sales efficiency.

It helps improve customer experiences by allowing businesses to develop expertise in specific industries and tailor strategies to customers, their regional business environments, and cultural nuances.

A well-structured territory design helps identify untapped markets and create consistent sales growth opportunities, making it easier to expand sales teams into new regions or industries.

It helps improve alignment with your ICP, leading to higher conversion rates, more consistent and repeatable selling motions for AEs, and higher win rates.

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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. 

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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Sales territory planning: The five minute territory plan and template

What is a sales territory plan?

The number one issue for sales leaders today is – pipeline, pipeline, pipeline. How’s your pipeline looking? What’s your pipeline coverage gap look like? Well, we got you covered.

We have proven ways to quickly build self-sourced pipeline and progress pipeline faster too. It all starts with planning – territory planning. Sales territory planning is a proven way to empower sales teams to prioritize accounts and activities to generate more pipeline and close more deals – faster.

A sales territory plan is a strategic document that outlines how a sales team will approach and manage sales activities within a specific geographic area or market segment. The primary goal of a sales territory plan is to optimize the allocation of resources, increase sales effectiveness, and achieve revenue targets within the assigned territory. A territory plan serves as a roadmap for a salesperson and sales team, guiding their efforts and helping them stay focused on achieving success within their assigned territory.

Territory planning offers several benefits to organizations, sales teams and salespeople. Here are some of the advantages.

• Clear sales objectives
• I ncrease sales and revenue
• Increase sales efficiency
• Develop more self-sourced pipeline
• Optimize resource allocation
• Improved focus and activity prioritization
• Better customer relationships
• Deeper understanding of customer and market needs
• Improved customer retention and growth
• Enhanced team collaboration

The five minute sales territory plan

We believe there’s nothing better than old school, back to basics, sales territory analysis, planning and prospecting. Here’s a short talk outlining how to get your team embracing territory planning as a path to create self-sourced demand. Imagine what would happen to your business and pipeline if every seller documented their own territory plan and then video recorded a short and thoughtful five minute version of it?

We call this the “Five Minute Territory Plan.”

Reps love the 5 minute territory plan:

“I found recording my sales territory plans to be such an illuminating experience. It helped me identify gaps in my strategy, evaluate what I was saying and why I was saying it. The AI was real time and the feedback was spot on. I feel I’m better for it and looking forward to doing more”. – Ben

Turn territory planning into an i nteractive experience for your sales teams by making everyone part of the process and accountable for results. I believe our quota carrying, revenue generating sales executives need to own self-sourcing pipeline. Territory planning is the way to reinvigorate it. Here are the secrets to making “territory planning and prospecting” a revenue generating peer activity appreciated versus criticized.

• Have vision and leadership to make it part of your sales culture
• Make territory plans relevant, short, and accessible to share best practices
• Do sales territory planning quarterly or even monthly

Vision and leadership make it happen

Companies that embrace the idea of video recording territory planning with Sales Enablement Platform on a regular basis, with peer reviews, are seeing tremendous increases in self-sourced pipeline and improvements in new hire time to ramp. Think about it. Imagine if every new hire had access to stack-ranked video recordings of territory plans grouped by tenure. What would happen to your team’s time to first deal and time to ramp metrics? The power and value of crowdsourcing is incredible. We all know that some of us are great at planning and others aren’t so great. Making territory planning a team sport is a chance to get everyone to learn how to plan like those who do it best. It takes vision to turn crowdsourcing territory plans into culture. It takes work to align teams on expectations. It takes discipline to make it stick.

Make the plan relevant, short, and accessible

Here are the basics of a sales territory plan proven to create pipeline and generate revenue fast. Start by sharing a territory planning template that’s relevant and short. Click here to download our template. Turn the territory plan into a collaborative business review.

Have your team document the facts of the territory and goals.

Then, move into top prioritizing accounts to prospect. Prioritize top accounts and explain why they are chosen (relationships, industry fit, target profile). For each, in one sentence, be clear and focused on the outreach strategy.

If some of the accounts are ready, have your teams create an opportunity plan and make sure opportunity plans are thorough. It doesn’t take much to know if there is a plan in place.

• What’s the compelling event?
• What’s the strategy to engage with a champion and economic buyer?
• What’s the mutual success plan?

We’re not doing deep detailed reviews. You can also follow a MEDDICC/MEDDPICC deal review format too.

Close out the plan with strategies to build pipeline. Don’t forget that we’re living in a 3X or even 5X pipeline-ratio world. Putting “pen to paper” on these territory statistics makes it super clear what needs to get done, to earn a spot on the beach celebrating club.

That’s the flow of the five slide and “Five Minute Territory Plan” template. Download the template now .

The benefits AI and sales territory plans

Artificial Intelligence (AI) can significantly enhance the effectiveness of sales territory planning by providing advanced analytics, automation, insights and coaching. Here are several ways in which AI can assist in sales territory planning:

Data Analysis and Insights: AI can analyze vast amounts of data, including customer demographics, purchasing behavior, and market trends, to provide valuable insights into each territory’s potential.

Customer Segmentation: AI algorithms can perform advanced customer segmentation based on various factors, enabling sales teams to target specific customer groups with tailored approaches.

Automation of Routine Tasks: AI can automate routine and repetitive tasks, such as data entry, report generation, and administrative activities. This allows sales teams to focus more on strategic planning and customer engagement. SalesHood’s AI Call Recaps and AI Coach are great examples.

Content recommendations: AI-driven personalization can enhance sales effectiveness within each territory by tailoring campaigns to the specific preferences and needs of local customers.Recommendation engines can suggest personalized offers and content, increasing the relevance of marketing materials.

Coaching: AI-powered collaboration platforms facilitate communication and knowledge-sharing among sales team members working in different territories.

A great use of AI is to provide coaching feedback to salespeople in real-time on their sales territory plans. The power of AI with territory planning is that you will make your review process more effective and efficient. It’s a game-changer for sales leaders, sales managers and sellers. Here are the benefits of using AI to inspect, review and coach territory plans:

• Reps and team show up ready for team reviews
• 10X review volume and quality
• Coaching in the moment

Here’s a video explaining the benefits of using AI to coach sellers and provide feedback – especially relevant for account and territory reviews.

Overcome territory planning objections and barriers

For many, sales territory planning is not perceived as a revenue generating and pipeline building activity. It’s our job as managers and coaches to guide our teams to breakthrough these barriers. Here are some questions to pose during a team meeting, kickoff event or one-on-one.

• What limiting beliefs are holding us back?
• What do we have to do to achieve greatness?
• How do we need to grow personally and professionally?
• How should we think differently?
• What behaviors need to develop, change, and evolve?

Sales territory planning cadence

Given the sales territory plan template is short, forward thinking leaders are building monthly and quarterly territory planning cadence. The short plans get sellers to focus on strategy and execution versus too much time filling out slides that aren’t relevant. We want to see more sellers take the time to be thoughtful about their plan and business. What we love most about this process is getting everyone to limit their territory planning to five minutes. Less is more. Less slides and less words is hard to accomplish.. We’ve learned when territory planning video recordings are five minutes or less (and accessible), sellers will invest the time to watch up to fifteen peer territory plans. We have also witnessed that with AI sellers are taking time to get feedback multiple times on their plans before submitting for approval by their managers.

The process and benefits apply to account planning too. If you want to learn more about Account Planning, here’s another blog you can read . You can scale Territory Planning and Account Planning with our AI Coach .

We have proven ways to quickly build self-sourced pipeline and progress pipeline faster too. Sharing hyper-personalized sites to educate and elevate prospecting outreach is working wonders for many of our customers.

✅ 60% pipeline conversion ✅ Win-rates are up 2X ✅ Deal velocity up 15% ✅ Deal size up 400%

Who doesn’t want these results? Click here to learn more and start a free trial.

How does SalesHood help with territory planning?

SalesHood is an AI-powered revenue execution platform designed to support various aspects of sales effectiveness, including training, coaching, and collaboration. SalesHood plays a role in facilitating certain aspects of the sales territory planning process including planning, prospecting and personalization. Here’s how SalesHood can contribute:

Training and onboarding: SalesHood provides a platform for creating and delivering training content. For sales teams involved in territory planning, this can be valuable for onboarding new team members or ensuring that existing team members are up-to-date on the latest strategies and approaches related to territory management.

Content creation and best practice sharing: SalesHood allows organizations to create and share content related to sales strategies, market insights, and best practices. This can be useful in the context of territory planning by providing a centralized repository for information that can be accessed by sales teams as they plan and execute strategies within their assigned territories.

Collaboration and communication: The collaboration features of SalesHood facilitate communication and knowledge-sharing among sales team members. This can be beneficial for coordinating activities within and across territories, allowing teams to share insights, success stories, and challenges.

Coaching and feedback: SalesHood supports coaching and feedback mechanisms, enabling managers and peers to provide guidance to sales representatives. This can be particularly useful in the context of territory planning, where feedback can help refine strategies and improve performance.

Hyper-personalized prospecting with Client Sites: Guide sellers what to do, what to share and what to say with hyper-personalized prospecting. There’s so much noise out there. Rise above the crowd with a differentiated and personalized approach to prospecting. We have proven ways to quickly build self-sourced pipeline and progress pipeline faster too. Sharing hyper-personalized sites to educate and elevate prospecting outreach is working wonders for many of our customers. Salesforce says that only 29% of sellers use videos to prospect. SalesLoft reports that using video to prospect can lead to a 26% higher response rate compared to simple email text.

SalesHood complements the sales territory planning process by providing a platform for ongoing learning, collaboration, and prospecting. Integrating SalesHood with other tools and processes tailored to territory planning can create a more comprehensive and effective approach to sales management and pipeline development.

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Sales Territory Planning and Management: What You Need to Know

Updated: June 09, 2023

Published: March 31, 2015

One of the essential pillars of a successful business is an effective sales territory strategy.

Sales territory planning requires careful thought and consideration — getting it right the first time is crucial. Constant changes in territory division can dampen your sales team's productivity and take a toll on employee morale. And from the client’s perspective, frequent changes in account managers can lead to unstable relationships and create a higher risk for churn.

In this post, we'll cover exactly how to execute sales territory planning and management that keeps your team and your customers in mind. You'll also get best practices for sales territory design, alignment, and the rules of sales territory engagement.

Understanding, planning, and managing sales territories can make or break your sales efforts. Your reps need a firm grasp on the specific customer segments they’re responsible for and the general framework of your team’s territories overall. Only then can your team successfully close deals using this strategy.

How you structure, define, and distribute the territories you work with has massive implications for your organization’s sales efficiency and bottom line.

A strategic sales territory design, exceptional territory management, and sales territory alignment are the building blocks of a successful sales territory plan . So here’s some perspective on how to do them right.

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Building a Sales Territory Plan

If you choose to design your sales territories without a plan, you’ll quickly find that your resources and budget are disappearing faster than your ROI can keep up. Sound familiar?

If you're on borrowed time and money quarter after quarter trying to prospect and close new business, get familiar with these sales territory rules of engagement below.

1. Define your market.

To effectively set up territories, sales leaders must first understand the environment of their business. There are numerous ways for a business to define a market. Factors could include geography, size, and consumer demographics, competition, and more. But starting with internal company factors is key.

Take a look at your company's core values, goals, and revenue. Which segment of your customer base is most aligned with these and generating the most revenue for the business?

Once you identify who this group is, look for similar niche markets that your sales team could tap into. For example, if your most profitable customers are in the consumer packaged goods sector, try targeting niche sectors of this industry like food & beverage or health & beauty products. These could become new territories for your business.

Know what is unique to your business and prioritize based on what your climate demands. Targeting a profitable market segment as its own sales territory will lead to lowered overhead costs, increased sales, and reduced customer churn.

2. Assess account quality.

After you've identified the perfect target market for your sales territory, you'll need to evaluate the value of each account within the market. The measurement could be either quantitative or qualitative , depending on the product or service your business offers.

For example, a beverage company might rank the value of its accounts by net profitability. In contrast, a company that relies heavily on customer recommendations could focus on accounts that are more likely to provide a referral for their company.

By determining the value of each account, you can prioritize each one in your sales territory planning. That way, your sales team understands which accounts are reflected in their quota metrics and can give these accounts the attention they deserve.

3. Determine territory quality.

After assessing the quality of each account, it’s time to determine how qualified the territory is as a whole. As with the accounts’ values, this process is subjective based on different business needs and priorities.

Continuing the consumer packaged goods example, if you have a food & beverage territory and a health & beauty territory, you may realize that each of them has different sales cycles, churn rates, and even repeat purchases. These are just a few examples of factors that could affect the quality of a sales territory.

Internally, you may decide that the sales cycle is the biggest determinant of territory quality and use this factor to rank each one from highest to lowest. A shorter sales cycle for the health & beauty territory could mean a quicker ROI for your team, so you could rank health & beauty as a higher quality territory than the food & beverage territory.

To get a better picture of territory value, include your sales team in these discussions. After all, no one knows the territories better than the reps who work within them each day. This way, you can assign the appropriate reps to maximize the potential of each territory.

4. Understand your sales reps’ strengths.

The next step of effective territory management may be the most important of all. After determining the quality of each sales territory, you must assign reps with the applicable skills to develop and optimize each one.

An example of an excellent sales territory assignment is assigning a territory defined by large enterprise deals to a rep who has experience closing big deals.

Now this isn't to say that as a sales leader you should cherry pick certain reps to work certain territories. This step represents the opposite. Instead of relegating reps to highly specialized roles to the point of creating silos, you can cultivate an environment of continuous learning. Use the expertise of each sales rep to introduce best practices for each territory that can be passed on to other team members.

By strategically assigning qualified reps to accounts, you will empower your entire team to deliver an amazing buying experience for your clients.

5. Review your sales territory plan.

The four steps outlined above will prepare your business to put a sales territory plan into action, but you'll need to do a final diagnosis of costs associated with each territory. Analyzing cost metrics will help you as a sales leader zero in on specific inefficiencies in the system and solve for them.

There are several ways to identify these industries, but I recommend you start with customer acquisition cost or CAC. By using this metric, you'll quickly come up with a list of costs associated with prospecting and closing each deal. You can even compare CAC over time, against competitors, or against industry standards to determine what a healthy CAC should be for the territory.

6. Design the final plan.

The last step of building a sales territory plan is to put it all together by designing your sales territories.

There are some strides businesses can take to ensure their sales territory management is as efficient and effective as possible. Below are some of the sales territory management best practices.

1. Put a stellar sales leader in place.

A sales territory plan is pretty much useless when you don't have the right sales leader in place to guide its execution. This person will be responsible for sales territory development, team management, and stakeholder alignment, so take your time and do your research when filling this role.

As you're considering promoting your next sales territory manager from within or hiring one externally, check out our post on what to look for in a good sales territory manager .

2. Practice sound cadence management.

Proper cadence management — the process of prioritizing, structuring, timing, and conducting account interactions — is central to successful sales territory management efforts. Your reps need to gauge account priority level, group accounts based on that assessment, and determine the best frequency, pattern, and nature of touches between them and contacts.

Cadences will differ from territory to territory. It might take some trial and error, but properly managing territories often hinges upon how you contact the prospects you’re trying to reach within each one.

3. Consistently keep track of your data and customer needs.

Territory management is agile by nature. You can’t expect a specific territory to remain stagnant in how it responds to your sales strategies. Customer circumstances change, and you need to be able to quickly adapt to them.

That’s why your reps need to keep records of their sales data in a CRM — making sure you’re keeping tabs on what is and isn’t working for you. Have reps maintain notes from their appointments and keep them on record. Stay abreast of every trend within all your territories to ensure they’re being catered to as effectively as possible.

4. Don’t forget to pursue new leads.

Effective sales territory management isn’t specific to existing accounts. Though this is a crucial component of the process, it’s not the only one. Always pursue new business — one way or another.

That doesn’t mean forgetting about current accounts. You still need to keep them happy — particularly high-volume ones. But if you want to grow your business, you have to consistently pursue new opportunities within your territories. Both kinds of customers serve an essential function to the health of your business, so both need their fair share of attention.

Remote Territory Management

Not all sales territories require an in-person presence, and there are instances when your reps will have to work remotely. If this is the case, your reps still need to abide by the best practices mentioned above, but in all likelihood, they’ll need to adjust their cadence.

A cadence that rests on in-person interactions will have to change if those interactions can’t happen anymore. It might mean finding a new progression that incorporates more phone time and remote tools like video calls.

It might take some trial and error, but you have to land on a cadence better suited to handle remote interactions — and that might not look like the one your reps are used to using.

In addition to adjusting cadence, you may have to adapt your sales territory plan to changes in the market or internally within the company. This is where sales territory alignment comes in.

The most common way sales territory alignment occurs is geographically, especially for remote sales teams who work in the field and meet customers face-to-face. If you notice that there's increased demand for your product or service in the northeast region, you can restrict the territory to the area with the most concentrated demand and expand the corresponding team in that area.

You may have to align your sales territories three to four years, but as often as every year can be normal for fast-paced industries like technology, medical sales, and real estate.

Final Thoughts

An effective sales territory design can be the difference between well-organized, cohesive, successful sales efforts and inefficient, scattershot wastes of resources.

If you understand and implement the sales territory rules of engagement discussed in this article, you can increase your chances of success no matter the territory you find yourself in.

Editor's note: This post was originally published in June 2021 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

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30-60-90 Day Sales Territory Plan Template

The 30-60-90 day sales territory plan template helps your organization target the right customers, implement goals for revenue, and achieve consistent sales growth over time. With this framework, you can outline a clear path to make your regional sales operation profitable.

• Create a visually engaging sales plan that aligns everyone in your company on sales goals and a regional execution plan.
• Identify focused messaging and priorities for all sales reps.
• Define a clear plan for scaling each of your regional sales territories.

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• Click and start editing, no account or credit card required. Follow along with the instructional sales territory plan details. Add charts, graphs, images, and videos to customize the sales plan template and make it your own. Drag & drop. Resize. It’s the easiest editor ever.
• Customize everything in the sales territory plan to match your brand. Define your style guide. Add your (or your client’s) brand fonts and colors. You can even pull colors directly from a website to easily brand your sales plan and other documents.
• Work on your sales territory plan together on the cloud. Add colleagues (or clients) to collaborate on the 30-60-90 day sales territory plan template. Changes automatically save and sync across all devices, in real-time.
• Share a link. Present a slideshow. Embed. Download a PDF/PNG. The sales plan seamlessly adapts to your workflow. No more jumping from tool-to-tool to design different types of deliverables.

What is a 30-60-90 day sales territory plan?

Your 30-60-90 day sales territory plan is a blueprint explaining how you’ll turn your region into a profitable operation. This framework helps your organization target the right customers, implement goals for revenue, and achieve consistent sales growth over time. Each section of the plan includes specific priorities.

First 30 days:

• Define your ideal customer persona
• Identify your competitors
• Discover your top accounts

31-60 Days:

• Define your sales goals and KPIs
• Identify your top leads
• Build your route schedule

61-90 Days:

• Get qualitative feedback
• Analyze your results

How do you create a 30-60-90 day sales territory plan?

Your plan needs to show management that you can develop a sales territory like a real outside sales rep. A lot of new reps think they can improvise instead of creating a detailed sales plan. Follow along with the instructional template copy to create your own sales territory plan. Generally, here are the things you’ll include in your plan:

First 30 Days:

• Understand and analyze your market . User personas (or buyer personas) represent the ideal customers who will engage with your product. Use this section to align everyone in your company on who your ideal customer is: their behavior, needs, interest, and motivators.
• Discover your top 10 accounts . 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.
• Identify your competitors using the competitive analysis template .

31-60 Days – Execute your plan:

• Consolidate the trends you’ve discovered above to come up with S.M.A.R.T sales goals (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-based). Set goals, based on valid data and information relating to historical performance. These will include the product/service revenues and margins, market share, lead–to–sale conversion rate, and other key data from the sales funnel.
• Define sales key performance indicators – these are numerical numbers that assist you in measuring performance and making data-driven decisions. Setting quantifiable goals to track your progress as a salesperson is critical to your success.
• Identify your top leads by researching your territory and finding out the leads that fit best with your ideal persona.
• Make a plan to meet your quota. Find out how many leads you need to meet with each month to meet your quota.
• Build your route schedule. Following up with prospects regularly is the best way to maintain and grow your relationships. Create a regular routine schedule based on your core customers and opportunities. A schedule will ensure that your deals develop at a steady pace, preventing you from missing any critical portions of your territory.

61-90 Days – analyze and optimize your plan:

• Obtain detailed feedback.  It’s usually a good idea to check in with your clients to see how happy they are with your product or service. You can also interview people who did not convert to find out what went wrong with them. This feedback will help you alter your sales strategy based on the needs of your customers.
• Analyze your results. Explain what you accomplished and how that aligns with the project or team’s overall goals. Focus on your main goals with measurable KPIs.

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The Only Guide You Need for Sales Territory Planning (Step-by-Step Template)

Nov 9, 2020

As a territory manager, you set a unique strategic sales territory that cannot fit into a cookie-cutter strategy. It is a distinct reflection of your company, customers, goals, and sales team.

Your sales territory should be a physical or spatial representation of a customer base that matches your sales team’s expertise. It requires a deep insight into both your customer and sales team.

It requires getting out of the weeds and getting comfortable with trends, sales enablement tool development, and generally supporting your team as they relate to their territory.

Territory planning also means advocating for those you manage while staying clued into any indication that customers are not being served. It’s a delicate balance that requires a lot of active listening.

Your ultimate goal is to encourage healthy growth for your company’s sales. And the good news is many of your responsibilities can be made easier with the right definitions and sales strategies in place.

That’s why we’ve created this ultimate guide to sales territory planning. It will give you all the information you need to know how to divide sales territories to maximize your team’s efficiency, lower overhead, and boost profits. We included a territory sales plan template so you can create a territory plan that is unique to your company.

So, let’s dive right in:

What Is Sales Territory Planning?

A sales territory allocates business amongst your sales reps. Sales territory planning is the process of dividing your territories to disperse regions to each member of your sales team to make sure your customers are served equally.

Geography is a common way to divide up sales territory , but how you define your regions depends heavily on your business. It may not make sense for you to divide up your regions geographically. Some other ways to assign territories include:

• Account types
• Audience segments
• Referral source
• Products purchased

For example, if your salespeople spend almost no time in physical meetings but more through phone and email , you probably don’t need to work geographically. An exception to this will be if you need to work in different time zones that require your salespeople to communicate at various times.

The work required to create the right sales territory is well worth the effort. In one survey of 100 organizations, those with an effective territory design had a 14% higher sales objective achievement on average. The same study found that ineffective companies had 15% lower success than the average.

If you already have a sales territory in place and are still not hitting the goals you would like, it’s worth taking a look into redesigning. Research by Harvard Business Review found that businesses showed a sales increase of up to 7% by redesigning their territories .

Don’t be afraid to take a step back and reconsider your territory if it does not measure up to your expectations. It probably means you’re leaving money on the table if you choose to ignore them.

Benefits of Proper Sales Territory Planning

Sales territory planning can be a painstaking process that requires leaders to carefully calculate their metrics, customer personas, deal sizes, costs, and sales reps’ strengths and weaknesses. Before making such a commitment of their time and energy, most management and leadership teams want to make sure it is worth their effort.

However, careful sales territory planning is one of the most effective ways to lead, encourage efficiency, and boost profits.

Specifically, strategizing your sales team’s territories helps to streamline processes and sets your reps up for optimum efficiency and productivity in any situation. Poorly defined regions can mean valuable time, energy, and resources wasted by not having enough sales reps working a territory or having too many in a territory.

Some of the benefits of sales territory planning include:

• Increase revenue by redistributing sales effort more equally and strategically. Allowing time and resources to zero in on customers and prospects with the highest engagement and greatest revenue potential.
• Increase profits by using a reduced sales force (costing less money) to target the areas and customers with the greatest potential.
• Organize the workload evenly across sales territories. This results in equal coverage of existing customers and prospects and maximum sales efficiency.
• Boost client satisfaction through more responsive and consistent client coverage.
• Reduce client fatigue. With more organization of the territories, reps can remain focused on effective sales processes , resulting in eliminating outreach redundancies.
• Balance revenue potential across territories. This will also help keep morale high by allowing for even rewards and incentives to all sales reps.
• Reduce your sales reps’ travel time and expenses by implementing an efficient outbound sales strategy that appropriately matches the size of the territory.

Leaders who spend time and energy to create well-balanced opportunities will find that they will have happier customers and sales reps, be able to take advantage of opportunities, and minimize any threats to their business.

Your Step-by-Step Guide for Defining a Sales Territory

While you may know that a balanced sales territory means more for you and your business, you may be at a loss as to how to create the right sales territory.

Although it might seem easy to recreate another business’ sales territory, it’s important to remember that what works best for one company might not work for you. Instead, you need to take the time to understand your customer and the sales process.

We included a sales template to help you create sales territories that are most effective for your unique business. Here are five steps that can help you make the most effective sales territory strategy for your company:

Step 1: Get Back to Basics With Customer Data

First and foremost, dividing your sales territories should reflect your customer base. It needs to primarily serve your customers’ needs, which can result in improved efficiency for your sales reps and sales for your business.

To understand how to divide up your sales territory, take some time to get to know your ideal customer and who you want to reach.

Start by looking at the customers, prospects, and leads that you already have. Divide your customers into three groups:

• Your top-tier customers, who require the least amount of effort to get a sale
• Your second-tier customers, who need some work but are worth the effort
• Your third-tier customers, who might need more than they are worth

By laying out these customers into groups, you can make sure that you target more customers like the first-tier customers. Analyze them to find common characteristics between them.

For example, do they typically convert online or in-person? This can let you know exactly how you want your sales reps to be spending their time. How long do they usually take to convert? Understanding your sales cycle will also help direct your sales tactics.

You will want to note more than where they are located to get the right territories. Some additional questions to consider:

• What are their pain points, and why are they drawn to your product or service?
• Which of your products and services is doing best?
• What events lead to a customer purchasing from you?
• Conversely, what events seem to discourage them from purchasing?
• What is your conversion rate?

The goal is to find trends in the market and within your customer base. Once you identify underlying themes, you can start to create a better sales territory that can serve their needs.

Step 2: Analyze Your Sales Team

Once you have a good understanding of your customer, it’s time to take an in-depth look at your sales team. This allows you to make sure your reps’ skills are truly matching the needs of your territory and guiding your decisions on education, resources, and future hires.

To do this, consider a SWOT analysis to help you create a strong territory plan. Here’s what that acronym stands for and what it means:

S = Strengths

Assess what areas your sales team does well. For example:

• Does your team excel in in-person demos or phone and email?
• How much internal knowledge do they have?
• Do you have experienced reps who know the product well or create content that provides valuable information to your prospective buyers, etc.?

These are all strengths you need to consider.

You also want to take a broader look into what your company has to offer. What advantage does your team have over your competitors? Why are clients turning to you rather than them? How does each of your reps contribute to that?

Also, take some time to consider your assets. Any capital or intellectual property will help you get ahead. Comparing this kind of wealth to your team members’ skills may reveal some interesting new strategies or pitch ideas.

W = Weaknesses

This step can be a bit painful, but it’s essential to know your weaknesses to help build up your company and identify growth areas. What does your business lack? Where does your competition out-perform you, and why?

Also, take an honest look at your sales process:

• Is there a particular stage that customers seem to lose interest?
• Are there any bottlenecks or leaks in your pipeline you need to address?
• Where are your resources limited?

You need to create a territory that minimizes your weaknesses, but you have to understand them first.

In addition to the weaknesses in your business, each sales rep has their own shortcomings. For example, a new salesperson probably doesn’t have the experience to handle enterprise clients, so territories that include larger clients should be given to a more experienced salesperson. Another rep might struggle with technology, so they may do better with clients that require more in-person meetings.

While every sales rep may have some challenges, it’s vital to understand the difference between a weakness and a weak salesperson. Your goal should be to improve efficiency in your team, not to enable poor performance.

A weak salesperson can be damaging to your whole team and company. Avoid the temptation to tailor their territory around them. The constant change in a region as you try to make it fit the wrong salesperson could upset customers, and potential customers as their point of contact keep changing.

O = Opportunities

While planning for the team and company that you currently have is essential, sales teams that succeed have leadership also keep one eye on the future. Recognizing and strategizing for the future will ensure your sales team continues to hit their quota beyond the current quarter and in the years to come.

Understanding the opportunities helps you plan for the future while defining territories. Some questions to consider include:

• Are there any untapped or under-serviced markets?
• Are there areas with fewer competitors or growing demand?
• Is there an opportunity for you to get positive press or build goodwill amongst your target audience?

These can all encourage growth in your company. Recognize where your business’s future is headed so that you can create territories that facilitate these opportunities.

T = Threats

On the other hand, you also need to look at potential threats to your company. While you can and should be optimistic about your sales team and business, overlooking threats can be dangerous.

Taking the ostrich approach to your sales territories could be detrimental to your entire company. Low sales and poor morale could plague your team if they are forced to handle the threats to your company on their own. Instead, your sales territories should account for and minimize any danger to your company.

Some threats to consider, for example:

• Is there somewhere where competition is fierce?
• Is there a new industry or regulatory standards that may require more time and money from you?
• Is there any negative media or a lack of goodwill?

These are all factors that could be damaging to your territory. When you recognize these threats, though, you can help mitigate some of the damage they would otherwise cost.

Threats are not necessarily a bad thing. In fact, they could be an unrecognized opening for growth. You can use it as a chance to turn threats into opportunities.

If there is an area saturated by competition, for example, you can instead look for potential areas where your competitors have not reached yet. It can provide you with the catalyst you need to make proactive changes.

Step 3: Set Goals for Your Team and Establish Quotas

The purpose of creating specific territories is to meet the goals of your sales team and company. It’s important to identify exactly what these goals are to both build your territory and track how well they are performing.

Any goals set by a sales territory manager should be clear and easy to track. Or, in a word, SMART :

• M easurable
• A chievable
• T ime-based

The goals you create should take the general aspirations of your company into concrete, manageable steps. Your goals turn the dreams of leadership into reality, and your territories should also reflect that.

Create goals for both your team and individual reps. These goals will give you an idea of how well things are going and if something needs to be changed. A well-set goal will also motivate your sales reps and enhance productivity.

Break down your overall goal into specifics. This is where your first step is most useful.

• How many opportunities will your team need to achieve the goal?
• Which regions are best to focus on?
• Which products will be the most profitable?

In addition, drill down to identify specific, action-oriented tasks that build up toward larger and larger goals.

Go over your data from previous periods to see what metric-driven goals are realistic for your sales team and assign quotas to support these goals. Your CRM will allow you to do that.

Step 4: Form Strategies to Meet Your Goals

This is where all of the information you acquired becomes practical. Create territories based on your current customers, opportunities, and threats. It’s also in this step you put it all together to match your sales rep to the right territory or figure out the sales enablement they need to be great.

As a territory manager or leader, your job is to enable your sales team to succeed. Your strategies ensure that everyone is on the same page and have the knowledge and tools to meet their quotas.

Assign your sales reps based on your assessment of their skills and match them according to the territory where it would work best. If your sales rep already has established relationships in a territory, for example, it would be wise to assign them there.

SWOT will allow you to assess where your team needs your help. For example, what does your organization need? Perhaps they need more education in the sales process or better content to give potential clients.

Take a look at your current successes. How can you leverage them? Perhaps you can ask for referrals or use them as a case study. How will you generate new leads to meet your goals?

Are there external resources you can use to reach your goal? Which sales reps have the information and experience that you need to achieve your goal?

These questions can shape your specific strategy to meet the goals you set.

Step 5: Review and Track Results

Territory management is never really done. It requires a continual assessment to measure progress. Regular checks will help you gauge how effective your territory planning is and if it is working for your sales team.

In your review of the territory, consider:

• Is there a significant difference in sales between your territories?
• Is there one rep that can barely keep up with leads while another struggles to meet quota?
• Is there an underserved territory?
• What are the costs of each territory?

As your company changes, grows and offers different products, it might require a re-assessment of the sales territories. Continue to track results to make sure that you are getting everything you can out of your regions.

Luckily, we wrote another article on territory management to stay on top of your territories after defining them.

Check out our Definitive Guide to Sales Territory Management

Do you need to restructure your territories.

If you’ve already put in the work to create sales territories for your team, you may be wondering if you’re getting the best results.

Maybe at one time, it seemed to work really well for your company, but sales have slowed, and you’re wondering if your territories are out of date. Or, your sales never really took off like you hoped they would after structuring your territories.

Balance is key to creating the right sales territories, and it is delicate. Stray too far one way or the other, and it could spell doom for your sales team.

Sales territories run into most of their troubles when they are either over- or underserved.

Why You Need Balanced Territories

Maintaining this balance in your sales territories requires constant surveillance and an awareness of changes to your company and business environment. Since business is constantly changing, territories can easily tip to being over-or underserved.

An overserved territory dedicates more sales reps to an area than there are real prospects . Your salespeople will have nothing to do and likely won’t be able to meet their quotas. In addition, other territories will probably suffer because of the increased (yet needless) cost to maintain the overserved territories.

Many businesses fall into this trap. According to one recent study, 72% of agencies admitted they commit a disproportionate amount of resources to high-profile clients. This can be a costly mistake for your company, though. HubSpot found that nearly half of the companies that they surveyed reported a loss of at least 11% through client over-servicing.

An underserved territory, on the other hand, will also create problems for your company. You will lose out on potential sales when your sales can’t properly take on their leads in an area. Sales reps will be too tempted to take on too much, which will leave your customers dissatisfied.

A well-balanced territory, though, means that your sales reps can spend more time making sales and less time feeling demoralized by the lack of fairness. They will be motivated to compete with each other instead of comparing their situations. The right sales territory strategy will help you achieve this ideal.

If you’re finding that critical areas are over- or underserved, it is time to take a hard look at your territories.

Critical Times to Restructure Your Territories

There are many reasons why your territories may shift, and there are key times in business when realignment is in order.

Knowing when to make adjustments to your sales territories can be challenging and unpredictable, especially since these adjustments are usually triggered by change. But, during economic downturns and significant changes to your market, as well as internal business changes, not taking a look at your current sales territories and how they may need to be adjusted can become a problem fast. More than likely, you’ll quickly be faced with lower sales productivity and territory imbalance.

That is why strategic sales territory realignment as soon as factors change, such as the number of sales reps, prospects, etc. will keep you ahead of running into any significant problems. In the case of having to downsize the number of sales reps, you don’t want to run into a situation where the remaining sales reps can’t effectively cover the gap left in the territory without being stretched too thin.

In most cases, it is better to do it sooner than later as long as it is done strategically. The goal is to position your sales team and your company as quickly as possible to remain efficient, productive, and cost-effective .

Aside from downsizing your sales team, there are other times you should be aware of where redesigning your sales territory plan would make sense. These include:

• A change in products or services offered – One territory might have a much higher demand for the new product causing a need for coverage by more sales reps.
• Expansion of sales team – Just like downsizing the number of sales reps, as you bring more sales reps back onto your team, your sales territory plan should be reevaluated. More salespeople mean more coverage.

No matter the current situation, over time, the structure and balance of your sales territories naturally decline. Making sales territory analysis and management a regular part of your routine will help you remain proactive and ensure your sales territory plan is always as effective and profitable as possible .

Even when sales are going well, keep a periodic check on the performance of each territory and your sales reps within the regions. Don’t wait until lackluster sales and unhappy customers force you to do so.

Tips to Successfully Readjust Your Sales Territories

Once you have decided that it is time to readjust your territories, you can follow many of the tips in our template above to come up with new territories. However, there are additional points that you may want to keep in mind as you decide how best to re-divide your regions.

Taking the time to readjust and deciding how to divide sales territories requires more than looking at sales volume across territories. Instead, it entails a careful analysis of your current customer base, data, and goals to ensure your sales team is successful.

Some sales territory management best practices should be followed to help you strategically readjust territories properly:

Reassess Your Capacity and Resources

Your current number of sales reps and the available resources might not be the same as when you last created your sales territory plan. This is especially true in situations where you have had to downsize your current sales force or during periods of rapid growth.

When readjusting your territories to move forward, it is especially important to realistically look at how many reps you have available to cover areas and what resources you have to help them reach their sales goals.

Based on your capacity and resources, some territories may need to be reduced and/or shifted geographically to allow your reps to focus on the areas with the highest opportunities.

Utilize Data Insights

Some of the best information to guide your readjustment is probably already at your fingertips. Your sales data can provide valuable insights to ensure to help you as you decide where your territories need to be changed.

Gathering and utilizing certain sales data and third-party data is an essential step in strategically realigning sales territories. This will help you best align sales reps to territories. You want to look at metrics such as:

• Number of accounts per rep currently
• Lead distribution
• Geographical location of customers and prospects
• Current revenue per territory
• Revenue potential
• Location of sales reps
• Market data on industry changes, prospects’ current technology usages/needs, etc.

Diving into this data and using data visualization will help you pinpoint instances of unbalanced territories currently and what course corrections may need to be made.

Keep Your Ideal Customer Profile in Mind

Your sales reps need to know what type of customers are best to approach. It helps make them more efficient in spending their time and energy on prospects that are valuable to your company. It also ensures that your customers are as profitable as possible, as opposed to wasting your time and resources in the long run.

When you are readjusting your sales territories, keep your ideal customer profiles in mind. Some geographic areas may now have a greater (or lesser) concentration of target prospects, which should impact how you divide sales territories.

Take into account your customer profiles to help your sales team pinpoint upsell and cross-sell opportunities within existing customers that they could focus on utilizing. Often, especially during economic downturns, these opportunities are the easiest and most profitable to capitalize on with a reduced sales force.

Set New Goals and Benchmarks for Your New Territories

Consider the problems you want to solve and the opportunities that may have changed from the last time territories were established. It can help guide your territory restructuring and enable you to set new goals and benchmarks . These new goals and benchmarks will then allow you to assess the success of your new territory structure moving forward.

For territory restructuring to be successful, you have to be able to determine sooner than later if the changes are helping to meet business goals and objectives. Make analyzing your sales territory plan something you do regularly moving forward. This allows for a more in-depth insight into territory performance and the ability to be proactive in making changes before problems derail sales performance.

Automate Your Territory Mapping

If you don’t know how to use it, even the best data is worthless. The right tools can help you convert your information into something meaningful and practical as you restructure your territories.

Utilizing a robust territory mapping software can speed up the process of readjusting your sales territory plan and make it more successful through the use of data-driven insights. Automated mapping tools allow you to:

• Perform sales territory analysis on existing territories to pinpoint ways to improve
• Look at potential territory maps as you are redrawing your territories
• Compare different territory models
• Share the new sales territory plan with your sales reps and make sure everyone stays on the same page

Territory mapping software provides an optimized sales territory map based on all the available information to help your company remain competitive and profitable. It will also help you make your territories balanced and fair for your sales reps, which will motivate them to stay productive and perform at their best level.

It’s also important to utilize other automated tools, like your CRM and industry/market tools, to pull in internal and third-party data . This will help ensure that each territory provides equal opportunities for your reps to hit their numbers.

Effectively Communicate New Territory Changes

Your work to readjust your sales territories strategically will become lost if you don’t ensure that everyone is on the same page with the new changes. Your team’s buy-in is incredibly important to the changes you make.

Your company culture is vital to your overall success. How your sales team feels about your brand, whether they feel supported, and how excited they are to sell your product or service will all have an incredible impact on your quota and reaching your sales goals.

If big changes to the company, such as lay-offs or economic downturn , are what is prompting your restructuring, your sales team might be suffering from low morale already. How you communicate and frame these changes can either instill hope and new enthusiasm or cause resistance and worry.

It is critical to make sure that the new territories, what has changed, any new sales goals, and any new roles are clearly communicated to the entire sales team. Instituting changes without any real communication can cause confusion and more resistance.

It’s also important to be transparent and communicate why the territories were restructured and the steps you took to do so. Explain how these changes will help your sales team specifically. They need to know that you are working to help them reach more prospects, sell more products, and manage a more reasonable workload. This will all help increase their buy-in.

Effective communication and transparency will help maintain trust from your sales force and prevent confusion and eliminate any surprises, both of which can cause decreases in cooperation and productivity from your reps.

Create the Right Sales Territory Plan for Your Business

Your sales territory plan will be as unique as your company. However, the right steps can help you identify how to best strategize and create territories that can serve your sales team and company most efficiently and effectively.

Companies that take the time to analyze their data, get to know their customer bases and create effective sales territory plans are rewarded with lower overhead, better productivity, and happier customers. Businesses that do not face waste, disgruntled sales teams, and higher customer abandonment.

There are also times where restructuring is necessary. As you scale your sales team (down or up) or your company faces market changes, readjusting your sales territories is necessary to remain profitable and continue growth.

Territory readjustment helps ensure that your sales team will be as efficient and productive as possible and align with your sales goals no matter what capacity and resources you currently have available.

By following the best practices outlined above, utilizing automation tools, and communicating with your team, you can save time in your readjustment efforts and ensure everyone is on the same page. This will all result in a sales team that remains competitive, effective , and profitable under any circumstances.

Other Posts

Territory Management for Medical Device & Diagnostics Sales: Advice for Field Teams

Joe mcdonald’s data-driven approach for territory management at jasper engines, podcast: build your framework for sales growth with todd caponi.

Fine-tune your team’s performance with our new Dashboard & Performance Profiles

Podcast: what’s holding back your field sales growth, revolutionize your field sales with a mobile-first crm for outside sales teams.

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How to Create an Effective Sales Territory Plan: Step-by-Step Guide

• July 1, 2022
• Sales Planning

Table of contents

What is a sales territory plan, help sales reps work more efficiently, improve resource allocation, boost employee morale, increase targeting capabilities, provide better service, step 1: evaluate your business objectives, step 2: define your ideal client or prospect, step 3: determine tam, step 4: analyze your current market standing, step 5: identify sales territories, step 6: create a plan of attack, step 7: review, revise, repeat, evaluate and optimize the efficacy of your sales territory plan, first 30 days: complete steps 1 through 5, next 30 days: implement and optimize your plan, final 30 days: leverage the 3 r’s to optimize your plan, sales territory plan examples, parting advice for effective sales territory planning, how do you make a 30-60-90 day sales plan, further reading.

If you want to put your sales reps in a position to succeed, then you need a cohesive sales territory plan. A great sales territory plan will help your organization get the most out of platforms like Salesforce. 

By implementing such a plan, you can also zero in on high-value sales targets, capitalize on territories with the best sales potential, and increase overall profitability.

With all that being said, creating a territory management plan can seem like a monumental undertaking, especially if you have never developed such a strategy before. Fortunately, facilitating territory alignment via a plan is far easier than you might expect.

As part of our efforts to help sales managers overcome the challenges of the modern commerce ecosystem, QBIX Analytics has created this comprehensive guide to creating an effective sales territory plan. Read on to learn more.

Before we reveal how to create a sales territory plan, it is important to understand exactly what a plan is and what it should include. 

In simple terms, a sales territory plan guides your sales reps when they target prospective customers. Specifically, this plan will help them target the right regions in order to maximize the efficiency of their sales efforts.

Due to its name, most people assume that a sales territory plan divides up a region into various geographical segments. For instance, a company operating within a large metropolitan area may create a separate sales territory for each zip code. 

While this is a common approach, sales territories can be segmented using many different data points other than geography. For instance, you can create sales territories based on the type of customer you want to target, sales potential, or virtually any other relevant factor.

After you have created a plan, you can assign sales reps to areas that align with their knowledge, experience, and capabilities. This tactic will improve the purchasing experience, set the stage for long-lasting client relationships, and maximize your return on investment (ROI) on all sales and outreach efforts.

Why Sales Territory Planning Is Critical to the Success of Your Sales Team

Sales territory planning can have a positive impact on every stage of the buyer’s journey. Additionally, a great territory plan offers countless benefits to both your sales reps and your company as a whole.

When sales reps can focus their energies on a specific territory, they will waste less time learning about market segments and participating in administrative processes. 

Instead, they can devote the lion’s share of their time to engaging with clients and closing deals. This focus will allow them to hit sales targets without logging in an unsustainable number of work hours.

Ideally, you want to assign your top sales reps to your highest-value accounts. Territory sales planning makes this possible.

When you know who your most valuable accounts are and where they are located, you can closely monitor territory-specific performance. If a particular territory is underperforming, you can make the adjustments necessary to correct this deficiency.

Sales territory planning allows you to create balanced territories. In turn, this ensures that you are not overworking your sales reps. Ultimately, this will lead to improved employee morale, which will also help you reduce attrition rates and retain top talent.  

One of the biggest advantages of sales territory planning is that it allows you to precisely target high-value accounts or regions. You can divide territories based on any number of criteria. After you have created these territories, you can then precisely target the prospects within those regions.

Sales territory planning gives you the opportunity to align sales reps with current and potential clients based on the rep’s knowledge base and skill set. 

The purchasing experience is enhanced when clients are matched with sales reps who understand the challenges they are facing. This approach will improve your company’s brand image, assist with client retention, and increase the average lifetime value of your clients.

How to Build a Sales Territory Plan

If you are ready to create your own sales territory plan, we recommend that you leverage the following seven steps:

Why does your business exist? Who do you serve? What are your key business objectives for the next year, three years, and five years?

By answering the above questions and other introspective inquiries, you can gain a better understanding of where you want to take your company over the next few years. Your short and long-term business objectives should guide you as you navigate the following steps for your sales territory planning.

While every client or prospect will possess a set of unique qualities and traits, you will find that many of your customers share a few key commonalities. By identifying what these commonalities are, you can create ideal client or prospect personas. 

For example, you may find that the majority of your high-value clients operate within the same industry or a closely-related sector. In this scenario, it is safe to assume that most future clients will also operate within one of these sectors.

The term “total addressable market” (TAM) refers to the total number of potential customers that match your definition of an ideal client. TAM would represent your revenue-generating ceiling if your company were the only game in town. No company can capture its TAM unless it has no competitors.

For comparison, your “serviceable available market” (SAM) refers to the number of prospective customers that your company could realistically capture using available resources and reach.

When creating your plan, you should determine both your TAM and SAM. Additionally, you should subdivide your SAM into several smaller target markets. These target markets will be the various territories identified in your plan, but more on that in step 5.

Once you have arrived at the halfway point of the territory planning process, it is time to analyze your current market standing. Essentially, you want to determine how you stack up against the competition.

One of the best ways to do this is to conduct a strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT) analysis. When performing this analysis, make sure to gather feedback from your sales reps, marketing team, and other departments within the company. 

By doing so, you can gain actionable insights from various perspectives. You can then leverage this information to improve your market standing.

At this point in the process, you should be ready to carve up your sphere of influence into various sales territories. Although these territories will be outlined using geographic boundaries, they should be created by analyzing a variety of data points. 

For example, you can divide up territories based on which products are most popular among an area’s client base. Alternatively, you could outline territories based on the audience segments that are most prevalent within each area.

After you have identified each sales territory, it is time to create a plan to connect with prospects within those various regions. During this phase of planning, set performance goals for each region. Now would also be a good time to determine which sales reps you plan to assign to each territory.

When creating your plan, also set short-term goals for each territory. Generally, it is a good idea to set monthly, quarterly, and annual goals. You can track your progress towards each goal using various key performance indicators (KPIs), but more on that below.

The final stage of planning involves three components. First, you must continually analyze sales rep performance data. Analyzing multiple data points will help you measure the efficacy of your sales territory plan.

You should review territory performance on a monthly basis, at a minimum. Depending on the market that you operate within, you may need to review territory and sales rep performance weekly or bi-weekly.

After reviewing territory performance, determine whether your sales plan should be revised. If it should, implement those changes as swiftly and efficiently as possible. Finally, continue to repeat this review and revision process perpetually, consistently building towards better results.

Further reading on creating your own sales territory plan can be found here .

It is impossible to measure the efficacy of your plan without tracking KPIs. There are many different KPIs that you could track. However, some of the most commonly used performance metrics include:

• Gross profit
• Total unit sales
• Customer lifetime value
• Total commissions
• Conversion rate

When selecting KPIs, make sure to choose metrics that are relevant to your industry and organizational goals. By doing so, you can gain valuable insights about your sales territory plan and can leverage those insights to improve its efficacy over time.

Territory Sales Plan Template

There are numerous different territory sales plan templates out there. However, many of the most effective ones use a 30-60-90 day approach. This approach divides the steps outlined above into three thirty-day initiatives. When using the 30-60-90 day method, your territory sales plan template will look something like this:

That’s right — you should complete steps 1 through 5 in the first 30 days of sales planning. This work means evaluating business objectives, defining ideal customer personas, determining TAM and SAM, analyzing your current market standing, and identifying sales territories in just one month.

As part of this process, you should also determine which ten active client accounts are most valuable to your company. Once you have completed this, explore ways to bolster relationships with these high-value accounts.

By the time you reach day 31, you should be ready to put your plan into action. However, you might also find that you need to rework your customer personas in order to align with organizational objectives or vice versa. Now is the time to do so.

During month two of sales planning, you will also need to identify which KPIs you intend to track. Programs like Salesforce include built-in tracking tools that make this process incredibly easy. You should also look beyond your top 10 most valuable accounts and examine other prospective clients you want to target.  

During days 61-90, you should be focused on analyzing the efficacy of your sales territory plan. If your plan is meeting or exceeding expectations, analyze performance data and other information in order to determine precisely which tactics yielded these results. 

If your plan is underperforming, determine why and implement changes to get your strategy back on track.

There are many examples of how you can divide up your sales territories.

For example, you may want to divide territories based on the amount of revenue that they generate. When using this approach, one territory may include only a handful of high-value accounts, whereas another might be home to several dozen accounts, even though the amount of revenue that they generate is approximately equal. 

Therefore, you may need to assign multiple sales reps to the latter territory in order to ensure that their workload is not excessive.

Another approach involves classifying territories based on the types of deals that are commonly struck within that region. For instance, one territory might be home to mostly large enterprise transactions, whereas another is the site of transactions involving small to medium-sized businesses. 

In this scenario, a sales rep that knows how to work out complex enterprise-level transactions should be assigned to the former territory. Conversely, a sales rep with experience closing a large volume of deals would be better suited for the latter territory.

By leveraging the proven steps outlined above, you can create your own sales territory plan. In addition to providing assistance with territory management, we can also help with several other integral components of business strategy development and planning, including the following:

• Creating a sales compensation plan
• Improving your sales commission plan
• Sales capacity planning

Contact QBIX Analytics to learn more or download our free territory sales plan template to get started.

A sales territory plan divides your target markets based on a multitude of different criteria. This plan can serve as a roadmap that will help you allocate sales reps to regions that align with their skills and expertise.

Your plan should include a map that identifies each territory. It should also explain what criteria are used to create each territory and provide specific information about each region.

Sales territories can be created using many different data points, including the number of prospects in a given region, the average value of clients within that region, etc.

The steps to creating a sales plan are as follows: – Define objectives – Identify customer personas – Determine TAM/SAM – Assess current market standing – Identify sales territories – Create a plan of attack – Review, revise, and repeat These steps can help you create your own effective sales territory plan.

Sales territories can include neighborhoods, zip-code-based regions, cities, states, multi-state geographic areas, or entire countries.

You can create a 30-60-90 day sales plan by using the steps outlined above. Generally, steps one through five are performed during the first 30 days. Step six is performed during the second month, and step seven is completed during the final 30-day leg of the plan. 

• 5 Tips for Sales Capacity Planning in 2021
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• Sales Compensation Terms You Need to Know
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Privacy Overview

How to Create a Sales Territory Plan: The Ultimate Guide

What is sales territory planning.

Sales territory planning is a critical element of sales management and overall sales success. It involves creating defined and balanced sales territories, customizing sales activities to maximize sales potential within each territory, and managing sales performance on an ongoing basis. Sales territories are typically determined by factors such as geography, industry, company size, or other metrics that matter to your business (e.g., historical performance, ARR potential, etc). By providing  balanced sales territories , companies can create specific revenue targets and strategies to increase sales productivity and efficiency in each region with precision.  Good territory planning ensures that all sellers have an equal opportunity to hit their number, which keeps them motivated and on target.

Benefits of Sales Territory Planning

Creating balanced territories can have a huge impact on your team’s ability to achieve its sales goals, yet it is often overlooked. According to the  Harvard Business Review , optimizing territory design can increase sales by 2 to 7%, without any change in total resources or sales strategy. In short, well-designed territories ensure that the right resources are focused on the right opportunities. This improves quota attainment and rep retention, making it a key driver of sales productivity and performance.  Good territory design is especially important In difficult economic times. Rather than increasing sales headcount, well-balanced territories can enable companies to achieve more with the same or fewer resources.

How to Create a Sales Territory Plan

The most important first step for  sales territory planning  is to determine your corporate goals so you can define your ideal customer. For example, one company’s goal may be to increase market share while another’s may be to retain customers. The BCG matrix (figure 1) provides a useful framework for understanding your accounts and dividing opportunities fairly among your team. BCG describes four types of accounts to consider:

• Cash Cows (high market share, but low growth) – opportunities may be limited
• Dogs (low market share and low growth) – it will be very tough going
• Question Marks (low market share and high growth) – these opportunities need serious thought whether they are worth the investment but could have high payoff
• Stars (high market share and high growth) – fantastic opportunities.

The key is to define each category based on your company’s context and GTM strategy.  For example, a Cash Cow account may look very different from one company to the next, and may even vary by region or product.  A Cash Cow in North America may actually be a Question Mark in the Asia Pacific region where the company has no existing market share.

Some important questions to ask before you dive into territory planning include:

• Are you trying to expand into a new market?
• Has your product or SKU mix changed to suit customers in a new industry?
• Has your total addressable market (TAM) changed or been updated based on new data?
• Are you targeting a certain company size this year?
• How important is expansion revenue to your growth strategy and which roles does this impact?

Common Sales Territory Planning Criteria

The next step is to divide accounts into each of the four categories among various roles on your team. There is no one size fits all approach and most organizations will follow a hybrid model. You may decide to simply divide the categories evenly across your team. Or you may target one segment of the matrix, such as Cash Cow accounts, with a new product and assign reps and overlay resources accordingly.

Although every organization will prioritize differently, some common criteria that are used to plan territories include:

Geography  – Historically, geography has been one of the most simple and common ways to plan territories and can work well if your sales model requires feet on the street. However, as remote selling becomes commonplace,  many companies are moving away from geographic territories  because there are better ways to maximize opportunity that more closely align with the corporate strategy.

Historical performance  – Which accounts, products, or geographies have historically performed well?  For example, you may balance your high-performing Star accounts or products with a mix of net-new Question Mark accounts or products.

Revenue potential  – A common approach, many companies balance territories based on the TAM or revenue potential of accounts.

Size  – High ACV accounts may have long sales cycles that require a high- touch or in-person sales process, favoring geographic territories, versus low ACV accounts with short sales cycles that favor other criteria.

Industry  – Industry can be useful for balancing especially if you are building a new vertical or have industry-specific products and messaging, such as financial services or government accounts.

Product Type  – If you have specialized teams selling certain products, it may be important to balance overlay resources across accounts.

Propensity to Buy  – Many companies group their accounts into categories based on propensity to buy and balance these across their resources (e.g., evenly divide Tier 1, 2 or 3 accounts across their team)

Account Score  – An  account score  aggregates many of the above criteria into one simple number which makes it easy to balance.

Quota  – Because it is almost impossible to get to 100% balance, you may consider factoring in quota to make things fair.  For example, you may assign a New York City rep a higher quota than a Midwestern rep; or a rep taking on a new, untested market a lower quota than a rep in an established territory.  As long as these calculations are transparent, this can be a useful final arbiter to equalize your territories.

Sales Territory Planning Examples

Most companies start their territory carving process by dividing into the major world regions. This first cut serves to align resources with time zone, culture/language, and internal organizational structures. From there, Ops and Strategy teams use a combination of criteria to balance territories to align with their corporate strategy. The following example demonstrates how single segments can be balanced. For additional examples, please visit,  The Ultimate Guide to Territory Balancing .

The Company:

• $50 million in annual revenue, reps have annual sales quotas of $1M each
• 50 Global Sales Territories

The GTM Resources

• EMEA – 10 reps
• LATAM – 2 reps
• APAC – 2 reps
• AMER – 36 reps

Planning Scenario:

The SMB sales in AMER tend to be high velocity. The team of 5 SMB reps need to move through accounts quickly to either disqualify or pursue. Rather than using a region-based design, the SMB territories are constructed according to the following criteria:

• Historical data indicates that financial firms are typically high-value and quick deals, so all accounts in the finance industry are distributed evenly across the territories.
• Additionally, ICP accounts located in dense urban locations, such as Manhattan and San Francisco, are distributed evenly across the territories.
• Each Territory has a maximum of 250 accounts at a given time. Reps can disqualify accounts throughout the quarter, then at the start of each quarter, the territories are topped up with fresh accounts.

Challenges of Sales Territory Planning

Even the best laid territory plans often go awry.  Here are some of the common challenges faced in sales territory planning.

Seller turnover

What happens when your best sales rep leaves in the middle of a quarter? Do you reassign that patch permanently, or temporarily while you backfill the role? What happens when hiring takes longer than anticipated? Are you certain that new reps will ramp quickly?  These are all examples of everyday occurrences that can throw the best laid plans into chaos.

Markets are constantly changing

Change is a constant when it comes to territory planning.  New competition enters your market, companies are acquired, recessions occur, pandemics hit.  These unanticipated changes can have a dramatic and sudden impact on your go-to-market (GTM) plans.  When a company sets an annual ‘one and done’ territory plan it is extremely difficult to respond with agility.

Spreadsheets and manual processes hinder agility

When your team has fewer than 50 reps, it is possible to manage territories with a manual spreadsheet-driven process  However, as you grow, it can be impossible to scale relying on spreadsheets alone. This method is fraught with errors, version control, and collaboration issues.  Other organizations may rely on  corporate planning software , yet these tools lack out-of-the-box functionality like integrated planning and agile deployment, so still end up bogged down in custom coding projects.

Data quality issues

Garbage in means garbage out.  The data in your CRM is constantly changing and if you rely on it to plan, you may end up with a point-in-time plan that does not reflect the current reality.  For example, if you pull data about your accounts from your CRM in September for a plan that launches in December, the data may already be several months out of date by the time you are ready to go to market.

Too many tools

Some organizations use  multiple point tools  for territory planning that quickly become difficult to manage. Your territory assignments are integrally tied to other aspects of your GTM plan like capacity, quotas, and routing.  When a change to territories occurs, it can be nearly impossible to make changes in real-time and keep your entire GTM system in sync.

Benefits of Sales Territory Planning Software

To overcome these challenges and maximize sales territory planning efficiency, many organizations are turning to Territory Planning or  Territory Management software . This enables them to shift from static sales territory planning to  dynamic territory management  process. Territory management recognizes that change never ends, and organizations must reduce the cycle time to respond to change. Automation enables RevOps teams to quickly adapt to change with agility so that revenue teams execute with clarity and efficiency. With Territory Management software, data can be refreshed and re-factored into the plan at any point during the year, which reduces the annual territory planning burden. Those that adopt a “ continuous GTM planning ” approach will be the ones that win the next business cycle.

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• Territory management

Sales Territory Planning: Strategies, Tips, and Best Practices

Sales territory planning is a tedious and time-consuming process without mapping software. However, a strong sales territory plan is crucial, as it’s an important part of any successful sales strategy.

Read on to learn what a sales territory is, real-world examples of sales territory plans, and how to create a successful sales territory plan (template included!). We have broken the process into 4 main stages:

Step 1: Analyze your market

Step 2: segment your customers, step 3: conduct a swot analysis, step 4: create your sales territory plan, sales territory planning: the basics.

• Knowing how to create a territory sales plan helps you make better-informed hiring decisions, which drives sales productivity, revenue, and profits.
• Sales territory planning maximizes sales resources, producing equitable and balanced areas and optimizes lead allocation.
• A sales territory plan is a win for salespeople, sales managers, and operations.

Let's start with some basics:

What is a sales territory?

There are three approaches to designing sales territories.

Here you assign a group of customers in a geographic region to a sales rep. Zipcodes are the most popular building blocks, but you can use county or state boundaries too.

Account-based territories

Many organizations ignore geographic boundaries and use an account-based or points-based design. Regardless of location, assigning accounts to a Senior sales rep or manager solidifies customer relationships.

As the name suggests, it combines geographic and points-based territory design.

Why good, clean data matters

To optimize sales territories, you need clean data. The challenge for many organizations is that their data lives in multiple systems like CRM, ERP, and spreadsheets.

• Consolidating the data makes your sales process more manageable, which is where mapping software excels.
• You win once you import clean data using one system as your source of truth.
• You can overlay multiple layers of data and fine-tune your analysis, and as you make changes, they sync with your CRM or other systems in real time, saving hours in administration.

Sales rep turnover

Your data is clean, so next, you turn to your greatest resource: your salespeople. You'll want to avoid underperformance due to poor sales territory design. All reps need coaching and development, but when your sales territory design is sub-optimal, your sales team’s efforts can fall behind, and training may not resolve the deficit.

Many salespeople leave because the odds are stacked against them.

Real World Scenario

A large contract recruitment company with a US-based field team experienced sales rep turnover of over 20% annually. On the surface, the under-performers left, which was a good thing. But the costs of hiring and training new reps escalated, and the sales operations team conducted a deep analysis of sales performance and territory design to understand if there was a correlation.

The results were stark. Almost 60% of their sales territories were out of balance with two key metrics.

• Sales potential

Territories balanced on potential sales

Territories balanced on customer count

Sales potential: The organization targeted large construction sites across the US to sell their services. When they mapped the locations of the highest-potential projects, a trend emerged. A minority of sales territories had enough potential projects to hit their quotas. So no matter how hard the rep worked, the area could never reach its sales quota.

The opposite was true also. Underperforming salespeople managed the sales territories with the lowest potential, so hitting quota was much more challenging.

Workload: Using workload as a balancing metric uncovered significant flaws in their territory designs. Too many territories had workloads far in excess or below their target workloads, meaning sales potential was wasted or unrealized.

Outcome: By redesigning the sales territories and optimizing sales potential and workload, sales reps had equal opportunities to succeed. Managers could now focus their coaching on skill development, knowing that territories did not reward the salesperson.

Check out our Conquering Sales Territory Management guide

How territory management software helps

Managing sales territories can quickly start to feel overwhelming. From careful planning to in-depth analysis to ever-evolving adaptation, it can be challenging to keep up with changing market conditions, customer needs, and company goals.

Whether you're expanding to a new sales territory or trying to boost your sales productivity, effective territory management software can make a big difference.

• You can identify inefficiencies and overlaps in territory design and fix them quickly. You can map your sales data and analyze trends instantly.
• You can overlay competitor locations and assess new opportunities.
• The options are endless as you strive to design the best territories.
• Ongoing sales territory management is easy and intuitive too. You can adjust alignments as new territory growth opportunities arise or people leave, and you re-assess area mergers. It is a way to future-proof revenue growth and maximize rep productivity.
• Optimizing your marketing plans is more manageable, too, as you map customers, prospects, and competitors and overlay other critical data. You see trends and gaps and hidden insights.

Critical outcomes of sales territory planning

Once you've chosen your territory mapping software and cleaned up your data, you'll be closer to hitting your sales goals.

But let's look at some key outcomes you should expect from properly aligned and optimized sales territories.

Your sales plan is data-led

Data-driven decisions are essential, and effective sales territory planning leverages the power of your data to give you visual insights.

You eliminate the guesswork, but just as important, it is easier to share, collaborate and engage others via live maps. That cuts down planning cycles while improving realignments.

Let’s look at some common sales territory plan examples and how they can be used to provide value to an entire organization. Imagine a sales operations team has visualized and analyzed the sales data using heatmaps, pin, and color-coded maps. Next, they optimized the territories using their territory mapping software with a workload and sales potential index.

The final (and some would say the most crucial step) involves their key stakeholders, sales managers, and HR. They bring their expertise and local knowledge and add suggested improvements using a shared map.

Their objective is to minimize disruption. Sometimes a customer relationship is more important than a perfect territory alignment, so it is easy to move an account to a rep (using an account exception approach).

HR, too will want to understand the impact those changes have on compensation.

Feedback via interactive maps accelerates decision-making and improves territory design while minimizing disruption.

Your sales performance improves

With a detailed sales territory planning system, you can track leads, opportunities, deals lost, deals won, and all critical metrics on a map and share insights.

This type of granular insight also supports targeted sales and marketing campaigns. It adds context to how regional markets have changed over time. Data from Gartner , the research firm, shows proactive territory management can increase revenue by improving sales planning and streamlining various management tasks. The Harvard Business Review says that impact can increase revenue by up to 7% without any other changes. Mapping software plays a significant part in the process.

Your sales costs decrease

Modern field sales teams understand that customer-facing time is precious and hard-won. Eliminating unnecessary travel (windshield time) is critical. Meeting customers face to face can be a competitive advantage, but cost control is essential too. Every 1% increase in selling time should convert to more revenue and higher productivity.

You slash fuel costs when you optimize territories.

According to research by consulting firm Pace Productivity, sales reps only spend an average of 26% of their time making sales . But with territory mapping software and route mapping, your sales teams can optimize schedules, almost eliminating planning time but boosting precious face-to-face time.

Using these solutions, you can ensure your top performers are productive, cost-effective, and focused on closing more deals.

Your business can grow sustainably

Over time, your customer distribution changes due to shifting market demand, increased competition, or other outside influences (economic, social). With a complete view of your territories, you can predict these market fluctuations and adjust your sales strategies.

For example, mapping software lets you identify underperforming regions that need support. By centralizing your data and incorporating location analytics, you can discover trends in the big picture or drill down to learn more about individual territories and clients.

Moreover, territory mapping tools can help you leverage scenario planning, allowing you to identify expansion opportunities and grow your customer base.

You hire better

The knowledge, skills, and experience of your sales reps are crucial to the success of your business, especially during times of uncertainty.

According to a 2018 report from The Bridge Group, a sales consulting firm focused on B2B optimization, the average sales rep tenure continues to decline . In 2010, reps stayed an average of three years at each job. In 2018, that was down to just 1.5 years.

Balanced, equitable sales territories with enough opportunity for success boost sales rep morale. So how do you keep your top earners longer? Design balanced and fair territories. When you achieve balance, you give every salesperson a chance for success.

Combine that with a manageable workload, and you have a winning formula for keeping talent.But when someone leaves, you need to act fast. Gaps in your coverage can be an opportunity or a threat to your business.

The opportunity to merge or absorb one territory into another can unlock new efficiencies. A territory map maker with optimization capabilities means you can accomplish your task in minutes. The threat is that a vacant territory opens the area to greater competitive activity, and customers may move.

Onboarding a new rep is much easier when using a territory map. It's much easier for a new sales rep to get started when their territory, leads, and customers are in front of them. And, since the sales manager has access to the same data, they can help a new rep with targeting and creating a plan.

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

We've covered what a sales territory plan is and why you need it. Now let's look in detail at sales territory planning best practices and how to use them to design sales territories tailored to your needs.

Before mapping your territories, assess your customers, prospects, and market penetration. It helps you align your territory management plan with your business goals.

You'll need to use data and insights from your CRM, ERP, and spreadsheets to create a complete plan.

Need a sales territory plan template to get you started? Use our sales territory planning template and start boosting your sales productivity today!

The first step to creating a successful sales territory plan is collecting and analyzing market data. Include an assessment of buying trends, past sales targets and performance, competitor activity, and other relevant data points.

The more detailed your information, the better prepared you'll be during the territory mapping stage. Some critical questions you should answer include the following:

• Where are your customers located?
• Which industries do you serve?
• Which regions are underperforming?
• Which region over-performs?
• What's the sales potential for each territory?
• How are buying trends influencing your sales performance in specific areas?
• Which service-related inefficiencies are leading to missed business opportunities?
• How might future demand for your products/services affect your sales territory plan?

These questions will help base your sales territories on current and future needs. You need to think beyond just geography and look at opportunity and workload.

So, you've analyzed your business operations, sales performance, and market context. The next step is to segment your customers into groups.

When creating a sales territory plan, avoiding giving too much weight to any one characteristic is essential. For example, organizing your customers into rigid industry-based categories can help you prioritize sales rep assignments. But it can also force them to cover a wider geographic area.

When sales teams regularly cross state lines to meet with customers and prospects from specific verticals, the fuel costs and travel times are much higher (unless you leverage the accounts-based territory design model).

Instead, sales managers should use several data points in their territory management framework allowing for more flexible segmentation and can help maximize resources.

When categorizing your existing and prospective clients, be sure to consider the following:

• Customer and prospect locations
• Industry type, size, and everyday use cases for your products/services
• Behavioral trends (spending habits, the likelihood of repeat sales, revenue potential, etc.)
• Client delivery and sales support expectations
• Regional competition (high vs. low risk of losing business to a competitor)

Combining these insights can provide a big-picture view of your current sales performance and help find areas of improvement. Keep in mind your customer segments will undoubtedly change over time.

The ability to quickly rebalance customer groups and realign territories should be a primary goal. Without some level of flexibility, your sales management strategies may fail to deliver the results you're hoping for.

Once you've organized your customers and prospects into groups, the next step is to assess internal and external factors that affect your business performance.

Conducting a SWOT analysis will help you identify your sales team's strengths and weaknesses, making it easier to assign the right rep to high-value or challenging accounts.

The popular business and financial education website Investopedia defines SWOT analysis as a "framework used to evaluate a company's competitive position and to develop strategic planning."

SWOT stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. These considerations are crucial to building an effective sales territory plan, so take your time before moving on.

Here's a quick breakdown of each phase of the SWOT analysis process:

Strengths: Note your organization and team strengths and be as open and honest as possible. A territory planning perspective starting point might be identifying territories with solid performance and the reasons behind that.

Are you strong in specific verticals? Is your team better organized and focused than your competition? Do you offer better service levels? Is your sales training and coaching a strength?

Weaknesses: Are there geographic regions where performance is weak? Do you have some fragile customer relationships? Is your marketing spend lower than the competition? Are your sales territories out of balance? Are your sales team over or under-worked?

What other weaknesses might you have?

Opportunities: What growth opportunities are available to you? Can you grow your territory footprint by expanding into new areas? Can you split/merge sales territories? Are there competitor accounts you can win? Are some existing customers expanding? Can you increase your share of wallet with customers? Do you have new products to launch?

Threats: Everyone knows that sales are a highly competitive profession. Understanding specific threats in your selling environment can make a big difference. When conducting a SWOT analysis, you should consider competitors vying for market share, changes in demand, and time wasted on low-value tasks.

The final step in the sales territory planning process is to combine your data, market research, and business goals into a single package.

Sales managers should create clear parameters for their sales teams. That includes realistic goals, information on who to target, and more. It will help you develop more balanced sales territories upfront and allow you to pivot down the line.

Some critical questions you should ask include:

• Where are your highest-value accounts located?
• How will you organize sales territories to capitalize on your sales team's strengths?
• Which regions may need more sales support?
• Where are the primary sources of new leads, and why?
• What quotas do you have for sales reps?
• What resources do your sales teams need to grow?

While drawing out your sales territories by hand is possible, territory mapping software gives you the advantage. It's easier, faster and allows you to make data-driven decisions.

With eSpatial's territory mapping software, you can quickly upload data from Salesforce and other CRMs, ERP systems, and spreadsheets. You can use this data to create your territory maps or analyze it further using the following:

• Radius maps

Alongside customizable data visualizations, eSpatial offers a suite of specialized tools. They make your sales territory plan more efficient and cost-effective.

For example, route planning lets your field sales reps map out their entire day and find the quickest path from the office to customer locations.

You can see how territories perform, compare, and create maps to communicate data to C-suite decision-makers. Tracking your sales success and failures is crucial, as it allows you to pivot your sales strategies and capitalize on new lines of business in real-time.

A sales territory plan is dynamic. You must adjust to keep your territories balanced and your top performers satisfied.

Creating interactive territory maps transforms raw data into actionable insights. You can find the hidden details that help you increase sales efficiency and effectiveness. Ultimately, that means more conversions, higher ROI, and flexible sales processes.

Learn How eSpatial Can Improve Your Sales Territory Plan

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Sales Territory 101: Defining, Planning & Mapping Territories

Learn this comprehensive step-by-step process for define, plan, implement, and optimize sales territories for optimal market coverage and revenue growth.

Sales territories are groups of accounts that share certain similarities, allowing sales teams to specialize. This specialization can lead to a more repeatable and efficient sales process. Historically, geography often defined sales territories because sales were conducted in person. However, as digital sales gain prominence, the approach to defining sales territories is evolving. Understanding and effectively managing sales capacity is crucial to driving organizational growth and achieving sales goals.

This blog will explore why sales territories are necessary, different types of territories, and steps to create them, enriched with real-world examples and expert insights.

What is a Sales Territory?

A sales territory is a defined market segment for which a salesperson or a sales team is responsible. In simple terms, territories divide your target market into smaller segments that reps can better manage. For example, back in the day, one person would be assigned to the top half of the west coast of the USA while another would be manning the bottom half.

The territories you define can be based on various parameters like location, company size, industry, product line, channel partners, etc. This can also be useful when working on account-based marketing campaigns .

For example:

●  A software company selling to SMBs across the US can split the country into Northeast, Midwest, South, and West sales territories. Reps based in each territory will handle that area.

●   An enterprise software company may divide its market by industry verticals. One rep handles all education/non-profit accounts; another handles healthcare accounts, and so on.

The primary goal is to create manageable sections that allow sales teams to focus their efforts and resources effectively. These territories can be defined by geography, industry, customer type, product type, or a combination of these factors. 

That said, geography doesn’t matter as much in digital sales as it used to. If you are selling a service performed by people like a circus or even heavy machinery, geography will play a role since you might wish to go and pitch your product. The same applies to an expensive product or service. However, geography won't matter much if a software or course can be sold, bought, used, and serviced anywhere.

We'll explore different types of sales territories later in this guide.

But why do we need sales territories?

Implementing sales territories provides immense strategic value for SaaS organizations. Well-defined territories lead to optimal sales coverage, increased efficiency, and higher productivity.

Let’s understand why sales territories are essential for everyone involved in the transaction: ‍

1. Customer Perspective

From the customer’s perspective, sales territories ensure they receive in-person service from sales representatives knowledgeable about specific, specialized products. Customers benefit from having a dedicated point of contact who understands their unique needs and can provide tailored solutions. Studies show that personalized service in sales territories can improve customer satisfaction by up to 20% . 2. Company Perspective

From the company’s perspective, sales territories help build competence within specific product categories or markets, leading to better predictability and coverage. This structured approach allows companies to allocate resources efficiently, track performance accurately, and adapt to market changes swiftly. Sales capacity planning involves predicting future hiring needs and balancing recruitment, ramp-up times, and churn. Effective territory planning can enhance overall sales team efficiency by 40% .

3. Salesperson Perspective

Clearly defined territories mean less overlap and conflict for salespeople, leading to higher motivation and productivity. Sales territories also provide a clear framework for sales compensation and career development. A well-designed sales territory plan can boost salesperson productivity by up to 25% .

Additional considerations in sales territory planning

• Frequency of Territory Updates

Regular updates to sales territories are essential to reflect changes in the market and business priorities. Market conditions, customer needs, and competitive landscapes can evolve, necessitating adjustments to sales territories. For example, if a company expands into new geographic regions or introduces new products, it may need to reallocate resources and adjust territories accordingly. 

Finding the right balance between stability and flexibility is crucial. Frequent changes can disrupt sales activities and impact performance, while infrequent updates may lead to missed opportunities and inefficiencies. According to Spotio, updating territories quarterly can help maintain alignment with market dynamics and maximize sales effectiveness .

• Impact on Compensation Structures

The design of sales territories can significantly impact sales compensation structures. Transparent and fair compensation plans motivate sales teams and align their efforts with company goals. Changes to territories can affect how sales representatives are compensated, potentially leading to adjustments in commission structures, bonuses, and performance metrics. Ensuring that compensation plans remain competitive and attractive, even as territories evolve, is essential. Companies should regularly review and adjust compensation structures to reflect territory changes and maintain alignment with overall business objectives. Data from Xactly indicates that aligning compensation with territory performance can lead to a 15% increase in sales results .

• Trade-offs in Territory Planning

Every approach to sales territory planning involves trade-offs. Static territories offer stability but may lack flexibility, while dynamic territories provide adaptability but can be complex to manage. Companies must evaluate their specific needs, market conditions, and business objectives to determine the best approach for their sales teams. Trade-offs include balancing the need for specialized expertise with the desire for a more flexible and responsive sales strategy. Companies should consider each approach's potential benefits and drawbacks and make informed decisions based on their unique circumstances.

Types of Sales Territories for SaaS Companies

Sales territories for SaaS companies can be defined in multiple ways depending on the nature of your business, products, and buyers.

Let’s explore the most common SaaS sales territory structures with real-world examples:

‍ 1. Geographical Territories

Geographical territories have been a traditional approach where sales regions are defined based on physical locations. This method is still relevant for physical and high-value digital products requiring face-to-face interaction. For instance, a company selling agricultural equipment may divide its territories based on states or regions, ensuring sales representatives can visit farms and build strong relationships with farmers. Similarly, pharmaceutical companies often define territories based on healthcare regions, allowing sales reps to develop in-depth knowledge of local healthcare providers and regulations. A study by HubSpot shows that geographical territories can help reduce travel costs by 20% . Geographical territories also offer several advantages. They simplify logistics, reduce travel costs, and provide a more focused approach to local marketing efforts. However, they can also present challenges, such as unequal distribution of potential customers or varying market potential across regions. Companies must regularly analyze market data and adjust territories to address these issues.One notable example is Amazon Web Services (AWS), which might sell to various sectors with differing needs. By defining sales territories based on industry, AWS can provide specialized services and solutions tailored to each sector's unique requirements.

2. Industry-Based Territories

Industry-based territories focus on sectors such as government, airlines, and telecom. This approach requires a deep understanding of industry-specific use cases and relationships. Sales teams become experts in the needs and challenges of their assigned industries, enabling them to offer highly relevant solutions. For example, a technology company might have dedicated sales teams for the healthcare, finance, and education sectors, each with tailored messaging and product offerings. Spotio highlights that industry-based territories can lead to a 25% increase in conversion rates due to specialized knowledge .Industry-based territories allow for a more targeted approach to sales. Sales representatives can speak the language of their industry, understand regulatory requirements, and build strong relationships with key stakeholders. This expertise can lead to higher conversion rates and increased customer loyalty. However, significant investment in training and development is required to ensure that sales teams are well-versed in industry-specific knowledge. ‍

3. Customer Type Territories

Defining territories based on customer types involves segmenting the market by customer size, purchase behavior, or lifecycle stage. This method allows sales teams to tailor their strategies to the unique requirements of different customer segments, whether small businesses, large enterprises, or key accounts. For instance, a software company might assign sales teams to small, mid-sized, and large enterprises, each with distinct needs and buying processes. Small businesses require more straightforward solutions and cost-effective pricing, while large enterprises may need customized solutions and dedicated support.Customer-type territories enable sales teams to specialize in addressing each segment's unique challenges and opportunities. This specialization can improve the relevance of sales pitches, enhance customer satisfaction, and drive better results. However, it also requires careful segmentation and may lead to a more complex management structure.

‍ 4. Product Type Territories

Product-type territories assign sales teams to specific product lines or services. This approach is efficient for companies with diverse product portfolios. Sales teams can develop deep expertise in their assigned products, providing better support and driving higher sales. For example, a company that sells various types of industrial machinery might have separate sales teams for each product line, such as forklifts, cranes, and conveyor systems. Product-type territories allow for a focused approach to product management and sales. Sales representatives can become experts in their assigned products, better understand customer needs, and offer more specialized solutions. However, this approach may require additional resources and coordination to ensure that sales efforts are aligned with overall business goals and that customers receive comprehensive support across product lines.

5. New Business vs Renewals Territories

An account can also be divided between new business reps focused on landing net new customers and renewal reps who manage ongoing subscription revenue.

New business requires more outbound prospecting while renewals need customer success skills. Separate territories prevent mixed focus.

6. Channel Sales Territories

If part of your sales goes through reseller partners, you can have dedicated partner account managers aligned to them.

For example, having an APAC channel partners territory manager who handles all partnerships in that region and works to grow revenue.

7. Named Accounts Territories

Larger SaaS firms often assign strategic accounts like Fortune 500 companies to specific reps who can customize solutions for them.

These named account territories get all the sales and marketing resources required to land massive deals.

As you can see, SaaS sales leaders have many options to define territories based on their unique situation and customer landscape.

How to Create an Effective Sales Territory Plan

Creating an optimal sales territory plan is crucial yet complex. There are many factors to consider and steps involved.

Let's go through a comprehensive, step-by-step process for designing a sales territory plan that drives growth:

Step 1: Define Your Objectives

Start by clearly defining the objectives of your sales territory plan. Are you looking to increase market coverage, improve customer satisfaction, or boost sales in a particular segment? Understanding your goals will guide the entire process.

Step 2: Analyze Market Data

Conduct a thorough analysis of your market data. This includes identifying potential customers, understanding market trends, and assessing the competition. Use data analytics tools to segment your market based on relevant criteria such as geography, industry, or customer type.

Step 3: Segment Your Market

Based on your market analysis, segment your market into manageable sections. Ensure each segment is large enough to justify dedicated resources but small enough to allow personalized attention. This segmentation will form the basis of your sales territories.

Step 4: Assign Sales Teams

Assign your sales teams to the defined territories. Consider factors such as team expertise, experience, and workload. Ensure each team has the necessary resources and training to succeed in their assigned territories.

Step 5: Set Goals and Metrics

Establish clear goals and metrics for each territory. These should align with your overall business objectives and provide a basis for performance evaluation. Regularly review and adjust these goals to reflect changes in the market and business priorities.

Step 6: Implement and Monitor

Implement your sales territory plan and continuously monitor its performance. Use CRM systems and other sales tools to track progress, identify issues, and make data-driven adjustments. Regular feedback from sales teams is crucial to refine and optimize your territories. Remember to make iterative changes when it comes to sales territories to allow your sales reps time to adjust. You do not want to make knee-jerk changes that disrupt the working processes your sales teams follow.

Static vs. Dynamic Sales Territories

• Static Sales Territories

Static territories consist of a fixed set of accounts for a specified period. This approach provides stability and allows sales teams to build long-term customer relationships. However, it may need to be more responsive to market changes and evolving customer needs.

• Dynamic Sales Territories

Dynamic territories adjust based on market changes, customer intent, and sales performance. This approach is more flexible and can respond quickly to new opportunities or challenges. Companies like 6sense are known for their dynamic sales territories, constantly using advanced analytics to optimize territory assignments.

Detailed Real-world Examples and Case Studies

• AWS's Industry-Based Territories

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is a prime example of a company that uses industry-based sales territories. AWS segments its sales teams based on various industries, including healthcare, finance, and government. This approach allows AWS to tailor its solutions and sales strategies to each sector's needs and regulatory requirements. By focusing on industry-specific sales territories, AWS can leverage its expertise and build strong relationships with key stakeholders in each sector. This specialization enhances AWS's ability to address complex industry challenges and drive successful customer outcomes.

• Salesforce's Dynamic Approach

Salesforce employs a dynamic approach to sales territory planning, using advanced analytics to optimize territory assignments. The company monitors market conditions, customer intent, and sales performance to adjust its territories in real-time. Salesforce's dynamic approach allows it to respond quickly to market changes and seize new opportunities. By leveraging data and analytics, Salesforce can ensure that its sales teams are always focused on the most promising prospects and regions.

• 6sense's Use of Advanced Analytics

6sense is known for its innovative use of advanced analytics in sales territory planning. The company uses data-driven insights to define and adjust sales territories, enabling its teams to focus on high-potential opportunities and optimize their efforts. 6sense's approach highlights the importance of leveraging data and analytics to drive effective sales territory planning. Using advanced tools and techniques, 6sense can continuously refine its territories and achieve better results.

How Factors Helps Optimize Territories

Factors is an AI-powered Account intelligence & analytics platform that can help maximize the potential of sales territories:

1. Enriches Anonymous Traffic

Factors enriches anonymous website visitors and ad impressions with company data—revealing the company name, industry, location, and other attributes you can use to map accounts to matching sales territories.

2. Automatically Assigns Accounts to Territories

Once Factors discovers the right data, like the location, industry, account size, etc, it automatically assigns the accounts to the right reps based on the territory definitions in your CRM. You no longer have to manually assign a rep every time there’s a new lead in the system. 

3. Alerts Reps About Territory Accounts

Factors helps you automatically alert users when there are new accounts identified. You can set up Factors to automatically message users on Slack informing them about the new account. 

The best part is, Factors continuously monitors your website and other connect platforms for new leads. Your reps are alerted as soon as a new lead hits Factors (in real-time) so they can act upon the leads while they’re hot. 

4. Provides 360-Degree Territory Account View

Factors unifies cross-channel account data to provide a 360-degree view of territory accounts—including web activity, ad impressions, intent data, CRM interactions etc.

5. Enables Data-Driven Territory Optimization

It analyzes territory performance across metrics like engagement, pipeline velocity, and more. This allows data-driven planning and optimization of territories.

With Factors, you can leverage previously untapped anonymous interactions to drive more territory leads. Continuous optimization of territories also becomes easier based on hard data vs guesswork.

Key Takeaways

• Sales territories optimize market coverage, sales efficiency, and account management for your team. Ways to define territories include geographic, industry, size, products, or channels.
• Steps for creating a territory plan include choosing territory types, mapping target accounts, estimating potential, setting goals, assigning territories, configuring lead routing, and tracking performance.
• When assigning territories, take rep strengths into account, involve reps in planning, make data-driven decisions, and limit frequent realignments.
• Specialized software provides visibility into sales territories and makes territory management efficient.
• Factors enriches anonymous traffic to assign accounts to territories. It also unifies data across channels for continuous optimization.
• Well-planned sales territories ensure your reps have reasonable workloads and can nurture the right accounts. Combined with the right technology, sales territories provide immense leverage to scale revenue growth. 

Map Your Path to Sales Success with Sales Territories

Territories allow reps to go “all-in” on targeted accounts instead of spreading themselves thin. This results in higher win rates and accelerated revenue growth.

But territory success depends on getting the fundamentals right.

Choose appropriate territory characteristics based on your business model, products, and customers. Involve reps in co-creating territory plans that align with their strengths. Set up your CRM to automatically route inbound leads to the right reps. And continuously track and optimize territories based on hard data.

Factors plays a critical role here. It enriches anonymous website traffic to identify and assign accounts to matching sales territories automatically. Cross-channel analytics further fuel data-driven territory optimization.

With Factors, you can leverage previously untapped traffic to generate more territory leads on auto-pilot. It connects the dots across customer touchpoints to uncover revenue opportunities hidden within your data.

So if you're struggling with sub-optimal territory planning, take control of your revenue engine. Book a customized Factors demo today to see how it can help optimize your sales territories.

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• Sales Mapping

Territory Plan Templates for Successful Sales Teams

• On Aug 9, 2022

Your business wants to grow by adding new and profitable customers. Your team wants to earn by identifying and closing attractive prospects.

It’s a simple, mutually beneficial relationship. But there’s a third party that disproportionately impacts a sales team’s success or failure. That third party is sales territories.

And it’s not easy to create and optimize them, making it hard to generate the consistent sales growth your business needs.

Many companies use a territory plan template to help them move into new areas and scale their reach. Technology plays an important role in the process.

To help you create effective sales territory plan templates, we will explore foundational information, best practices, and approaches you need to build a successful territory planning.

Table of Contents

Important Factors for a Successful Sales Territory Plan Template

Before we jump into the different templates, what factors help create a successful sales territory plan? There are three simple things that you need to consider before starting the sales territory plan process:

• Data: What data will you use to inform your sales territory planning? (See below for more information on this.)
• Equity: How will your plan give each sales rep an equitable opportunity and equitable resources to maximize their earnings?
• Balance: Does every territory in your plan offer sales coverage that matches the sales capacity?

These are your ultimate goals when working on sales territory plan templates: using the right data to create equity and balance. And a 30-60-90 plan is one of the best approaches to reaching those goals.

What is a 30-60-90 Day Sales Territory Plan?

Like all sales territory plan templates, a 30-60-90 day sales territory plan serves as a framework. It’s a blueprint for building out a highly profitable territory for the business. A 30-60-90 day sales territory plan covers the following three things:

• Research: Spend the first 30 days defining the market, creating customer personas, evaluating from a SWOT perspective, getting to know the competition, and identifying top opportunities.
• Launch: Before 60 days have expired, launch your territory plan by doing the following: setting sales goals, finding leads, optimizing routes, and setting monthly quotas.
• Scale: The last portion is optimizing territories to scale for the future. This can include getting feedback from reps, conducting quantitative analyses of performance, talking to customers, etc. All companies want consistent sales growth, and this approach to sales territory plans helps you get there.

This is just a high-level overview of what it’s like to use a 30-60-90 day sales territory plan template. But you’ll want to consider your sales reps and your unique circumstances and needs when creating this type of plan for your business and sales team.

How to Create a 30-60-90 Day Territory Plan

How do you create a 30-60-90 day sales strategy for your target market? To use this approach to creating a sales territory plan, follow these steps to develop strategies that help build your sales pipeline:

• Personas: Who is your perfect customer? Build out a persona that reflects all of the characteristics that you are looking for in a client, as well as the unique challenges and needs of that ideal customer.
• SWOT analysis: Look at your team and business from a strengths and weaknesses perspective, and then evaluate the territory from an opportunities and threats standpoint. That’s the simplest way to conduct a SWOT analysis.
• Competitive research: Who is the competition in the territory? What does your business offer that theirs does not? In other words, what is your competitive advantage?
• Profitable accounts: Who are your top prospects? Find the accounts that can be most profitable and use them as a starting point in the territory.
• Sales goals: Set specific goals for your team in the territory. What results will they be able to deliver? And by when?
• KPIs: Create a dashboard that includes all of the metrics that really matter to your success in the territory — the key performance indicators.
• Additional leads: Beyond the top prospects established in No. 4 above, what other leads look attractive?
• Route optimization: Optimize routes for your salespeople so that they can spend more time selling and less time traveling.
• Monthly quotas: Create monthly quotas for your representatives to hit. These quotes should derive from the information gathered in the previous steps.
• Feedback: Get feedback from your reps on how things are going in the territory. They are on the ground in the area and should be one of your best sources of information.
• Analytics: Look at the performance numbers. Where are you exceeding expectations? What areas need more attention?
• Customer interviews: Talk to customers about their experience with your business and its salespeople. You can learn a lot from the people who have said “yes” to your pitch.

And then, it’s time to carry on into the future, continually optimizing and making adjustments as circumstances change. While there’s no end to the tweaks you’ll need to make to your sales territory plan, the 30-60-90 day approach accelerates your work and helps you build a viable territory as quickly as possible.

Other Sales Territory Plan Template Strategies

The 30-60-90 day approach to sales territory planning isn’t the only one available to you. You have other options you can use for your sales plan, which we explore below.

Biggest Potential

The simplest template for territory planning is looking at the biggest potential. This can include finding large metropolitan areas where prospects will be close in proximity. These areas are full of opportunity, and they allow your salespeople to maximize that opportunity by spending less time traveling and more time selling.

Internal Data

As an existing business, you likely have reams of data that can be used to create a territory plan template. Get geolocation data indicating where your existing customers are, where your latest opportunities are, and where your accounts sit in the pipeline.

The drawback to this approach is the echo-chamber effect. You’re working from your existing data, so there’s no opportunity to bring in third-party learnings that can positively impact your business.

Industry Data

Industry data can help you overcome the echo-chamber effect. Industry data that could be helpful include incorporation filings in various states, permit filings in various cities, as well as new developments in markets of interest.

The drawback to this approach is that it gives you information on areas that you’re already interested in. It cannot help you identify areas that you should be interested in.

Multiple Data Sources

There’s no shortage of data available to you. If you have time to get complex with your territory planning, you can combine your internal data and industry data with other information like census results, economic factors, consumer trends, etc.

This level of data can be incredibly insightful when planning territories, but it can also be unwieldy. You need a great deal of time and resources to properly use this approach to territory planning.

How to Use Maptive Mapping Software for Territory Planning

To properly use territory plan templates, you need technology that accelerates processes and gives you accurate data to make decisions.

At Maptive, we offer a platform that allows you to plan territories that are fully aligned with your sales goals. Our software offers a suite of tools that lets you take a data-driven approach to planning. Use Maptive in your sales process to:

• Use demographic and census data to drive decisions.
• Leverage heat mapping to identify opportunities.
• Create drive radius maps .
• Optimize multi-stop routes .
• Calculate distances .
• Put the right customers into fully optimized territories .

We’ll soon introduce a feature that allows you to automate territory creation and optimization .

Maximize your territory planning and gain more market share when you start a free Maptive trial .

Brad Crisp is the CEO at Maptive.com, based in Denver, CO and born in San Francisco, CA. He has extensive experience in Business Mapping, GIS, Data Visualization, Mapping Data Analytics and all forms of software development. His career includes Software Development and Venture Capital dating back to 1998 at businesses like Maptive, GlobalMojo (now Giving Assistant), KPG Ventures, Loopnet, NextCard, and Banking.

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How to Create a 30-60-90 Day Territory Plan [Template Included]

By emily healy, posted in sales productivity, territory management, sales management.

The most overwhelming part of being an outside sales rep is building a brand-new territory from scratch. Managing a territory is like running a business: you’re the one who decides if your territory succeeds or fails—and there are no days off.

Your territory plan is a blueprint explaining how you’ll turn your region into a profitable operation .

Your plan needs to demonstrate that you can develop a territory like a top outside sales rep with the right tools at your disposal. 

A common mistake is thinking that you can improvise instead of creating a detailed sales plan . These are the same salespeople who get overly cocky and end up scrambling for deals at the end of the quarter.

This guide will teach you how to create a 30-60-90 day territory plan that will help you scale your new territory without missing a single step.

Instead of scrambling the next time you need a territory plan, read on to find out the ins and outs of a 30-60-90 day territory plan, and check out our template for creating your new sales territory plan! 

How to Create a 30-60-90 Day Territory Plan

What is a 30-60-90 day plan, how to write a 30-60-90 day plan what to include in a sales territory plan, what does a 30-60-90 day plan look like, 30-60-90 day template for new sales territory plan, days 1-30: understand and analyze your market.

• Define Your New Sales Territory
• Identify your ideal customer persona

Product Knowledge: SWOT Analysis

Know your competition, discover your top 10 accounts.

• Days 31-60: Implement Your New Sales Territory Plan

Define Your Sales Goals

Go beyond your top 10, find new leads.

• Optimize Your Route

Plan to Meet Your Monthly Quota

Days 61-90: optimize your sales territory plan and get feedback, get qualitative feedback, run the numbers, check-in with your customers, sync your schedule, manage territory management reports, day 91: what’s next, edit & download our 30-60-90 day territory plan template.

A 30-60-90 day territory plan is a blueprint explaining how you’ll turn your region into a profitable operation. 

It is a workable plan for targeting the right customers and implementing goals for income and consistent sales growth over time. A structured plan from the start will paint a positive picture that will give you a sense of direction and show you where you’re headed. 

Back to Top ↑

The aim of the 30-60-90 day territory plan is to target the right customers and implement goals for income and consistent sales growth over time. 

This framework will help your organization outline a clear plan of how you’ll turn your region into a profitable operation . 

When creating a 30-60-90 day plan, the keys are in the details. It’s important to analyze your unique situation by focusing on certain factors, such as:

• Understanding and analyzing your market 
• Identifying your customer persona
• Creating a SWOT analysis
• Discovering your top 10 accounts
• Defining SMART goals and KPIs
• Optimizing your route

Including detailed sections in your new territory sales template will set you up for success. For more information on how to build your sales territory plan, keep reading! 

A 30-60-90 day territory plan will look slightly different for each sales rep. You should be customizing your plan to the goals and needs of your company. 

Badger Maps has partnered with Xtensio to create the ultimate   30-60-90 Day Sales Territory Template  for sales reps. 

With this template, you can add or subtract different sections based on your preference, while keeping all of your information organized (and visually appealing!). Creating and customizing a free territory plan has never been easier. 

Define Your New Sales Territory 

Before starting your sales plan, it’s important to clearly define your market quantitatively. Asking specific questions will help get a strong start. 

Consider asking questions like:

• What geographical area does this territory cover?
• What is the value of this territory?
• What are the demographics of this territory?
• What competition already exists in this territory?

The more you know and understand about your territory before you start the initial planning will help you grow faster down the line. 

Identify your ideal customer persona 

User personas (or buyer personas ) represent the ideal customers who will engage with your product. 

Using this template to create a buyer section in your 30-60-90 day sales plan will align everyone in your company on who your ideal customer is. This will show the key insights to your ideal customers, such as their behavior, needs, pain points , interest, and motivators.

In your first 30 days, you need to learn everything there is to know about what you’re selling. Creating a SWOT analysis is a great starting point to figure out why a customer would want to purchase your product.

By creating a SWOT analysis for your product, you will find out:

• What are its strengths ?
• What are its weaknesses ?
• What opportunities does it create for the buyer?
• What threats does it face from competitors?

Take the time to develop concrete answers to these questions . Keep in mind that customers are always thinking about cheaper alternatives, so driving home your product's value proposition is integral to close a deal. 

A SWOT analysis is your secret weapon. By mastering it, you won't sweat when tough questions pop up. 

Set higher standards for your own performance than anyone around you, and the only competition will be with yourself - Rick Pitino

By understanding your competition, you learn why your market needs your product category . Examine your direct (and indirect) competition, and think about the reasons your customers should choose your product instead.

Here are some areas to evaluate during a competitive analysis:

• Positioning
• Reviews and testimonials

It’s always interesting to see a competitor’s product features compared to your own. Go back to that SWOT analysis and focus on the threats . Dive into your research to understand the why . Why are those competitors actual threats, and what can you do to minimize these threats? 

Your company probably has competitive analysis reports on the major competitors in your market. But, if they don't, you should take the initiative and begin building this resource.

Knowing exactly who your competitors are and how your product compares will put you miles ahead of them when it comes to preparing for deals. Competitive intelligence is worth its weight in gold and you can easily do it with an online competitive intelligence tool .

You should immediately figure out who the most profitable accounts in your territory are. These may be accounts you've inherited or defined by analyzing your ideal buyer. 

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.

The 80/20 rule is in full effect - 80% of territory growth will come from 20% of your customer base .

To maintain a steady relationship with your “golden customers,” get as personal as possible. Not only will they start seeing you as a friend rather than a salesperson, but they will also trust you and your advice - which means more sales .

Days 31-60: Implement Your New Sales Territory Plan 

Consolidate the trends you’ve discovered above to come up with S.M.A.R.T goals: 

• S pecific 
• M easurable 
• A chievable 
• R elevant 
• T ime-based

Set goals based on valid data and information relating to historical performance. These will include the product/ service revenues and margins, account revenues, market share, customer retention levels, and other key data from the sales funnel.

Sales key performance indicators (KPIs) are numeric values that help you measure performance in order to make data-driven decisions. 

As a salesperson, setting measurable values to track achievements is essential to improve .

A few examples of sales KPIs are:

• Market Share - the relative market share of your company in comparison with your competitors 
• Lead to Sale Conversion Rate - the percentage of new customers compared to new leads
• Customer Turnover Rate (AKA churn) - an annual metric that depicts the number of clients that stopped using your product or service
• Average Conversion Time - the amount of time taken by your customer to move ahead in your sales funnel
• Product Revenue - the metric resenting the individual contributions of a specific product or service to the total company revenue

Now that you're an expert on your sales territory and have a plan to conquer it, start selling beyond the top 10 customers you met in your first month. 

Start prospecting regularly and invest the time into developing your territory early. This way, you'll avoid any unpleasant surprises as it grows. 

Analyze the market segments in your territory. What should be prioritized in your sales pipeline ? 

This answer will give you a clear overview of your territory's growth potential. Set deadlines for territory expansion, but be realistic. A deal doesn't close in a single meeting . In fact, 80% of deals require 5 follow-ups or more. 

Leads will be the driving force for your sales pipeline, but you need a systematic approach to generate and close them to avoid overwhelming your pipeline. 

The best way to develop a better lead generation process is by maintaining a strong customer base . If you take care of your existing customers, they'll refer you to other qualified leads who will be much more likely to close.

Optimize Your Route 

Following up with prospects regularly is the best way to maintain and grow your relationships. 

Create a regular routing schedule based on your core customers and opportunities . A detailed schedule will ensure that your deals develop at a steady pace, preventing you from missing any critical portions of your territory. 

You can use a sales routing app like Badger Maps for planning and growing your territory . Badger Maps helps you schedule appointments and create efficient routes. On average, users sell 25% more and spend 20% less time in the car . The app accomplishes this with traffic-sensitive route optimization and a built-in lead generation tool. 

Combine these great sales tips with the best field sales app

Find out how many leads you need to meet each month to crush your quota . Also, keep track of how many leads you meet with each day or week to acquire a new customer. 

For example, if you need to meet with 5 leads to acquiring 1 customer and your sales quota is 30 new customers/month, then you need to meet with 150 leads a month to meet your quota.

• Break down this goal of 150 leads by week and then by day, so you can achieve your goal.
• 150 leads/4 weeks = ~ 38 leads/week
• 38 leads / 5 days per week = ~ 8 leads/day

Be sure to adjust your weekly or daily goals if you only prospect 4 days a week, or you plan to take a vacation.

It's always a great idea to connect with your customers to check how satisfied they are with your product. You can also interview people that ended up not converting to understand what went wrong with them. 

Gathering feedback will allow you to adjust your sales strategy based on your customers' needs . To evaluate how satisfied your customers are with your product you can collect data about your cross-sell and upsell opportunities, the number of problems solved, or ask them for their Net Promoter Score.  

Explain what you accomplished and how that aligns with the project or team's overall goals. Focus on your main goals with measurable KPIs .

Your territory plan should be solidified by the third month . Your most important accounts, sales goals, and your schedule for reaching them should be set for the rest of the year.

Design your plan around your personal life and responsibilities . Don't overload your schedule without taking your personal life into consideration. It's easy to get overwhelmed in a new sales territory. 

In the final 30 days of your plan, it’s time to forecast your numbers for the rest of the year . Where do you see your territory going ?

You can use this formula to project how fast your territory will develop: 

Contacts to make x appointments to set x average close rate x average revenue per deal = % to quota

Keep track of your meetings . Nothing is worse than missing deal-critical details. By logging each of your customer interactions, you're helping your future self stay ahead of your pipeline. 

It’s important to keep a record of your history with every account. Jot down any information that seems relevant. You might uncover objections before they're even brought up. 

For example, if a customer mentions an issue with your product, you can ask follow-up questions about that previous issue during your next conversation.

This information will help you manage the many relationships you make in the field. Building strong customer relationships will help you close more deals, get more referrals, and increase productivity .

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Chances are that your calendar is going to be slammed in the first few months. In the third month, you should make it your mission to have your schedule under control. 

You want to avoid overlapping appointments . An overwhelming schedule prevents you from prioritizing important customers. Even worse, your appointments might fall on different areas of your territory, forcing you to waste time (and gas) driving to two wildly different places.

Using a CRM software can do wonders. Look for software that has features that allow you to prioritize accounts , keep notes and tabs on each individual profile, pick a date for the next follow-up , and also remind you of your prospect's preferred method of communication.

With Badger Maps , CRM integration is built right in. You can secure your upcoming follow-ups and never miss an opportunity to contact a prospect on time.

Managing how you report your time is an important aspect in sales, which it's often overlooked. It's useful to check in often and provide feedback on your progress. 

Here are some important tips for reporting the activity in your territory.

• Don’t make assumptions . This can apply to any situation, but make sure that you understand the context of the sales situations you find yourself in. 
• Make sure you and your manager are on the same page when discussing deals. 
• Have open conversations about how your pipeline looks and any deals you've forecasted already. There is no such thing as "over-communication" in outside sales.

Each quarter of the year, you should project your revenue . Do this by looking at your territory and all of the active deals in play. It gives you and your manager an overview of how your revenue has grown and what goals are achievable next quarter.

Congratulations! You've completed your 90-day sales territory plan! But now the question is: what’s next ?

Constant improvement is the key to continuing your success as a sales professional. There is always room for finding new leads, improving your CRM, optimizing your schedule, and learning more. 

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For your 30-60-90 day territory plan, using this template can help you feel more at ease in the first few months. 

If you feel like making things easier for yourself, look into different sales software or apps to help streamline different areas of your sales process. For help with route optimization, territory division, customer relationship management , and much more, make sure to check out Badger Maps .

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How to Build a Sales Territory Plan with a Buyer-Centric Approach

There’s a lot to think about when developing an annual sales plan to support your organization’s strategy and objectives:

New customer acquisition, customer retention, increasing share of wallet, resource budgeting … just to name a few. But don’t forget about your sales territory plan. It’s a critical team effort to determine the best place to win.

In this blog, you’ll learn how to create a sales territory plan in 3 steps:

• Identify buyer-centric market opportunities
• Calculate your Total Addressable Market (TAM)
• Expand with a Win/Loss SWOT

Even though the first quarter is already behind us, it’s not too late to incorporate sales territory planning into a winning sales strategy and produce results, before the year is over.

What is a Sales Territory Plan?

A sales territory refers to a geographical location that is assigned to a specific sales rep or sales team, for the purpose of targeting prospects within that area. However, in our digital age, some companies have expanded their definition of sales territories beyond geography — choosing to include other data points like industry and company size.

A sales territory plan refers to the strategic organization of sales territories to maximize revenue. Once a sales team has defined their territories, they become more efficient by assigning the right sales reps to the right territories, tailoring their outreach efforts based on each territory and customer’s unique characteristics, and more.

In short, a sales territory plan helps you guarantee your sales team targets the right people to close the best, and most profitable, deals possible.   

Why is Sales Territory Planning Important?

Without proper territory planning, how do you know where your sales reps should focus their time? Are you taking full advantage of sales territory mapping , or are there other untapped regions or verticals that should be getting more attention?

And how do you measure year-over-year performance in particular verticals or territories – without knowing where to measure in the first place?

3 Steps to Build a Laser-Focused Sales Territory Plan

Let’s work through this with an example in mind: cloud-connected storage as the solution.

Step 1: Begin with a Buyer-Centric Approach.

Before you begin looking at which market segments or verticals your sales reps should be focused on, consider why those segments need your solution in the first place.

Take the example of a company selling a cloud storage solution: Many CIOs have mandated a “cloud-first” strategy to their IT organization. While cloud migration is a hot topic with many IT teams, they struggle with problems like controlling cloud consumption costs or mitigating security risks. These pain points represent an opportunity in the IT market.

A product development team, on the other hand, may need to use big data analytics and the Internet of Things to differentiate their customer experience and engagements. As a cloud storage provider, the pain points associated with processing speed and data storage present another market opportunity with product development buyers.

Think like a customer first.

This is what we like to call an “outside-in” go-to-market strategy to territory planning.

Don’t think you should know all these answers yourself. Your product marketing and management teams are excellent partners for identifying the needs of different buyers.

As a pragmatic marketing best practice, product marketing and management teams should have market requirements documents to help answer:

• Which are the most opportunistic markets to target?
• What type of demand needs to be created to drive customer interest?
• What are your buyer needs? What do buyers care about when making a purchase?

Keep in mind that your customers are constantly evolving, just like your company. The benefits that resonated with your customers two years ago might not be the same requirements they need help with today.

For example: Some verticals, such as life sciences, have strict data compliance requirements; placing data in the public cloud is prohibited in certain countries. Your cloud-connected storage solution enables these clients to keep data residing on private storage that is connected to the cloud, not actually in it. In this example, your solution solves for this emerging buyer pain point.

Knowing these market requirements upfront during your sales territory planning exercise will define WHO to target (CTOs and operations roles in the life science industry) – and, most important, WHY (because they can maintain data compliance as they realize other benefits of the cloud).

This becomes the foundation to knowing who your ideal customer profile is for each of your solutions.

Step 2: Know Your Total Addressable Market

Once you identify the market needs you’re targeting, it’s time to identify the size of the market opportunity.

Understanding your Total Addressable Market (TAM) will help determine if a new region or vertical needs to be part of your territory plan. (It may be that your existing sales coverage isn’t optimal, and you need to hire a new business development rep to drive customer acquisition within a new vertical or market segment .)

New General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) is a great example of a location-bounded sea change. Market shifts like this present new growth segments for your sales team to target.

This is where good market data becomes extremely important to your sales territory strategy. In fact, without good data, step two cannot be completed.

Marketing and sales intelligence tools like ZoomInfo allow you to quickly conduct a Market Segmentation Analysis to explore which verticals, or industries – such as life sciences – present the largest opportunity for your solution. Once you’ve identified the verticals, you can segment prospective contacts and companies by region. You might find your existing sales coverage needs to expand into an additional territory to drive growth.

Step 3: Win/Loss Analysis Programs for Competitive Insight and Customer Feedback

Now that you know who (CTOs in life sciences), why (maintaining data compliance while using cloud services), and where (existing areas vs. new) to focus – the next step is identifying opportunities where you can win against local competition.

Look at past win/loss analysis data per region to develop a SWOT analysis on each major local competitor. This will help you understand why you win or lose locally.

An independent interviewer allows the buyer to more freely respond without offending or creating conflict. You may want to consider outsourcing your win/loss program to a third party, like Notable Evolution, who will gather unbiased insights.

The resulting information keeps you current with the ever-changing marketplace and buyers. Getting inside your buyers’ head increases your understanding of what they need, their buying criteria and pain points.

Not only that, you can gain intel relating to your competitors’ messaging, pricing strategy, and product features.

“Those who take a more comprehensive approach [to win/loss analysis] have seen a 15% to 30% increase in revenue and up to 50% improvement in win rates.” Todd Berkowitz, Gartner Group

Benefits of Buyer-Centric Sales Territory Planning

By taking a buyer-centric approach to territory planning, you’ll benefit in a few ways:

• Align your sales team to the best regions, segments, and/or verticals for success
• Align your company strengths to provide an optimal customer experience
• Partner with Product Marketing and management to drive strategic corporate objectives
• The territory plan becomes the foundation for account-based marketing (ABM ) and will significantly speed up execution of ABM programs.

It’s never too late to take a step back and make sure that the efforts of your sales team are focused on the right WHO, WHY, WHERE, and WHAT.

The benefits of a focused sales approach go far beyond the deal.

How to Create a Sales Territory Plan in Excel

A sales territory plan is a strategic tool that enables businesses to segment their market effectively. By defining specific areas for sales representatives, companies can optimize their sales efforts and ensure that customer needs are met in a focused manner. This approach not only enhances productivity but also fosters strong customer relationships by providing consistent touchpoints.

Moreover, a well-structured sales territory plan can lead to better allocation of resources. Sales teams can concentrate their efforts in high-potential areas while ensuring that every geography receives the attention it deserves. This effective allocation ultimately translates into increased sales and revenue.

Understanding the importance of a sales territory plan extends beyond mere organization. It empowers sales leaders to make informed decisions, anticipate challenges, and adapt to market changes swiftly, creating a dynamic and responsive sales strategy. The ability to pivot in response to market fluctuations can be a game-changer, allowing businesses to stay ahead of competitors and seize new opportunities as they arise.

Defining Sales Territory Plan

At its core, a sales territory plan is a documented strategy that outlines how a sales team will approach their assigned regions. It defines the geographic boundaries, target accounts, and sales goals for each territory. A robust plan takes into account various factors, including market demographics, purchasing patterns, and competitive landscapes.

A concise definition of a sales territory plan encompasses not only the 'where' but also the 'how.' This means detailing the tactics and strategies that representatives will employ to engage potential clients and drive sales. Clear definitions provide alignment across teams, ensuring everyone understands their roles and responsibilities within the broader sales strategy. Furthermore, incorporating feedback from sales representatives who are on the ground can enhance the plan's effectiveness, as they can provide insights into customer behavior and preferences that may not be captured through data alone.

Benefits of a Well-Structured Sales Territory Plan

Implementing a well-structured sales territory plan offers numerous advantages. Firstly, it drives accountability among sales representatives. When territories are clearly defined, each team member knows their boundaries and is responsible for performance within those limits.

Additionally, such a plan can enhance sales forecasting accuracy. By understanding territory dynamics, sales leaders can set realistic targets and anticipate challenges based on historical data and market trends. This clarity enables better resource management, as teams can allocate time and budget to areas that promise higher returns. The predictive nature of a well-crafted territory plan can also help in identifying emerging markets or trends that may require immediate attention, thereby allowing the sales team to be proactive rather than reactive.

Furthermore, a structured sales territory plan allows for easier performance evaluation and adjustment. Regularly analyzing the success of each territory provides insights that can influence strategy moving forward, ensuring that efforts are concentrated where they matter most. This ongoing evaluation process not only helps in recognizing high-performing territories but also sheds light on underperforming areas that may need additional support or a different approach. By fostering a culture of continuous improvement, organizations can refine their strategies and enhance overall sales effectiveness over time.

Getting Started with Excel for Sales Planning

Excel is an indispensable tool for creating a sales territory plan, offering flexibility and accessibility for users at all skill levels. Getting started involves understanding both basic and advanced features within Excel that can enhance your planning and analysis experience.

Basic Excel Skills for Sales Planning

For beginners, the foundational skills in Excel include understanding basic functions such as SUM, AVERAGE, and COUNT. These functions facilitate effective data analysis, enabling you to calculate key metrics essential for your sales territory plan.

Creating tables and utilizing filters are also important basic skills. They allow for organized data presentation, helping you visualize sales data by territory, product, or sales rep. Additionally, mastering conditional formatting helps in highlighting performance trends, making it easier to identify areas that need attention.

Another essential skill is the ability to sort data effectively. Sorting your sales data by date, revenue, or customer name can provide immediate insights into your sales performance. This can help you quickly identify your top-performing products or the most lucrative sales territories, allowing you to allocate resources more efficiently. Learning to use data validation can also streamline your data entry process, reducing errors and ensuring consistency across your sales planning documents.

Advanced Excel Features for Sales Analysis

Once you've grasped the basics, delving into advanced Excel features can significantly enhance your sales planning capabilities. PivotTables, for example, enable you to summarize large data sets efficiently, making it easy to track progress against goals and identify performance trends across territories.

Furthermore, using Excel's VLOOKUP function allows you to cross-reference sales data with customer databases, ensuring that you have the latest information at your fingertips. Integrating charts and graphs enhances your presentations, allowing stakeholders to visualize data-driven insights effectively.

Another powerful feature to explore is the use of Excel's What-If Analysis tools, such as Scenario Manager and Goal Seek. These tools allow you to model different sales strategies and forecast potential outcomes based on varying assumptions. This can be particularly useful for assessing the impact of changing market conditions or pricing strategies on your overall sales performance. Additionally, incorporating macros can automate repetitive tasks, saving you valuable time and ensuring consistency in your reporting processes, thereby allowing you to focus more on strategic decision-making.

Step-by-Step Guide to Creating a Sales Territory Plan in Excel

Now that you've grasped the fundamental and advanced skills necessary for Excel, it’s time to put them into action with a structured approach to developing your sales territory plan.

Identifying Your Sales Territories

The first step in creating your sales territory plan is identifying the geographic boundaries of your territories. Consider factors such as market potential, customer distribution, and the locations of your competitors.

Using Excel, you can create a map of your territories, highlighting critical areas to focus on. This visualization makes it easier to align your sales strategies with market realities. Don't forget to involve your sales team in this process; their insights can prove invaluable in designing effective territories.

Setting Your Sales Goals

With your territories identified, the next step is to set clear, measurable sales goals. Establish objectives for each territory based on historical data and market research. Aiming high is essential, but it's equally important to set attainable targets that motivate your sales team.

In Excel, create a sheet where each territory is listed alongside its respective goals. This structured approach allows you to monitor progress effectively and make adjustments as necessary.

Allocating Resources and Assigning Sales Teams

Once your goals are set, it’s time to allocate resources accordingly. This involves not only assigning sales personnel to each territory but also ensuring they have the tools and support needed to succeed.

Excel can be utilized to track assignments, inventory levels, and budget allocations. Creating a dashboard in Excel can help you visualize which team members are covering which territories and whether resources are distributed appropriately.

Maintaining and Updating Your Sales Territory Plan

Creating a sales territory plan is not a one-time effort but a living document that requires regular maintenance and updates to stay relevant and effective.

Regular Review of Sales Performance

To maintain your sales territory plan, schedule regular reviews of sales performance. This assessment should include evaluating the success of each territory against its goals.

Utilizing Excel’s analytical tools during these reviews can provide insights into emerging trends and areas for improvement. Comparing current performance against historical data enables you to make data-driven decisions about strategy adjustments.

Adjusting Your Plan Based on Sales Data

As sales dynamics change, your territory plan must adapt accordingly. Use the insights gained during performance reviews to fine-tune your approach. This could mean reallocating resources from underperforming territories to those with higher potential.

Excel can store historical data trends, making it easy to analyze shifts in market conditions and sales results. By staying agile and ready to pivot your strategy, you’ll ensure that your sales efforts remain effective and focused.

Tips and Tricks for Effective Sales Territory Planning in Excel

To maximize the effectiveness of your sales territory planning in Excel, consider the following tips and tricks that can enhance your process and results.

Utilizing Excel Functions for Sales Forecasting

Excel offers robust functions that can assist with sales forecasting, helping you predict future sales based on historical data. Functions like LINEST and FORECAST provide valuable analytical capabilities.

Incorporating forecasting into your territory plan allows for proactive adjustments rather than reactive ones, making it easier to achieve strategic goals. Regular updates to your forecasts can set your team up for success by preparing them for upcoming demands.

Avoiding Common Pitfalls in Sales Territory Planning

Lastly, avoid common pitfalls that can undermine your sales territory plan. A frequent mistake is neglecting to involve the sales team in the planning process. Their firsthand insights are crucial for creating practical, effective territories.

Additionally, be cautious of overcomplicating your plan with too many layers or metrics. The goal is clarity and usability. Keep your Excel sheets organized and as simplistic as possible while conveying the necessary information needed to drive results.

In conclusion, a strategically developed and well-maintained sales territory plan in Excel can play a pivotal role in enhancing sales performance. By leveraging the functionalities of Excel, organizations can create a dynamic and effective approach to territory management that evolves with their business needs.

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