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Location Intelligence and Analytics

How Strategic Territory Design Leads to More Sales

Could your company be losing millions of dollars each year because of an imbalance in sales territories? Are you sure your sales force is not deploying too much effort against low-potential customers or doing too little to convert key prospects?

According to a study of 300 companies published in the Journal of Personal Selling and Sales Management, sales territory alignment is one of the most commonly overlooked areas of sales force productivity. And optimizing territory design can increase sales by 2 to 7% – without any additional resources or changes in the sales strategy.

Problems with poor territory design

If you really think about it, a major chunk of sales and marketing data is purely geographic in nature – the address of a prospect, postal code, city, phone number, demographics, etc. But, to draw up sales territories, sales operations managers have traditionally relied on Excel spreadsheets.   And there is only so much you can accomplish by flipping through one time-consuming spreadsheet after another.

Sales managers often end up leaving millions of dollars on the table simply because they are not aware that their territories are out of balance. So, while one sales representative may be chasing bad leads and struggling to stay busy, another may be ignoring challenging but high-potential prospects because they are already crushing their targets through easy accounts.

Think about it: Is there any specific territory where you have had trouble retaining salespeople? Could this quick turnover be a result of an opportunity mismatch – that salespeople become discouraged because of the lack of opportunity in their area and leave the organization?

You may be able to spot a similar trend in your incentive pay scheme too. Irrespective of how capable or hard working a salesperson is, their capability of taking home a fair share of incentive pay is significantly impacted by the equitability of sales territory design.
So, if you are looking to foster a culture where you reward someone for their true performance, it may be time to rethink how you design and manage your territories.

Target sales strategically with data visualization

The easiest and most straightforward way to divide sales territories in a fair and balanced manner is to visualize them on a map. And no, using a map does not mean taking a print out of the map of Canada and highlighting areas with different colored markers. It means leveraging sophisticated technologies to build territories based on key metrics like revenue goals, market opportunities, custom client information, government areas, proximity to salespeople’s base location, etc.

Territory Builder is a data visualization tool which allows you to group FSA/LDU (3 or 6 digit) postal codes or municipalities together to create equitable sales territories easily.   Built especially with non-technical people in mind, this Cloud-based visualization portal is powered by DMTI’s powerful Location Hub® Viewer module that automatically cleanses your data before displaying it on a map. With Territory Builder, visualizing and building territories on a Canadian map is as easy as uploading a CSV file of addresses or geographic information and using 3 or 6 digit postal codes to define boundaries.

And if your salespeople still think the territories are unfair, or launching a new product is shifting priorities, or you discover new sales opportunities in a region, you can easily manage and modify the boundaries. Since Territory Builder is a SaaS-based product, you can make live changes by reassigning postal codes to new territories.

Indeed, you cannot hope to optimally utilize your sales force and maximize profits unless you can picture the gap areas in your sales coverage clearly. DMTI’s Territory Builder is a powerful data visualization tool which will not only give you a more accurate view of your business, but it will also help you provide a fair challenge to your salespeople and drive home new revenue streams.

So, are you ready to increase the productivity and performance of your sales representatives?  Get in touch here.

Additional Reading:  

Territory Builder Brochure

UAID Territories

4 Ways to Visualize, Build and Manage your Territories for Canada

Territory management is a process that helps organizations by defining geographical territories based on factors such as sales, infrastructure locations and service delivery zones. Companies are managing this type of information today within spreadsheets and require a solution that helps build and visualize territories based on key metrics like revenue goals, market opportunities, custom client information, government areas, proximity to salespeople’s base location, etc.