One of the most common challenges that most sales managers and reps face is managing sales territories. Especially when a territory is new or unknown to you, it can be an even bigger challenge. When you create a new territory, you don’t have any leads, and even if you have, they are few and unqualified.
They are all cold leads that need nurturing before they turn into customers. In short, managing a new sales territory is no cakewalk. However, if you follow the proper strategies of time and territory management in sales, it can be more manageable.
So, if you are a sales manager looking to manage a new sales territory, this post will guide you on how to do that. You’ll first learn about various challenges in sales territory management and then the ways to handle sales territory management efficiently.
Challenges in Sales Territory Management
Whenever you manage a new sales territory, one of the main causes of missed prospects and opportunities is inefficient mapping of territories. The use of outdated tools and processes leaves many sales managers with only one option of mapping and managing the sales reps’ territories manually. This often leads to inequitable distribution of territories, which fails to provide equal opportunities.
This unequal distribution of territories results in improper time and territory management in sales. This is because some sales reps have many more accounts to handle than they can, while others have fewer accounts to handle.
In this process, the over-utilized reps sometimes handle the “easy” accounts first, which saves them time and easily reaches sales quotas. What happens here is that they hit the numbers fast but at the same time miss out on very potential high-value accounts that require more follow-ups and efforts. If you talk about the sales territories with fewer opportunities, sales reps there wouldn’t have much work, sit idle, and miss their daily quotas. This may force them into thinking of leaving the organization as they may feel under-utilized.
Why Isn’t Manual Mapping Effective?
Out of a number of challenges in sales territory management, manual mapping of territories in spreadsheets is cumbersome and causes inefficiencies. Spreadsheets don’t provide visualization capabilities to help you experiment with different territory designs, nor do they provide access to scaled analytics. Further, with no flexibility to develop spreadsheets in real-time, scaling these sheets as the organization grows turns impossible.
How to Create and Manage a New Sales Territory?
Creating and managing a new sales territory requires a strong sales territory plan. Basically, it is a strategy that your sales team uses to target and approach new prospects, leads, and existing customers to close more deals.
Here are the six steps to manage a new sales territory:
1. Define Your Sales Goals
Be clear about your goals before making a plan. There are various approaches that you can take to determine sales goals. Typically, you can start with the big sales numbers and then break them down into quarters, months, or weeks.
For instance, if your annual sales goal is $1200K, your quarterly goal will be $300K, and your monthly goal will be $100K. In case you are not sure what your annual goal for your new territory should be, you can take help from past territories’ performance.
Let’s say one of your already existing territories is performing well and gives you an annual income of $1000K. This territory is double the size of your new sales territory. So, you can set your monthly goal of this new territory somewhere around $500K as it is half the size of your old territory.
2. Define Your Market
Once you define your sales goal, your next step is to define the industries and people you target. Defining your target market and customers helps you understand their specific needs, goals, and pain points. You can also segment the target audience on the basis of their needs and revenue-generating potential.
3. Assess Previous Prospects’ and Accounts’ Qualities
When you manage a new sales territory, you don’t know much about your new leads. If you take the help of your existing customers in other sales territories, it can help you make the process easier. You can analyze what your previous customers demanded, how you fulfilled their demands, and the success you got with them.
Based on that, you can prioritize targeting those leads and accounts with similar needs as your existing customers. This will help you launch your sales strategies in less time and in a more focused way.
4. Analyze Competition
While analyzing previous leads’ data can help, you also need to analyze the competition in your new sales territory. Find out your competitors in your new target territory and gauge the level of competition. Observe those competitors’ customers’ preferences, strategies, and tactics. You can refer to their sites and track their offline sales activities to find out more about them.
Once you gather all the information about your competitors, use that to form a plan to stand out from all your competitors.
5. Distribute Territories according to Sales Reps
Every sales rep is not the same. While some are better at closing deals with new vendors or customers, the others are better at maintaining relationships with the old customers. Start mapping out the strengths and weaknesses of your reps and distribute the sales territories accordingly.
You can assign big territories to more experienced reps who can deal with new leads more productively. On the other hand, if you have a new territory that is small in size with low-potential leads, you can assign it to a new sales rep.
If you cater to multiple industries like education, IT, etc., you can also assign new territories as per your sales reps’ niche. For example, if your rep is good at closing deals with educational institutions, you can assign the territory where there are education-related leads. Similarly, if you have a sales rep who can sell IT products easily, you can assign them IT-related leads.
6. Visualize Sales Territories
Use a mapping tool to map all your CRM accounts on the map and visualize them for better visibility. There are various mapping tools available in the market for time and territory management in sales that you can pick from.
About AppJetty
AppJetty can help you manage your new sales territories better and more efficiently. Our Dynamics Mappyfield 365 is a cutting-edge mapping tool that you can use to plot and visualize all your CRM records on the map. It also features check-in/check-outs, auto-scheduling, territory management, route optimization and sharing, user-level configuration, advanced search, heat maps, and more.
So, if you are also looking to manage your new sales territory, it is time you integrated Mappyfield 365.
To know more about how Mappyfield helps manage territories, you can visit Simplify Dynamics 365 Territory Management with Mappyfield 365.
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