Properly developed and structured sales territory plan can make a world of difference for your team and your business as well.
Whether you’re looking to expand or redesign your existing territory management strategy or starting from scratch, there are huge benefits of having a comprehensive sales territory plan.
Efficient and effective sales territory sales plans are needed to generate new business and increase sales. However, it can be quite challenging to know which markets and which accounts you want to target with hundreds or thousands of companies within each state, region, or country, and to choose the best b2b data licensing services from b2b database providers. For your sales team to stay motivated and support your territory allocations, you need to consider how to divide territories equitably. When done right, sales territory planning provides your team with the exact accounts to go after and why, allocates territories fairly across your entire organization and keeps everyone focused on the accounts that are most likely to buy from you and will increase revenue for your company faster.
What Is a Sales Territory?
A sales territory is the industry, regional, or account type assigned to a specific sales representative or sales team. The owner of the sales territory is responsible for prospecting into their customer base and meeting their territory quota.
The Importance of a Well-Defined ICP:
It is important to have your ideal customer profile (ICP) well-defined amongst your marketing and sales teams before starting your sales territory plan so that they know the type of accounts your sales territories should include and why. And to do this, many organizations use firmographic data like industry, company size, and annual revenue as part of their ICP definition leveraging b2b data licensing from b2b database providers. But, it is difficult to create equitable territory assignments without a deeper level of insight or know which countries or regions to invest your resources in next.
The organizations, who use tech intelligence to expand their ICP definition, are the companies that have the most success in driving rapid sales growth in their territories. These organizations use tech intelligence for critical insights on the accounts in their territories, including granular information on which technologies an account has installed, how much they spend on those technologies and when they are due for renewal.
Once you have defined your ICP, you can use technology intelligence data to find the accounts that fit best with your ICP. Technology intelligence data provides you insight into your total addressable market (TAM) in each category of technology, which helps you to see the complete selection of accounts that matches your ICP. This includes the accounts that match with your broad firmographic criteria like industry, geographical location, revenue size, and the number of employees. What’s more valuable is that it allows you to find accounts that match critical technology intelligence criteria like the following:
Technology Installs:
Tech insights reveal the software and hardware technologies that companies use to run their business, which many b2b database providers and b2b data list provider offers along with b2b data licensing. IT can include if the technology is on-premise or in the cloud and how likely it is for that organization to install a specific technology product or service. However, it can also help you to target the accounts that complementary or competing solutions with more relevant outreach, showing how your offering solves the most common and tedious pain points or enhances their current technology.
IT Spends:
This information enables you to know the potential IT spends for the category of your offering in any geographical region, and is offered by many b2b database providers and b2b data list provider. What this means is that you can clearly see exactly which accounts comprise spends and also about how much each account spends individually.
This information can help you in the following ways;
- Tier how you assign accounts to sales representatives so you can assign the top value accounts to top performing sales representatives
- Determine more realistic sales territories having the accounts that best match your ICP
- Create more equitable sales territory assignments for your sales representatives
- Help your sales representatives segment the right targets based on potential spend in their specific territory
Contract Intelligence:
Tech intelligence data helps you to know when the technology contracts of your target accounts are due for renewal before they expire so your sales teams have enough time to plan and then reach out to them, and is offered by several b2b database providers and b2b data list provider. Knowing about which vendor services the contract, what are the contract terms, and if that vendor is a company you have worked with in the past to land wins, can really help you create efficient and equitable sales territory plans.
5-Step Plan to Create a Winning Sales Territory Plan:
If your existing sales territories are unevenly serviced or you struggle with sales territory management or even if you are creating it for the very first time, use this step-by-step guide to put together a winning sales territory plan for your sales team.
Analyze and Segment Your Current Customers:
Before you can actually create an effective sales territory plan, you first need to take stock of your prospects, current customers and leads as well leveraging b2b data licensing. Begin by segmenting your current customers based on their vertical, geographical location, purchase history, or any other relevant characteristic.
Make notes of which verticals your sales team is having the most success with where they are located geographically, how they make their purchase. For example, does this type of customer often require an in-person demo to convert? Or does this type of customer buy online with minimal relationship nurturing?
And if, pick your top ten customers or prospects and then identify the common characteristics shared by them.
Not only you should know about who your customers are and where they are located geographically, but, you should also be able to answer the following questions about each segment;
- Which events lead prospects to not purchase?
- What are your customers purchasing? Are certain services or products outperforming others?
- What is your conversion rate? Where exactly do conversions tend to drop off?
- Why are your customers purchasing? What pain points does your offering fix?
- Which events lead to purchases?
By answering the above questions you’ll be able to better segment your territories and spot overarching trends in the market and a good mailing list provider really helps.
Conduct SWOT Analysis:
Now, do a basic SWOT analysis to identify your sales team’s weaknesses, strengths, threats, and opportunities.
Strengths: What is your sales team good at? Where do your sales representatives excel? Maybe some of your sales team members deliver great in-person demos, while others work best over email and phone.
Weaknesses: Is there any particular stage of your sales process where your leads just tend to lose interest? Are there any leaks or bottlenecks in your sales pipeline that must be addressed soon?
Opportunities: Based on your customer segments and the current marketplace, is there an under-serviced territory or untapped market that more of your sales representatives should sell to?
Threats: What are the top threats to your success in a given territory? Is there any competitor fighting for the same market share in a particular location, vertical, or customer segment?
Set Goals and Establish Targets:
Set Goals and Establish Targets:
Whether you’re redefining a specific sales representative’s sales territory or mapping out a new territory management plan for the entire sales team, it’s always in your best interest to set tangible goals, and clear parameters. The easier your goals are to track and measure, the better.
To make sure that you come up with realistic, specific targets for each territory, first ask yourself and your sales team the following questions;
- Where are most of our new leads coming from?
- Looking at the coverage of our sales pipeline, how many new opportunities do we need to add to meet quota?
- Are any of our sales territories being underserviced? If so, how many sales representatives should we assign to those sales territories?
- Which customer segment delivers the highest payoff?
- Are we tapping into that value consistently?
- Which geographical regions should we focus on?
- Which products/services are the most profitable? Which customers are buying them?
So, once you know what exactly you want to achieve, give your sales team clear objectives for each sales territory like “We want to double the number of accounts we serve in this vertical by next year” or “We need to sign five new customers in this region by the end of this quarter”.
Develop a Tangible Strategy:
Now that you have clear goals and customer segments, you’re all set to create a sales territory plan with your sales representatives to target the top lucrative segments and get the most possible coverage.
Assign individual sales representatives to specific markets or regions. Use the information you gathered in first and second steps and from your mailing list provider to take sales potential into your consideration to ensure even distribution.
Try to match your sales team members’ sets to the type of sales territory you assign them. And if any of your sales representatives have already built relationships with prospects in a particular sales territory, try to allocate them the jurisdiction over those accounts.
Decide how often different types of accounts should be contacted by looking at your customer segments. Look at if, or not they need in-person visits to be handled by a field sales representative or whether most of your accounts can be effectively handled remotely.
When creating your sales territory strategy, keep the following questions in your mind:
- What else does your team need to achieve success in reaching the milestones and goals you’ve set for them?
- What resources do your sales representatives need to effectively manage the accounts assigned to them?
- How will you boost conversions in each sales territory?
- Are there any opportunities to further penetrate underserviced territories?
Track Your Results and Optimize Territory Division:
Longest lasting and the last step is to put your new sales territory plan into action. It’s vital that you continually measure your progress to see how exactly your new sales territory plan impacts your sales.
For example, is there any big disparity between sales in different sales territories? Have sales increased in a specific market or region? Is there a market that seems underserviced that needs additional sales representatives assigned to it? Is one sales representative struggling to keep up with leads while another sales representative is barely meeting their quota?
If any of your sales representatives or sales territories are underperforming, make an effort to find out why and implement necessary adjustments.
Use Tech Intelligence during Sales Territory Planning or Afterwards:
To include tech intelligence, the ideal time to redefine your ICP is before you start your sales territory planning so that you can go through the tech intelligence data of accounts that accurately match your ICP.
But, if you’ve already gone through the tedious exercise of creating a sales territory plan and also created your list of accounts that you want to target, it’s quite alright. All you need to do is expand your ICL a little to include the tech intelligence components that are most relevant for you. And once you have redefined your ICP, go through your target account list, match them to your data vendor reference set, and then get a modified target account list from your data vendor that matches with your redefined ICP so you can focus all your sales efforts on your best prospects.
Sales Territory Management Best Practices:
Sales managers can easily maintain even sales territory distribution and set their sales representatives up for better success by adhering to the following best practices.
Create a Call Rotation Schedule:
You can easily keep in touch with all your target accounts. So, determine how much contact each of your accounts needs to determine how frequent your sales representatives should reach out. And also consider whether the customer needs a face-to-face, in-person meeting to renew their contract with you or can they be managed over the phone or email.
Account for Seasonal Buying Trends:
You reach out to the right sales territory at the right time of the year. So, reach out to your customers when they are most likely to buy again.
Prioritize Long-Term Results:
Sure, it’s vital to address fresh leads as soon as they come up, but, you shouldn’t let your less qualified or unqualified opportunities distract you from the big picture plan. Even when new leads appear, encourage your sales representatives to stick to their call schedule.
Go Beyond Geographic Sales Territories:
Depending on who are your targets and what you are selling, segmenting the leads by geography may not be the best choice and working with a mailing list provider is a good idea, especially if your sales representatives often don’t travel to meet customers in person. And it makes more sense in many cases to segment customers by referral source, industry, and account or product size.
Conclusion:
A sales territory plan is a much needed resource for every company. While the sales territory plan gets merged into the overall business plan, it makes more sense to break out your sales territory plan as a separate document. Sales revenue is the lifeline of every business and, as a result, needs its own undivided focus.
