a quick guide to sales territory management by espatial

Learn how to boost sales, increase productivity and reduce

costs with sales territory mapping.

Sales Territory

Management

A Quick Guide to

Introduction

Chapter 1: WHAT IS SALES TERRITORY MANAGEMENT?

Chapter 2: HOW CAN TERRITORY MANAGEMENT BENEFIT YOUR SALES TEAM?

Chapter 3: WHY YOU NEED MAPPING SOFTWARE FOR SALES TERRITORY MANAGEMENT

Chapter 4: QUESTIONS TO ASK YOURSELF WHEN CHOOSING TERRITORY MANAGEMENT SOFTWARE

Chapter 5: GET STARTED WITH SALES TERRITORY MANAGEMENT

eSpatial | A Quick Guide to Territory Management 2

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Recently there has been an upsurge in sales organizations investing in territory management software to enhance their sales performance capabilities. According to Gartner (2016) The adoption of territory management has increased from 22% in 2012 to 38% in 2015. We believe this is the result of a combination of multiple factors such as a more competitive landscape, a more analytical and performance driven sales environment and a data-intensive market. This means organizations are now looking for ways to make sales data easier to digest and gather insights such as market gap analysis and over-serviced territories.

73% increase in adoption of territory management software since 2012.

-Gartner

INTRODUCTION

Territory mapping is one of the easiest ways to visualize your data as it allows you to overlay multiple datasets which helps you to bring insights to the surface. These insights then drive business decisions about sales people and distributor locations by identifying which territories are over-served and which need a higher priority. Poor territory management can be costly for an organization, time and money are wasted in administrative work and key insights can be missed leading to reduced or lost sales. Read on to see what you can learn from this eBook. eSpatial | A Quick Guide to Territory Management 3

What will you learn from this eBook?

What territory management is and why it’s important for your

business today.

How territory management can benefit your sales teams.

Why you should be using mapping software to manage your

territories.

How to select the right mapping software for your needs.


What is a Sales Territory?

A sales territory is the customer group or geographical area for which an individual salesperson or a sales team holds responsibility. Territories can be defined on the basis of geography, sales potential, history, or a combination of factors. Companies strive to balance their territories because this can reduce costs and increase sales. What is Territory Management?

Territory management is a methodology to control, optimize and improve territory alignment and structure your sale’s resources and activities. This can include balancing and aligning territories so that sales personnel and resources are being used effectively to maximize productivity of your sales team. Territories are often unbalanced; some may be underserved or valuable resources could be misdirected to a low value area.

Sales quota and territory management software that refines business practices for territory sizing and balancing can add over 5% in sales from existing resources.

- Gartner

KEY TERMS


Usually to manage territories, companies create large databases using a mix of internal and external sources. But managing territories through a single solution makes it easier to interpret data from multiple sources, build and manage territories by visualizing them on a dynamic platform.

Sales Territory

Management

A quick overview of what territory alignment and balancing means along with the benefits of having a well balanced territory.

Territory alignment is a well-known and commonly used sales productivity technique whereby specific geographical or regional sales territories are assigned to a specific salesperson. The basic building blocks are usually states, counties, cities and zip-code areas; large customer accounts locales or a combination of these factors. Territory balancing refers to ensuring that sales territories themselves are equally distributed among the sales team. Depending on the market condition, the activities and resources of your sales team, their objectives, and the insights gained from visualizing your spreadsheet data, you may want to balance assigned territories according to the value or workload that they represent. This can be the volume of customers, opportunities, leads, or even the size of the territory itself. Balanced and aligned territories are proven to be effective and efficient, allowing you to get the best performance from your sales team.

WHAT IS TERRITORY ALIGNMENT AND BALANCING?


BENEFITS OF TERRITORY ALIGNMENT

Unbalanced sales territories can be a headache for sales teams. If a salesperson’s territory is too big or if their workload is too heavy, they cannot effectively cover all customers and prospects. Conversely, a salesperson whose territory is small or not populated enough has too little work and can end up wasting their potential on low priority clients, leading to under utilized sales resources and an unmotivated workforce. As a result, the company loses money, time, and potential customers. Balanced territories on the other hand, are proven to be effective and efficient, allowing you to get the most from your sales team by allocating sales opportunities more equitably. Territory management software ensures efficient coverage of sales territories, improving lead development, increasing responsiveness to emerging trends, and balancing the workloads of employee’s, thereby maximizing the company’s performance and profits.


6 Ways Territory Management Can Benefit Your Sales Team

6 Benefits of Territory Management for Your Sales Team

1. Increases Sales & Reduce Cost With Aligned Territories &

Improved Coverage

2. Measures Performance Through Reporting & Analytics

3. Identifies Hidden Insights With Data Visualization

4. Delegates Work Through Hierarchies

5. Increases Collaboration & Sharing Within Your Team

6. Saves Time With An Easy To Use Solution


An important benefit from sales territory mapping is increased sales and reduced costs. Territory management will improve market coverage allowing sales teams to be more efficient at making each sale and grasping new opportunities, gaining a stronger competitive advantage. Aligned territories will result in balanced workloads for sales personnel, providing them

INCREASED SALES & REDUCED COST

When sales territory data is visualized using mapping software, there are a host of analytical tools to take advantage of including several different performance reporting options. Mapping software enables data plotted on a map to be aggregated to get a consolidated view of performance. It’s possible to segment and filter data, isolating sales of above or below a specific value. You can also overlay demographic and geographic data to identify insights in your market. Each member of a sales team can create reports and analyze their own territories and measure their current performance against quotas and targets. These reports can then be easily shared with colleagues and managers.

REPORTING & ANALYTICS

with greater earning potential, improved morale and career satisfaction. This leads to higher motivation, lower staff turnover and most importantly, more sales. Territory mapping also provides route optimization capabilities. Field Sales teams can reduce travel costs, improve fuel efficiency and increase the number of customers that they serve within their territory.


The human brain can interpret visual content faster and easier than textual information. Sales teams and managers should take note of this considering that almost 90% of all information interpreted by the brain is visual. It’s also been proven that managers who use visual data tools are 28% more likely to find opportune information than those who rely solely on traditional reporting and spreadsheets. Data Visualization enables you to quickly optimize and visualize the data from your CRM and spreadsheets. An interactive map allows the discovery of hidden insights and patterns not possible in spreadsheets. Seeing a territory in a variety of different perspectives allows you to see not only the bigger picture but also more granular detail. For example, zooming in to see greater detail based on different market characteristics such as customer types, or assigned sales professionals.

DATA VISUALIZATION

Questions you can answer with data visualization

•How many customers in a territory?

•What areas are not being serviced adequately? •Are there gaps in your coverage? •Where are your customers most densely located?


You can create hierarchies to match your sales team’s organization structure. Using territorial hierarchies enables more flexibility over data visibility, collaboration and delegation between managers and teams. Each member of your sales department, from sales rep to regional manager can quickly see and manage the territory they have responsibility for. For example, a sales rep may only see their own territory in a city suburb, the Regional Manager can see all of his sales team’s territories in a city, while the National Sales Manager can see all the territories in the country. Each sales representative can clearly see the territory they are responsible for, allowing them to focus on their own market. This facilitates the sharing of data up and down the managerial chain. As a manager you can use these hierarchies to measure the performance of each territory, and quickly delegate responsibility acr0ss your sales team.

HIERARCHIES


Territory management software enables collaboration and sharing between sales managers and sales personnel. You and your sales team can input/edit sales data and plan against targets. For example, members of a nationwide sales team can add their own data – latest sales or leads – to a territory on a daily basis, thus creating a complete, up-to-date holistic view of their territory. You as a sales manager, can share historic sales performance, territory definitions and current performance against targets. This facilitates a constructive sales performance conversation using a single source of sales data. The instantaneous nature of being able to collaborate on territories online reduces the necessity of expensive and time-consuming onsite sales performance reviews. Additionally, territory maps can be shared easily publicly or privately online, used in presentations, and printed in high quality hardcopies.

SHARING & COLLABORATION

For sales teams located remotely, seamless collaboration is very important. Cloud based solutions can allow these teams to collaborate on the definition of their territories from any location, the office or the field in real-time.


12 Reasons Why Mapping

Software Is Essential For Sales Territory Management

Our insights into sales territory management in this eBook have been formed through direct engagement with sales organizations around the world. These insights have helped us to define what we believe to be the 12 reasons why mapping software is essential for effective territory management.

WHY MAPPING SOFTWARE IS ESSENTIAL FOR TERRITORY MANAGEMENT


12 Reasons Why Mapping Software Is Essential For Sales Territory Management:

1. Increases profits and achieves greater efficiency through quicker on boarding and clear delineation.

2. Quickly divides up a large target area into more manageable regions.

3. Allocates and realigns territories to sales teams more effectively.

4. Improves collaboration across the sales team.

5. Cultivates better sales leads.

6. Builds your territories from predefined locations (from zip codes, counties, states, provinces, and countries).

7. Creates territories straight from a spreadsheet.

8. Overlay other geographic regions or points for reference.

9. Balances your territories on multiple data sources.

10. Creates Hierarchies to match your company’s reporting structure.

11. Produces vibrant maps for presentations and reporting.

12. Optimizes your sales calls with routing.

eSpatial | The Definitive Guide to Territory Management 17

8 Questions To Ask Yourself When Choosing Territory Management Software

Do you require various levels of visibility to match your sales organization structure? Assuming you do, you should choose a mapping software solution that has hierarchal features. These features will allow you to set up multiple hierarchal tiers for a territory map. Look for these following capabilities to: • Import and build sales hierarchy definitions. • Assign a territory to a sales team member. • Delegate responsibility for specific territories

to a sales team member. • Control visibility of assigned sales territories.

Before you choose a territory mapping software solution and begin defining your territories, it is important to identify your challenges. Below are some essential questions to ask to before making a decision:

WHAT ARE MY CHALLENGES?

• What are trying to achieve with your sales

data?

• What does success look like for you?

• Are you trying to compare performances

against targets and quotas?

• Create and realign territories?

• Identify gaps in your coverage?

• Manage resources?

• Communicate the organization/

reorganization of your sales team?

• Or simply identify where your customers are

based?

Knowing your challenges allows you to identify the software solution that fits your needs.

DO I REQUIRE HIERARCHIES?


CAN IT SCALE AS MY BUSINESS GROWS?

It is important to have a solution that can scale along with your business. Your ideal vendor should be cloud based as one of the biggest features of cloud, besides reliability, is its ability to scale.

Are you looking to compare your sales data with additional information such as demographics to reveal the age, gender, or population of customers in your territories? Look for the following capabilities that support: • Multiple globally available data sets (e.g. US,

Canadian, European datasets etc). • Census demographic data. • Customized datasets. • Global geo-coding.

When working with sales data, which can be changeable, it needs be able to grow, and update along with your business. On-premise software is limited in its ability to increase capacity and requires time and effort to upgrade. Cloud based solutions provide the elasticity for businesses to scale up or down, without the need to buy expensive software licenses or install programs.

CAN I COLLABORATE AND DELEGATE TO MY SALES TEAM?

Territory management involves the collaboration of multiple users on a sales team, where the ability to allow numerous users to access the same maps can enable time savings and real time coordination. When selecting a territory mapping software for your sales team, having the ability collaborate and even delegate some of the work is crucial. Look for the following capabilities to: • Share live territory maps easily. • Allocate permissions for maps. • Securely share maps internally and externally.

CAN I LAYER THIRD PARTY DATA?


WHAT ARE MY REPORTING NEEDS?

Performance reporting will be essential to key stakeholders in your organization, so it is likely to be a key decider when you are reviewing mapping software provider.

In-app support is vital for any type of service used in business today. While many services provide help forums and websites, the vendor you select should provide in-app support such as live chat allowing users access to experts on demand. A dedicated account manager is also important for ongoing support as they will check in with you periodically and based on your usage, can make recommendations to help you achieve your goals. Finally, the vendor should also have a detailed on-boarding process that can help your sales team become efficient with the software quickly.

Any software that you are going to adopt for your organization or sales department needs to be easy to use. There are many mapping software solutions available however most will need a high degree of configuration and customization for Territory Management. Look for a solution that has been designed and built by Sales Territory Management experts. After all, effective territory management relies on faster and improved processes and the software will be used daily by your sales team.

IS SUPPORT AVAILABLE WHEN I NEED IT?

IS IT EASY TO USE?


Look for the following capabilities to: • Export/print high res booklet of territories

including hierarchy structure. • Export for PowerPoint presentations. • Create customized reports. • Report using heat maps, radius maps and

filtered views.

The perfect mapping solution will have an easy to use interface, no install requirements, ongoing automatic updates, and include dedicated support.

Get Started With Sales Territory Mapping

Use the checklist on the next page to identify the best sales territory mapping software for you.

TERRITORY MAPPING CHECKLIST

Essential Territory Management Features

Notes

Upload business data directly

Territory alignment & balancing

Create custom territories

Hierarchies

Reporting tools

Radius maps & heat maps

Routing software

Collaboration

Share maps publicly & privately

Dedicated Account Manager

Training available

Live chat support

Create territories from csv/spreadsheet

Delegation


This Territory Management eBook is brought to you by

www.espatial.com

About eSpatial

Working with thousands of international users of our mapping software, we focus on making customers successful through world-class customer service and location technology. eSpatial provides mapping and powerful insights in minutes, not months. Our software is focused on user results and not the complexity to get there. It’s fast, easy and powerful and backed by our team of mapping experts with 15 years experience in delivering results. Trusted by our customers and partners that span nearly every industry, we are committed to helping our users reach their mapping goals. Our Territory Mapping Software is used daily by customers ranging from global multi-billion dollar organizations, to small and medium enterprises. It has been designed from the ground up, with feedback from our users to make sure it meets the requirements of sales teams from any industry.

http://www.espatial.com/

http://www.espatial.com/

a quick guide to sales territory management by espatial

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