Many Organizations with an outside sales team organized into sales territories can utilize the big data generated daily to construct equitable sales territories. Mapping can afford management the opportunity to strike a balance between splitting territories into equal areas and to build practical sales territories for each salesperson on the team.
The solution may not always be straightforward, and ultimately some equity in sales opportunities may need to be sacrificed to construct practical territories.
What is ‘Geo-Aggregation’?
This construction can be done equitably by extracting current sales data on the person with the lowest sales opportunity (i.e., lowest turnover of all prospective customers in a specified area), and assigning them the next closest region.
The thinking behind this is to build each territory up around a central point in an equitable manner. By asking who has the lowest sales opportunity and allocating them an additional area, a boost in sale opportunity is provided.
From a given set of data (usually referred to as Big Data), all the relevant geographical information, such as coordinates, city, ZIP code and state are extracted. These vital metrics are then used to map territories. It is essential to distinguish the areas on the map visually. For instance, if ten regions bring an enormous amount of business while the other seven need marketing attention, the boundaries must be in different colors, and a key should be given at the end so that the relevant departments can work on it.
Furthermore, it is also vital for the organizations to make peer groups from the Big Data, which are also known as micro markets. These happen to be the territories or markets that share specific characteristics. There may be minor changes in both of the territories, but the concept demands that their structure must be similar. Therefore, such markets can provide the same business opportunities, regardless of the fact that the sales team might have to put in more working hours to exploit the territories.
It is worth noticing that the strategy for each territory tends to vary significantly. To handle these different strategies, managers should craft personalized or rather custom action plans that are best suited for the communities living within a vicinity. For instance, if an oil company identifies and maps two strategies where business is growing, they might mark the plan for the first one as ‘invest’ and for the second one as ‘maintain.’ It implies that although both markets have growth opportunity, the managers must spend more money to establish and grow business in the first territory. However, they only need to maintain their current strategy and spending for the second territory to stay in business.
It should also be noted that companies prefer implementing previously tested plans into action so that the risk factor is minimized. Otherwise, they are keen to prove the plans in pilot markets first.
To learn how GeoMetrx can help you map big data to develop equitable sales territories, contact us.