Sales territory mapping is an essential tool for any business involved in sales, helping your sales team better understand customers and the potential for sales within a specified area. Sales territory mapping also allows sales management and employees to clearly define territory ownership to avoid wasting valuable resources. Before getting started, familiarize yourself with the components of a sales territory map to develop a strategic, balanced map that helps grow your business.

The Basics of Sales Territory Mapping

Sales territories refer to areas where a group of customers is located and managed by an individual salesperson. When these territories are laid out on a map geographically, it is called a sales territory map. When creating a sales territory map, it is important to remember that your map is not set in stone; as the market changes, so should your map. New competition and other factors can influence your territories and, depending on the industry your business is in, these changes may happen more frequently.

In past decades, a sales territory map would be manually drawn to segment out different territories; with the speedy growth of mapping software, mapping is now easier and faster. Sales territory mapping is an excellent option for any business that relies on forming relationships to sell a product. Sales territory mapping achieves better visibility over your sales performance, particularly if you have multiple sales staff pursuing the same prospects, or if you regularly meet with clients face-to-face. Nearly any business that creates sales can benefit from mapping.

Individual sales representatives are often responsible for managing their own territories. Using learned strategies, sales reps can work toward objectives defined by management and execute marketing plans to generate and convert leads. Sales territory mapping software gives sales reps a visualization of their territories and their target customer base. Mapping software includes numerous capabilities, such as the ability to filter customers by categories or search for customers due for renewals.

Plan of Attack

Sales territory mapping can present businesses with a wealth of benefits. Through mapping, you can easily map out territories and assign them to representatives, create hierarchies so your sales reps know where to go, maintain real-time visibility and stay better organized. You will need to gather sufficient data to create your map in a way that is easy to read and edit if needed, which can be done easily by data transfer of existing spreadsheets. By using mapping software, you will also have the ability to share the maps with others on your sales team.

Specifically Target Beneficial Areas

When creating territories on your map, take the time to target market demographics. This process begins by collecting information about your prospects and mapping this information geographically on a map. Territory mapping creates a strategic approach to sales and ensures that your sales reps are only targeting viable leads. Creating a sales territory map provides the ability to organize your target market using specific criteria which may include credit score, median home income, home market value, and homeowners vs. renters.

Stay Organized

It is important to stay organized when dealing with sales territories. Fortunately, mapping technology makes it easy to map out important information in a clean and concise format. Sales territory mapping ensures the size of your territories is manageable for the sales reps to whom they are assigned. In addition, mapping can safeguard against overlap between sales reps. Sales territory mapping software also allows sales managers to strategically assign top performers, accelerating faster growth within a company.

Evenly Distribute Among Sales Employees

Every member of your sales team should have the chance to make a sale; however, disorganization within your sales department could result in some employees gaining more opportunities than others. When distributing territories, it is important to consider how having greater demand in one territory could impact employee morale. If a territory does not have enough opportunities, you may find that certain members of your sales team struggle to meet their quota. When there are too many opportunities, a sales rep may feel overwhelmed with the prospects and miss out on opportunities. Sales territory mapping can promote equal workload opportunities.

Talk to the Sales Territory Mapping Professionals

Sales territory mapping has proven to be highly advantageous for businesses involved in sales. This powerful tool can be used to help your business measure performance, boost sales, delegate work more effectively, save time, and enhance collaboration among team members. It can also help businesses spot hidden insights not easily discovered on a spreadsheet. For more information about mapping or to see how mapping software could help your business, contact Geographic Enterprises today.