Sales territory mapping is one of the most important processes in every sales organization, but it’s often treated as a tedious, draining sales planning activity that some feel is just a relief to complete.
That’s not to say creating sales territory maps gets neglected and rushed. But it sometimes becomes a complicated process.
Let’s take a closer look at everything you need to know to start mapping sales territories effectively.
What Is Sales Territory Mapping?
Sales territory mapping is the process of dividing target markets into defined geographic regions, industry, or account segments and assigning each to a specific sales rep or team.
The goal is simple: to ensure every prospect and customer has a dedicated point of contact while distributing capacity across your sales.
Why Sales Territory Mapping Is Important
Sales territory mapping is important because it helps you ensure that your sales teams have balanced workloads, equitable opportunities, and complete market coverage.
It can also help you and your sales teams do the following:
Drive Equitable Quota Attainment
Balanced territories give reps a realistic shot at hitting their numbers. You can't compensate your sales reps fairly for performance when the playing field is inequitable.
Reduce Sales Representative Overlap & Conflict
Without clear boundaries, sales reps collide on accounts, wasting selling time and damaging customer relationships. Clean sales territory structures eliminate ownership ambiguity.
Maximize Your Market Coverage
By effectively mapping sales territories, you can ensure high-value accounts get the attention they need without leaving the market space uncovered.
Note: This is only possible when territories are mapped against actual opportunity.
Support Forecasting
Clean territories make sales pipeline data more reliable, which helps make sales forecasting more accurate. It can also help them spot underperforming regions early and make corrections to resolve gaps before they compound.
Improve the Customer Experience
Territory instability creates buyer friction. Consistent, knowledgeable points of contact who understand account history strengthen relationships and improve retention.
Note: Without effective territory mapping, your sales territories can become imbalanced and cause sales reps to burn out, especially if you have reps competing in areas that don’tprovide equitable opportunities.
Factors That Impact Sales Territory Mapping Success
Before creating a sales territory map, you need to consider the factors below that impact your mapping success:
1. Historical Performance, Capacity Levels, and Ramp Time
First, you need a baseline of where your sales territory design stands. Ask yourself, “How many fully ramped sales reps do we need to achieve our goals, realizing that not all of them will hit quota?”
To answer that question, you need to analyze your sales capacity, historical performance, and average ramp time. Your sales capacity helps you identify how many partially and fully-ramped reps you have on deck right now. Based on past performance patterns, you can estimate what percentage of these reps will hit/exceed quota. Combined with ramp time, you can make sure you’re hiring at the right pace to maintain consistent levels of performance.
This information will be vital in later planning steps as you identify sales opportunities and assign reps to sales territories.
2. Your Ideal Customer Profile
Before you can begin identifying sales opportunities, you need to have a solid grasp of the business you want to target. Examining your existing customer base is a good place to start. You need to understand the different industry verticals, company sizes, readiness to buy, etc. that make up your ideal prospect.
You might even consider creating a scale to break down your target customers and identify who is most likely to buy. This could then be used to help reps prioritize accounts and better manage their sales territories.
3. Data Quantity & Quality
Aside from your internal metrics, you need to examine external data to fully understand the opportunities within your industry and marketplace. In fact, organizations that adopt data-driven sales territory planning see up to 30%higher quota attainment.
There are three key data sources you should consider when creating your sales territory plan:
- Internally Generated Data: This is the data you’ve already partially examined in the first planning step related to customers, prospects, and potentials. For most companies, this is commonly sourced from a firm’s CRM, ERP, or spreadsheets.
- Geospatial Data: You should analyze geographic data for sales territory mapping and analysis, including the location of your existing customers, prospects, and potential opportunities. This helps you identify where your target companies are located and where you may need additional resources to cover.
- Market Data: It’s important to be aware of economic and industry trends. The demographic information that’s available from public sector sources and other data that can be purchased from third-party vendors can help you stay on top of potential market factors.
4. Your Planning Team
Sales territory planning is a collaborative effort. It’s important to consider the bigger picture, and you must make sure that every part of your organization is aligned on strategy and all efforts are driving towards the same goals.
Having input from sales, operations, finance, marketing, product development, etc. is crucial. They don’t necessarily have to sit at the table and physically map out sales territories, but there should be a consensus amongst leadership on strategy, messaging, and communication.
You also need field expertise in addition to the data you collect. For example, field sales managers’ knowledge of local markets and account relationships can provide valuable insight. Additional information from customer success, product, and marketing teams will also help decentralize the sales territory planning process and produce stronger territories.
How to Build a Sales Territory Map
Now that you’ve considered the factors above, you should have what you need to develop a sales territory map. But how do you do that, exactly? Take the following steps:
1. Gather Your Market and Account Data
Organizations that invest the time, energy, and resources into sales territory management see a 7%yearly increase in sales purely through territory redesign, as well as 14% higher sales objective achievement than the average business.
Your customers are your best source of information when it comes to sales territory mapping. Collecting the data on deals you’ve closed in specific areas can help you identify patterns and common factors that ultimately made these deals successful.
When examining the data, you should aim to answer these initial questions:
- Which geographical areas does most of our customer base reside?
- Do industry or other factors impact the areas we successfully sell into?
- Are there any markets or areas that we’ve previously ignored that could provide additional opportunities?
2. Create a Sales Forecast
This is where an accurate sales forecast comes into play.
To maximize success, you want to start going beyond basic metrics like territory size or past sales and instead use the data to accurately gauge lead potential and create balanced territories.
You should also try to use third-party data to uncover overlooked geographic areas or industry hotspots.
3. Establish Goals and Targets
If you fail to plan, then you plan to fail.
When you're creating your sales territory map, it's critical to set clear guidelines and goals that are easy to track and measure. If you're having trouble looking for specific targets, it helps to consider these items:
- How many opportunities do you need to meet your quota?
- Which geographical regions could use more attention?
- Which locations do most of your leads come from?
- How many reps should you assign to each territory?
- Which products and services do customers purchase the most?
- Which products and services are the most profitable?
- Which customer segment brings in the most revenue?
By answering these questions, you gain a clearer picture of your necessary objectives for each territory.
4. Segment Territories by Geography, Vertical, or Account Size
Your territory segmentation depends on your overall go-to-market strategy, your buyers, and where revenue opportunities exist. But doing so will also impact the day-to-day of your entire sales team. So before locking in your territories, you should consider these questions:
- Does geography alone make sense for the business/industry?
- Are there clusters of potential accounts that should be grouped rather than split?
- How will you handle accounts that span multiple regions, verticals, or sizes?
- Does your segmentation give each rep a realistic and balanced opportunity to hit quota?
5. Assign Reps Based on Capacity and Fit
With your territories set in place, the next thing you need to do is provide your sales reps a chance at success (this will also keep them motivated.)
To do this, you’ll want to make sure your sales reps are evenly distributed throughout each territory, and you’ll want to match the skill sets of your reps with the types of territories you map out.
You might also choose to have sales reps with established relationships in a particular territory, if it makes sense to give them those accounts.
To ensure you have an effective territory laid out, answer these questions:
- What resources does your team need to reach their goals?
- What do your reps need to succeed in their territories?
- How can you increase conversions in each territory?
- Are there any opportunities in underserved territories?
Note: You should create customized plans tailored to the unique demographics of each location.
6. Visualize and Document Your Territory Sales Map
After assigning your sales reps, you need to lay out the map and start documenting the information. This lets you visually understand the sales territory map and have something to refer back to when you need it.
But before finalizing the map, consider these questions:
- What tool or format will my team actually use day-to-day: a map, spreadsheet, or CRM?
- Does the visualization make it easy to spot coverage gaps and overlaps at a glance?
- How will I share and update this sales map over time? Can you?
- Is each rep's territory documented clearly enough?
7. Measure Results and Reflect
Now that you have your sales territory map, goals, and strategies, it's important to track your progress. Your goal is to see how your new territories affect sales.
For example, ask yourself:
- Have sales increased in any of your new territories?
- Are there any significant disparities between the territories?
- Are any of your sales reps struggling to keep up with leads, while others aren't even making half their quota?
- Are there any underserved markets?
Tips for Mapping Sales Territories
Effectively mapping sales territories takes time, but there are a few additional ways you can optimize your sales territory maps.
Support Sales Rep Career Progression
When mapping out your sales territories, think about the career progression of your sales reps. There are territories in every region with large opportunities. As you create your territory maps, think about sales rep progression and how they can progress through territories as they advance in their careers.
Use Data-driven Intelligence to Map Territories
Data-driven territory mapping uses analytics and third-party data to find your biggest opportunities. Although the approach is different based on industry, the logic is similar: You layer in the right data and let it guide your mapping. This becomes especially valuable during mergers or acquisitions, when territory realignment needs to move fast and be defensible.
Simplify and Streamline Processes with Automation
At the beginning, sales territory mapping will take time to ensure your territories are balanced and aligned with your company's business goals and guidelines. But taking the simple route is always best. The reason is that you can also use automation to simplify the entire process.
How Xactly Helps with Sales Territory Mapping
Xactly's Intelligent Revenue Platform takes the guesswork out of sales territory mapping by replacing manual processes with data-driven precision.
Instead of relying on spreadsheets or instinct, you can design, visualize, and balance territories with the sales territory mapping software, giving every sales rep a fair opportunity for success.
You can also segment territories by geography, vertical, account size, or any combination that fits your go-to-market motion, while built-in analytics identify gaps, highlight key accounts, and flag issues before they affect performance.
