Discover four ways territory planning tools are optimizing sales performance, maximizing profitability, and providing sales leaders with insights for strategic planning.
Sales territory planning represents the bedrock of your revenue strategy. Organizations that invest in territory management technology see a seven percent yearly increase in sales purely through territory redesign, as well as 14 percent higher sales objective achievement than the average business.1
Modernized territory mapping software gives companies a competitive advantage with:
- Higher Revenue
- Reduced Turnover
- Lower Cost of Sales
- Improved Efficiencies
- Greater Intelligence
1. Drive Higher Revenue
Territory planning software uncovers insights that are critical to territory optimization and revenue generation. To drive sales volume, businesses must make sure that they have the right coverage in a given territory to:
- Serve existing customers
- Uncover potential new opportunities
- Support workload with capacity
Without enough coverage in these three key areas, you could be leaving money on the table. When a salesperson’s workload exceeds their capacity, you cannot serve all new accounts, as well as existing customers. Territory planning software helps you understand the capacity and resources needed for both hunting and farming accounts.
Modernized territory planning software, gives an instant view of all of your account records based on set variables. You can input data (e.g., potential estimates, white space, green space, etc.) to measure your territory balance against that variable. This allows you to quickly compare how distribution in one territory compares to another and make adjustments as needed to balance your coverage.
2. Decrease Sales Turnover
If salespeople are not given fair opportunities, they won’t stick around. Favoritism and seniority should never be factors in territory alignment. Even if untrue, the perception that territories are distributed unfairly hurts morale and increases turnover. You don’t want to lose top performers because of sales territory allocation.
Territory planning software gives everyone a fair share of sales potential. Maps that are drawn with intelligent technology show reps that territories are being strategically allocated based on specific and defined criteria, not management’s gut feeling. This builds critical trust between the sales team and leadership.
3. Improve Efficiencies
With so many people across the organization involved in the territory planning process, it can be difficult to get input and consensus. Managing the process is time-consuming and labor-intensive.
Companies using modernized territory planning software have seen a 75 percent reduction in the time it takes them to plan territories.2 With an intelligent solution, you can automate the planning process. This creates a map of territories with evenly distributed sales potential and volume.
Unexpected market changes might impact the need for territory reassessment. Many companies do territory planning on an annual basis. However, there can be times throughout the year when territories need to be realigned. With the ability to visualize territories and accounts on a map, you can easily evaluate territories for compactness and geographic contiguity.
4. Greater Intelligence
Using data to map sales territories helps you design a fair and profitable distribution. For every point, there’s a data value or a set of data values to help you identify the potential or the priority of a given territory.
Companies are learning that modernized territory planning has become an essential and strategic requirement for gaining a competitive advantage. Sales effort can be applied more intelligently with greater business returns.
To learn more about how you can use your data to map effective territories, check out our guide, “How to Create a Sales Territory Plan: 7 Best Practices You Need to Know”.
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