Sales territory mapping: how it can help you win an advantage
Sales are the most important part of your business. You wouldn't have a business without them. So, it makes complete sense to get the most out of your sales team.
Luckily, this is feasible through sales territory mapping, a progressively useful and famous tool for business owners.
Sales mapping helps the management teams and sales staff to recognise a certain region's customers and possibilities in incredible detail — if you're doing it properly.
Here’s a quick breakdown of ten different ways in which sales territory mapping could aid your sales force.
Let's dive in!
10 different ways how sales territory mapping can deliver a competitive edge
Here’s a rundown of ten tried and tested ways through which sales territory mapping can prove beneficial for your business.
1. Monitor performance
When data associated with sales territories is viewed with a mapping system, a wide range of analysis tools are used for effective reporting and evaluation purposes.
Mapping software basically makes it possible to combine plotted data into a single view of performance.
Users can easily import from a worksheet, funnel and fragment data, or even separate revenues above or below a specific value.
Each one of your sales representatives can make his/her own fact sheet with this helpful tool. After which, they may use findings to analyze their regions and decide how they’re functioning premised on certain objectives and quotas.
The best thing about such reports is that they are shareable with both managers and coworkers.
2. Boost sales
The main goal of your company is to get your sales department to spend as much time as possible marketing in the field.
This is why mapping sales territories is so useful. It aids you to weigh the work of your sales staff and gives them more opportunities to make money.
What happens? Workers who are regarded as having high morale and being happy at work.
Your sales representatives will be more likely to keep selling for you if they are happy with their jobs.
It thus results in a positive loop of further sales and works motivation for them — leading to reduced turnover rates for you.
Another good thing about charting the selling process? It lets you figure out the best way for your staff members to get where they need to go.
This may reduce their travel expenses, increase the client base they can represent in their regions, and improve their fuel economy.
Again, once your sales reps' territories are aligned optimally, you can operate faster whenever a fresh opportunity arrives, hence beating your competition to the subsequent potential sale.
3. Look for hidden ideas
With the visual data functionality of sales territory mapping, users can obtain meaningful information which you might not commonly see on an Excel spreadsheet.
For example, you might be able to find an area that isn't getting enough service or that is getting too much service faster.
In the end, it's true that a picture is worth a thousand words.
Furthermore, observing one certain territory from differing viewpoints allows users to view the bigger picture as well as the granular specifics your sales representatives need.
For example, you can drill down for more specifics about numerous market attributes, such as types of customers, that might be affecting your team’s effectiveness.
In fact, using spatial analytics and data science via sales territory mapping – to optimise territories based on company priorities can help sales managers to eliminate guesswork and create well reasoned and data driven territories.
4. Give out jobs more efficiently
Via sales mapping, sales teams can quickly view the territories for which they hold responsibility — as can their supervisors. This makes it easy to give work to people in the sales department.
For instance, a sales rep's territory might be a certain set of city suburbs. Or, your area director may be able to see the territories of all the sales staff in your community.
In the meantime, your nationwide sales director could perceive all territories across the country to ensure that tasks are being assigned appropriately.
5. Save time
Another reason why your company should deploy sales mapping is that — the sales force supervisors or representatives can transform their corporate data into meaningful maps in just a few minutes.
They can use these charts anywhere at any time on any device that can connect to the internet.
Plus, if you start creating your sales territory layout with the right approach to mapping, your salespeople's workloads will decrease. This will relieve them to generate more revenues for you in the long run.
6. Work together more
Collaboration is very important, particularly for a sales department whose representatives are in different places.
Luckily, nowadays sales mapping renders it simpler for members of the team to work collaboratively instantaneously on their regions’ definitions.
Even if some teammates are out in the field and some are in their workplace simultaneously, this is still true.
For example, on a daily basis, members of the state sales department can add their own information to the regions.
Some of these details could be about the most recent leads and sales, for instance. Then, they can use this knowledge to form comprehensive and up-to-date pictures of their regions.
7. Prepare for the future with data analysis
With a system for mapping territories, you can make sure that your territories are the right size in the long term.
Significance — when you've already involved the effort and time into accurately charting your regions in the earlier days, you wouldn't have to delete the decks and build from zero.
Rather, you can just import current territories into the territory mapping system. This step-by-step process couldn't be easier or handier.
With territory mapping, you can use a lot of different tools for analysis. In reality, you have more than one way to report on performance. You might even decide to combine demographic and geographic data to learn more about your area.
8. Get sales leads that are better qualified
With territory mapping, you can simply avail and reap the benefits of every territory, which implies more time is spent on potential leads. Leads, particularly warm ones, are important for each sales director and rep. No one's best choice is to call on cold leads.
Still, every business could use more revenues, because more sales indicate more money in the bank. Once your salespeople can waste less time determining their region and additional hours attracting leads, everybody benefits.
Whereupon, reps can find prospects based on things like their age, venue, job description, sector, and more.
This demographic segment, which is based on data, helps the sales reps see things more clearly. Then, they can create marketing messages that are very relevant and get results.
Each salesperson can also make their own findings to look at their own territories. So, they can compare how well they did with their goals and quotas. The managers and the entire team also can easily get these reports.
9. Make quick changes
Your territory map is simple to alter whenever your new data arrives. Customer and competitor information can vary. So, your territory has to be able to change. To give an example, the following things could change:
● How consumers act
● Increased competition
● Population
● Demographics
● Industries
To do well in each territory, it's essential to adapt to these changes. With territory mapping, you can introduce changes rapidly on a needed premise by incorporating third-party sources of data without needing to return to square one.
10. Choose the right geography
There are lots of ways to make a map of a place. Always start by getting to know your market. For instance, you must know what kinds of users and companies to go after.
You also have to know how big the enterprises you want to do business with are and how much money they have. In the end, it boils down to where you draw your lines.
You can set up regional territories by state and city. With territory mapping, you get a vision of all the prospects superimposed on a chart, which is predicated on position.
This kind of visual reference is very important when you are setting up your territory in a place you have never been before.
If your company is selling different products or services depending on the industry, it then makes more sense to chart your region by industry.
You also can split your territory by how much a prospect or customer can spend. This could include bigger accounts that need salespeople who know how to close big deals.
After a contract is complete, the account may well be cultivated by some other finance team — giving large account reps additional hours to chase bigger deals.
Again, salespeople who know how to hunt may do better in optimising territories for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs).
Whereupon, you can mark prospects based on where they are in the sales funnel. Yes, because you wouldn't have to find all this out by yourself. With territory mapping, you can fixed it and forget it.
Conclusion
How to begin? Here's a brief glance at how to use mapping tools to set up sales territories.
First, decide on your existing clients as well as prospective customers’ areas to help solidify your primary territories.
Next, put people in all of the regions and keep assessing how well your plan is working.
Take into account control systems, such as metro areas, ZIP codes, urban areas, towns, and jurisdictions, as well.
Your management shall decide how regularly sales reps will go to each customer’s locality, depending on anticipated sales plus the telephone call numbers required to reach the sales totals.
The better it is if you can give a sales rep a limit and jurisdiction as soon as possible. After all, when they have their jobs, representatives can start making money for you.
Recall to frequently rethink your territory layout, as well, as it will aid to make sure that the business is receiving the most of its employees.
Likewise, if the demography of the location changes, ensure to introduce these modifications to your business territories as early as possible.
