Territory Design

Once you have a database of prospects and customers, analyzed the workload levels for each segment of customers, and established your sales force size, it is time to optimize your territory alignments.

In the territory design phase, we'll use the workload levels (or an Alignment Index - a combination of metrics) to identify the overall balance of each of your current territories.
Sales Territory Map®
Designed by Analytics In Focus, this territory alignment software is a low-cost, easy to use solution that handles most straightforward territory alignment and mapping projects.

The software will allow us to make ZIP code changes to your territories in a way that can be seen on a map as well as keep track of the workload balance between territories.
Sales Territory Map® Software
Sales Territory Map® Software

Steps for a Successful Territory Alignment

1.  Create Alignment Database
2.  Assign workload to each customer, account, or group of accounts (segments)
3.  Adjust workload to existing sales force size or evaluate alternative size options
4.  Territory Design using Sales Territory Map software
5.  Print out preliminary maps / reports of territories
6.  Hold webconferences for sales management to view and make changes with an alignment expert
7.  Give sales management time to be comfortable with all the final changes
8.  Print out final maps / reports for sales management
9.  Update CRM system with new account database and alignment

Territory Design Expertise

Our company’s insistence on using experienced territory alignment analysts is based upon the simple truth that effective territory design requires a knowledge of both the art and the science of sales force alignments.

The territory alignment software allows our analysts to quickly incorporate all of the required mathematical components (the science) of an alignment.  When territory boundaries are adjusted, the software automatically recalculates the new workload levels of the alignment.  The art of effective alignments, however, requires that the analyst have an in-depth understanding of traditional business areas, natural geographic boundaries, and appreciation for the delicate balance required between balancing territories versus minimizing sales representative to customer disruption.

Painting Yourself Into a Corner

Our analysts get extremely adept at making sure they don’t “paint themselves into a corner” – a situation where they’ve run out of geography before a complete territory has had enough workload allotted.  It doesn’t take long for analysts to realize that New York territories must be designed from Long Island towards Manhattan, or risk painting themselves into a corner with half of a territory on Long Island.  It does, however, take years of experience before learning how mountain ranges and traffic patterns in California require a specific order in which territories need to be designed.

Another advantage of using our alignment analysts is their experience in doing time-critical projects.  Whenever a company requires extremely fast turn-around, our knowledge of natural partitions within the country allow us to split the country into different sections, and have multiple alignment analysts work simultaneously on the project.

Territory Realignment:
Start from Scratch or Modify Existing Territories?

A common question that we receive from sales executives at the start of a re-alignment is whether our alignment specialists will design the sales territories from scratch or whether we’ll start with the existing ones and work from there.  The answer is usually:  both.

Once the alignment index has been designed, a good check of the validity of the index is to calculate the total index for each existing sales representative.  The index should confirm that the sales representatives with the highest sales and/or who complain of being overworked are in those territories with the largest index.  It should also identify those areas of the country where there is insufficient workload to support all of the current representatives.

During the process of validating the alignment index, the sales executives are exposed to the outliers:  those existing territories that require the most modification.  Often, these outcomes are predicted, and the sales executive is ready with solutions.  Example situations include comments such as “I always thought that Chicago could have another territory in there, so let’s definitely add one there” or “There seems to be one representative too many in Florida.  I’d love to find a way to dissolve one of the Orlando territories because I have a representative there that I can promote to district sales manager”.  The process of going through the outliers one by one allows the alignment to be seen from a clean slate perspective.

After the alignment has determined all of the locations for adding and deleting territories, the goal of the alignment is to incorporate those changes while minimizing disruptions to the sales representative – customer relationships.  By the end of the process, then, we have both examined the alignment from a clean slate (for major additions/deletions) and we have modified the alignment from the existing territory boundaries (to preserve relationships).