The secret to successful sales is a blend of competence, determination, and good sales conversation starter. All these characteristics are essential qualities a salesperson should possess. Regardless, the most vital feature of successful sales occurs even before the meeting takes place, that is, the sales territory plan.
The sales territory plan holds the sales team and produces desirable outcomes for the customer and the organization. Sales territory plan enables you to take full advantage of the sales and efficiency of the team to obtain customers.
What is a sales territory plan?
A sales territory is an area, province, industry or account type allotted to a particular salesperson or a sales team. Nowadays, it also incorporates territories formed around certain types of customer and audience segments. A sales territory in charge is accountable for searching into their customer base and reaching their territory quota.
A sales territory plan refers to the steps taken by the sales team to target and approach the right prospects, leads, and existing customers to close more deals and implement objectives to earn profit and steady sales progress over time. It provides the sales team with the supervision to correctly identify and know customers and prospects, assess and measure value, and support customers in a way that leads to loyalty.
A step-by-step guide to making a sales territory plan:
1. Define your market, evaluate, and group existing customers
The first step to developing a solid sales territory plan is to define the organization's goals and assess the industry's trends. It will help lay out the team base and guide them through the sales territory plan.
The second step is to look at the clientele in-depth. It is vital to observe and note the unique traits and characteristics of the customer base. Additionally, it is helpful to identify appropriate differences amongst the customers.
Further, the customers can be divided into groups based on several characteristics like their location, purchase history, and any other necessary information.
The customers can be classified by asking a few questions like: "Who are your most profitable prospective customers defined by industry, product, etc.?"
" Which of the prospective customers will help you to reach the path of development for your company?"
On this basis of the evaluation, the customers can be categorized into three groups:
The best customers group have customers who require little effort.
The second group of customers requires a little bit of effort to be persuaded. Nevertheless, they should have the potential to generate profit.
The last group are the ones who require a lot of effort.
Once an ideal customer profile is generated, the next step is to understand the extent of the market opportunity in line with the description.
2. Do a SWOT analysis
After organizing the prospective customers into groups, the following step evaluates your position in the market. A SWOT analysis enables you to measure the impact of the internal and external factors on your business performance. A better understanding of the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats can help develop a robust sales territory plan.
The key questions include:
What Strengths will you build upon?
Which Weaknesses do you need to reduce?
What Opportunities are available in your marketplace?
What are the Threats in your selling environments?
Strengths
Strength describes the area of excellence and uniqueness from the competitors. The strength is determined as a strength of the whole team rather than an individual. Every person has a different set of skills that they bring to the team. It is necessary to know what positive qualities the team has that can help to achieve the goals. Accordingly, the team can be created to yield maximum results.
Weaknesses
Along with the strengths comes the weakness. Weaknesses encompass the area of improvement in the sales team. The person might be competent and knowledgeable but still, come with a few drawbacks. Therefore, the team's weakness must be evaluated to prepare a more effective plan to reduce the chances of errors.
Opportunities
Opportunities refer to the outside factors that could give your company a competitive benefit. There is always room for improvement in the sales territory plan. The manager must be able to detect the new opportunities in the business and take advantage of them. Careful planning can help you discover the hidden markets and increase demand for specific products or services.
Threats
Threats are the factors that can have a destructive impact on your sales. Sales is a highly ambitious profession. Therefore, knowing the exact threats in your selling environment can make a huge difference.
3. Set goals and create targets
Goal setting is one of the essential steps to provide clarity and direction to the sales team. Thus, the manager should set goals that are attainable with clear limitations. The easiest way is to follow the SMART framework. The SMART acronym states that the goal must be Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-based.
Here are a few questions that might help you to set goals:
How many new opportunities are to be added to meet the quota?
Where are the characteristics of our new leads coming from?
Which geographical area should we focus on?
How can we serve the territories equally? How many sales representatives can be assigned to these territories?
Which products or services are the most profitable? Who are the customers purchasing them?
Which group of customers offer the highest remuneration? Is the value being tapped constantly?
When you are prepared, you can assign the team with a clear objective for each territory.
4. Develop strategies to accomplish your goals
Now, when you have a list of clear goals. The next step is to develop approaches to reach these goals. The information obtained till now can be used to form teams and assign them their target region. The strategy allows you to allot team members with specific skills and talents to suitable territories.
A strategy map should be developed starting from where you want to be and work your way to work out how you can get there.
These four perspectives can help to develop a strategy map for your business:
1. Financial: The goals depend on the size of the company. The goal could be to increase value for large companies, whereas, for smaller companies, it could be gaining new customers.
2. Customer: You need to layout that your product or service is unique to add customer value proposition.
3. Internal: What type of work is required to be completed? How many members are required in each team? Which sales representative have the appropriate experience and skills you require? Where do you need to improve? How will you generate new leads?
4. Learning and Growth: Hiring a workforce when needed is a safer option than recruiting altogether.
Remember to note your advantageous actions, the resources required, and your deadlines and core milestones.
5. Review and track your results
Finally, the last step is to put the new sales territory plan in an active mode. The plan guides the sales team to generate projected results and modify them as and when needed. It's essential to review and track the results to optimize territory division continually.
Conclusion
A sales territory plan might look complex, and it might be challenging to implement. Following each step carefully is the key. You'll be able to recognize your goals, better understand your market, identify your customers and target them. A sales territory plan supports you to choose the correct sales team and pick out the right people to close the top and most profitable deals possible.
