Not Mapping Sales Territories? You’re Missing Out!

When you’re managing a sales team, you want everything to run smoothly. You want the sales to roll in, you want your team to be a happy one, and you want your revenue to grow. That’s the ideal, but the reality is often not as pretty. Your sales representatives are tired and stretched, your sales are starting to stagnate with no clear reason, and your revenue growth isn’t hitting the targets set earlier in the year. It’s time now to address these problems and action changes that will bring you and your team back on track.

One thing you should do is analyze your sales territories. How are they distributed and how are they individually performing? Next, take a look at how you’re defining your territories. Are your sales territories based on customer groups where specialists in one industry travel to clients as and when they are required regardless of their geographic location? If so, you should try mapping sales territories geographically to see exactly what you’re missing by not mapping your sales territories. In this article, we’ll highlight some of the most common benefits that sales managers like you can get by mapping sales territories.

Motivated sales team

A well-defined and balanced geographic sales territory will quickly reduce conflict between sales people by providing concrete boundaries. Vertical territories are harder to manage, as one person’s definition of which industry an organization fits into can be different to another’s and so you encounter a back and forth of emails to find out who is responsible for a new account.

Mapping sales territories allows you to set well-defined territories which will curtail any disputes over account ownership as well as increasing accountability for the management of assigned accounts. It also allows you to give each representative an equal share of the available, and potential, market by balancing the territories using factors such as population, income, education level and existing customer base. When sales reps have a clear defined picture of their sales territories, they can spend more time on the accounts they are responsible for rather than worrying about potential territory encroachment.

Local Knowledge

One of the main benefits of mapping geographical sales territories is that you assign territories to the best reps that reside within that territory. This means the sales reps are fueled with local knowledge both on the industry in that location as well as the cultural requirements to close a deal. Clients in the southern US do business differently than clients on the East Coast, and you need local reps capable of meeting and exceeding the expectations of those clients. Having a sales rep on the ground and involved in the local industry means they often hear about sales opportunities before the client makes it public knowledge. Local reps are also likely to have established contacts and channels that are only open to them and would take years for an outside rep to build up. If you’re flying in reps from across the country to get your foot in the door, you’re already too late and a local competing rep has made a lasting impression. Be that lasting impression — hire people that live within a sales territory to work that sales territory. Identify the top recruitment locations by mapping your sales territories.

More time spent selling

Sales people often get less time to sell than they’d like. It’s said that only approximately 33% of a sales rep’s time is spent actually selling, between administration work, travel time, internal meetings and training. The goal is to increase that percentage so the rep has a better chance of hitting the quotas and targets set for them and for the business.

While administration work, internal meetings, and training are necessary, the time a sales rep spends traveling to and from client meetings can be optimized. Mapping sales territories and assigning your reps to a local sales territory massively reduces the amount of time they spend on the road and increases the level of attention they can give to customers. Even when they do need to travel to the far end of their territory, they can use maps of their client locations and optimize routes to ensure they visit critical clients while traveling. Local sales reps aren’t spending hours on the road or in an airplane, they’re sitting in front of clients closing deals.

Higher margins

As mentioned above already, mapping your sales territories geographically and assigning them to sales reps within those territories means they have more time to spend with customers. The sales reps are closer to their accounts, so they can spend less time traveling. With less distance to travel, fuel, hotel and flight expenses are lower, leading to a reduced cost per sale. One domestic trip could cost you $1000, which immediately eats into the potential profit from that sale. If those sales don’t close, then your average cost per sale increases significantly. Imagine all sales reps spending less to close a deal and you’ll immediately see a change  you margins.

Map your sales territories with eSpatial

Now that you’ve learned the benefits of mapping sales territories, give it a test run! With eSpatial, it’s easy to get up and running with a free trial and start to reap the benefits yourself.

Are you looking to replace MapPoint with a modern, complete mapping solution? Try eSpatial for free and step into the future of mapping with fully supported, cloud-based mapping software.