How to Grow a Sales Territory in 10 Steps

Quick answer

Building a sales territory is a strategic, 10-step process for sales professionals, managers, and marketing leaders that helps expand market footprint and increase revenue.

Key takeaways:

Research your market: Understand your ideal customer profile and market potential to set clear, measurable goals
Create a sales plan: A one-page plan should summarize your goals, priorities, and tactics
Prioritize opportunities: Focus on future opportunities rather than just past sales data
Manage customer relationships: Build relationships to generate referrals and never stop prospecting for new leads
Use mapping software: Use a tool to analyze data, optimize routes, and identify new opportunities

Growing a sales territory is challenging but a requirement for all sales reps, managers and marketing leaders. It is a data-backed strategic process rewarded with higher sales potential and revenues.

Below are ideas and proven steps for sales managers and reps who plan to grow their sales territory footprint consistently.

1. Research Your Market

Your data is your friend, and with some data crunching, you can see your sales territory in a different light. First, understand your ideal customer profile. To help you get started (if you still need a clear customer profile), answer these questions:

Which industry and or verticals should you prioritize?
What size are organizations fit best?
What personas will you target?
What will be their key drivers to enable them to say yes? (Key Business Drivers such as sales growth, profitability, capital productivity, cost efficiency, operational effectiveness, competitiveness, and customer satisfaction/experience)
Do they know they have a problem you can solve?
Are there enough of them in your region to justify your focus?
When will they look for you?
When do they buy it?
What is the lead time involved?
Are they willing to pay for your product or service?
What level of competition will you face?

Above is a color-coded map showing customer locations by industry vertical. Using zipcode, heatmaps, and color-coded maps is the perfect way to analyze your data.

2. Set Your Goals

Next, define your goals. Many goal-setting frameworks can help you; the most popular is SMART. As you frame your goals:

Specific: Be as detailed as possible. For example, my territory will generate $5,000,0000 in revenue by 31st December 20XX. $1,000,000 will be new revenue from five new customers. $500,000 will be incremental sales of product X.
Measurable: Be specific on the measures (like above)
Attainable: As the saying goes, "paper doesn't refuse ink". Our goal is for 5 new customers in the year, but did your market research uncover that level of sales potential, or is it a pipedream? Ensure it is believable and achievable. It will motivate you.
Relevant: Is the goal in line with your business goals and strategy?
Timebound: Our example has a clearly defined end date but set yourself some weekly, monthly and quarterly time commitments.

3. Create Your Sales Plan

Outline your one-page plan summarizing:

Your goals (from step two)
Your priorities (ideally by month and quarter)
Your tactics. The specific sales tactics you will use to generate sales. For example, upselling, cross-selling, prospecting, account management, events, tradeshows, referrals, and LinkedIn.
A learning mindset is critical to your ongoing development and success. So write down your focus areas to improve your skills.
Target customers. Do you have specific "logo" accounts you plan to win? Name them.
Non-negotiables. Record the critical daily, weekly actions you must commit to that will deliver your desired results.

4. Assess Your Sales Potential

Review your customer base and assess their sales potential. For example, two customers deliver $300,000 in revenue each year. But your research reveals that customer B is part of a larger corporation with three other divisions. Your assessment of sales potential is close to $1,000,000. Customer A has little potential to grow, so you re-prioritize your time to exploit the new sales potential by planning more time with customer B.

Assess your sales territory potential using similar logic. You'll quickly unleash new ways to grow a sales territory. Prioritize sales potential over historical sales.

ZIP code heatmap California sales potential

The map above shows sales potential by county, with the red areas showing the highest levels. Heatmaps are perfect when analyzing areas for growth.

5. Manage Customer Relationships

Customers invest in suppliers they trust, so the strength of your customer relationships is critical.

When you assessed your sales potential, you uncovered new opportunities to grow. Leverage the strength of your relationships to generate referrals. Increase your reach by networking, attending industry events and conferences. A key differentiator will be how you manage your relationships and how you sell.

6. Never Stop Prospecting

Your market research uncovered new potential customers. Your customer research revealed new opportunities to upsell and cross-sell. Never stop asking for referrals. They are by far the most effective lead-generation tactic available to you.

Continue to leverage social media, email, events and conferences. And update your customers regularly.
Customize your Value proposition.
Having profiled your ideal clients, you should consider how to tailor your value to their specific needs.
You know multiple stakeholders are involved in a buying process and decision, but are you clear on the pain points for each role?

The pain points for a marketing manager differ from a sales manager or operations director. So you should work hard to develop a proposition that resonates with each. Avoid a generic "one size fits all" approach, and you engage your audience better.

Be an SME on your product or service.
Know your products and services like an SME (Subject matter expert). And know your competitor's offerings inside out.
Modern selling is consultative. Customers appreciate and value expertise, which can be a significant differentiator, giving you a competitive edge.

Above is a map with prospect account locations.

7. Prioritize Time Management

When planning to grow a sales territory, you must prioritize your time. You have already taken some crucial steps above by clarifying your goals, priorities, assessing your sales potential by customer type and creating a sales plan.

You set yourself some non-negotiables, and the best tactic for your success is to make appointments with yourself by blocking out the time needed in your weekly schedules to complete your priority tasks.

Build your schedule around your priorities, and you'll see the results.

Above is an optimized sales route. Sales route optimization is essential if you want to compress sales planning and drivetime.

8. Implement Lead Nurturing

Only 5% of your target market is ready to buy now. 20% will never buy from you. Up to 75% of your target market will buy some time in the future. So you need a consistent lead nurturing cadence.

Regularly stay in touch with customers and leads using email, phone, social media and face-to-face meetings.

Remember to think strategically about your follow-ups. Ask yourself, "how does this follow-up action help build trust and engagement"?

9. Conduct Your Monthly Review

Track and analyze your results monthly and hold yourself accountable to your goals, priorities and critical measures. High-performers are power users of their CRM tools because they know they enable them to win more sales deals. Track your sales activities and your conversion rates. Analyze your results for trends. Analyze your closed lost deals and identify areas for improvement.

Integrating maps with your regular sales performance reviews is a great way to boost engagement and insights.

10. Consider Mapping Software

There are so many ways sales mapping software helps you grow a sales territory:

Analyze sales potential with heatmaps
Identify pockets of new opportunity
See your competitor locations
See new verticals

If you value face-to-face time with customers, you need route optimization software. It compresses schedule planning, optimizes your working day and minimizes drive time.

Putting it All Together

Growing sales comes down to these 10 crucial steps:

Research your market
Set your goals
Create your sales plan
Assess your sales potential
Manage customer relationships
Never stop prospecting
Prioritize time management
Implement lead nurturing
Conduct your monthly review
Consider mapping software

Frequently Asked Questions

My Team is Constantly Bogged Down in Spreadsheets Trying to Plan Territory Expansions, and the Version Control is a Nightmare. How is Your Platform Fundamentally Better Than the "excel" We're Living in for Identifying and Planning Territory Growth?

eSpatial is fundamentally better because it instantly transforms your complex sales data into a visual, interactive map, allowing you to model growth scenarios and make strategic decisions up to 95% faster than with spreadsheets. Spreadsheets are powerful for calculations, but they can't answer the critical "where" questions essential for growth. Instead of trying to interpret endless rows of data, you can see your entire market landscape, identify underserved areas, and rebalance territories in minutes, not weeks. This moves your team from manual data manipulation to strategic, data-backed growth planning.

I Feel Like Our Growth is Flatlining Because We're Just Guessing Where the Real Opportunities Are. How Does Your Tool Help a Sales Leader Like Me Move Beyond Gut Feelings to Find Actual, Untapped Revenue Pockets in Our Existing Markets?

Our tool helps you find untapped revenue by mapping your customer and sales data against market demographics, revealing profitable customer clusters and white space opportunities that are invisible in CRM reports or spreadsheets. We know you need to deliver predictable growth. eSpatial allows you to visually layer your sales data with third-party data to see exactly where your ideal customers are concentrated and, more importantly, where they are not. This enables you to direct your sales team with precision, focusing their efforts on high-potential zones to unlock up to 12% more revenue.

We're Hiring Two New Reps Next Quarter, and I Dread the Process of Carving Out New Territories for Them. It Takes Days of Work in Excel, and I Can Never Be Sure if the New Territories Are Balanced. How Can I Quickly Create Fair and Optimized Territories for New Hires?

You can instantly create balanced and optimized territories for new hires by using our tools to automatically draw and adjust boundaries based on workload, sales potential, or any other metric you choose. The old way of manually splitting ZIP code lists or accounts is slow and prone to error, often leading to unfair territories and frustrated reps. With eSpatial, you can select an area, define your balancing criteria (like the number of accounts or historical revenue), and the platform will generate multiple territory options for you to compare, ensuring each new team member has an equitable shot at success from day one.

My Top Reps Are Already Stretched Thin, but I Know There's More Potential in Their Regions. How Can I Help Them Grow Their Territories Without Just Adding More Accounts and Risking Burnout?

You can help your team grow their accounts by using our route optimization and analysis tools to identify efficiency gains, cutting travel time by up to 30% and freeing up their schedule for up to 20% more customer meetings. Growth isn't always about adding more; it's about working smarter. eSpatial allows you to visualize your team's weekly routes and customer locations, identifying inefficient travel patterns. By optimizing their routes, your reps can spend less time on the road and more time selling to high-value accounts within their existing territory, preventing burnout and maximizing their performance.

I'm Worried About Bringing in Another New Tool. My Sales Team is Not Very Technical, and I Fear That a Complex Mapping Platform Will Have a Steep Learning Curve and Low Adoption. How Do You Ensure My Team Will Actually Use This?

We ensure high adoption by providing an intuitive, user-friendly platform designed for sales professionals, not GIS experts, backed by a dedicated Customer Success team to guide you through every step. We understand that a tool is only valuable if it's used. That’s why we designed eSpatial to be as easy as any other app your team uses daily. From simple data uploads to creating insightful heat maps, the process is straightforward. Our onboarding team works directly with you to ensure your data is integrated seamlessly and your reps are confident using the tool to plan their days and identify opportunities.

I'm Hesitant to Approve a Major Territory Realignment. What if My Plan Backfires, My Top Performers Feel Their Territories Are Now Unfair, and I Risk Losing Them?

Our scenario planning feature de-risks this process by allowing you to model, compare, and visualize the impact of multiple territory realignment options before you implement anything, ensuring you can secure buy-in from your team with data. We know that the fear of getting it wrong can be paralyzing. Instead of making a high-stakes decision in the dark, eSpatial gives you a sandbox environment to test your hypotheses. You can model different scenarios side-by-side, share them with stakeholders to get feedback, and choose the optimal, data-backed plan that ensures fairness and maximizes opportunity for every single rep.

I Need to Build a Business Case for My Vp. How Can I Prove the ROI of This Software Beyond Just Making Our Territory Maps Look Better?

You can prove the ROI by demonstrating how eSpatial directly impacts operational efficiency and sales productivity, showcasing time savings of up to 95% on planning cycles and enabling more balanced territories that improve quota attainment. Your VP cares about numbers, not just maps. The business case for eSpatial is built on tangible outcomes. You can calculate the cost of the time your team currently spends on manual territory planning and compare it to the efficiency gains. Furthermore, you can show how balanced territories—which you can now create in minutes—directly lead to higher sales morale, lower rep turnover, and a greater percentage of your team hitting their targets.

My Cro Will Only Approve This if I Can Connect the Investment to Clear Revenue Growth. How Can I Show That This is a Revenue-generating Tool, Not Just Another Operational Expense?

You can justify this as a revenue-generating tool by highlighting its ability to uncover hidden market opportunities that can lead to a 12% increase in revenue and maximizing the performance of your most expensive asset—your sales team. This isn't just an operational tool; it's a growth engine. The conversation with your CRO should focus on two things: market expansion and sales effectiveness. With eSpatial, you can build a data-driven plan to enter new markets or expand in existing ones by identifying untapped customer segments. Simultaneously, you can prove how optimizing your team’s territories and routes will lead to more meetings and higher sales velocity, directly impacting the top line.