Manage Territories and Crush Your Sales Goals
Learning Objectives
After completing this module, you’ll be able to:
- List ways to maintain your territories throughout the year.
- Describe how to manage your territories with Salesforce Enterprise Territory Management.
Earlier, you learned all about creating balanced territories to make sure sales reps succeed and you meet your company goals. Now let’s talk about how you can manage those territories.
Maintain Your Territories Throughout the Year
Territories are not something you set and then forget about. You need to check in throughout the year to make sure they’re still giving your sales team what they need to succeed—and adjust where necessary. Take note of these best practices to keep top of mind.
Experience Is Your Friend
A data model can only take you so far, so talk with your sales leaders to get that institutional, qualitative knowledge. They’ll know which territories didn’t quite pan out and where you need to adjust.
Go Back to the Data
When in doubt, reference data to help you adjust territories. With the Salesforce Enterprise Territory Management (ETM) tool, you get reports that show the accounts in each territory, which accounts have no territory assigned, and how much revenue you can expect from different territories. Combine that with sales manager input, and you’re ready to go!
Minimize Territory Disruption
Changing territories is painful for some sales reps, so make changes only where they really aren’t working. If you need to adjust midyear, communicate early to keep confusion to a minimum. Give reps and their managers time to plan for upcoming changes, and when it’s time to flip the switch, do it fast. You don't want sales reps transitioning territories when they can be selling. Be cautious about moving accounts with late-stage opportunities. If you must shift those accounts, give your reps enough notice to facilitate a smooth transition.
Managing Territories in Salesforce
So how do you manage these territories, exactly? First, step away from the spreadsheet—yes, that one right there on your screen. Step away from time-consuming manual processes and embrace Salesforce Enterprise Territory Management. It’s included in Lightning Experience and Salesforce Classic in Developer and Performance editions and in Enterprise and Unlimited editions with the Sales Cloud. Specifically, you can:
- Model your territories: Play with different territory models, and see their effects without touching your real data. And when you do choose to deploy a model, it automatically assigns your accounts.
- Create a territory hierarchy: Just like you need an org chart in business, territories need hierarchy. For example, you can create a master territory for the US, broken into smaller territories for East and West, and those can be broken into smaller territories: California, Texas, New York. You can run rules directly from that hierarchy, even if they’re different for each territory.
- Define assignment rules: Input your rules so you know which accounts belong in which territories. For example, accounts in x zip code, with y revenue, and in z industry belong in Territory A. That way, you don’t have to do it manually. If you’re using a territory hierarchy, you can assign those same rules to every territory in the hierarchy, without having to manually add and re-add them.
- Promote team selling: A great way to help reps find the right person to close deals is to assign collaborative roles in a territory. This is an effective way to activate team selling.
Manage Territories with the AppExchange
If you need specialized assignment logic, such as distance- or driving-time–based assignment, or extensive map-based territory manipulation, the AppExchange has lots of great options for you.
AppExchange is the official Salesforce app store. It’s where you can turn if you ever feel like you need a more customized solution, but you don’t want to build it yourself. And because it’s by Salesforce, everything you expect from us, like security and trust, carries over to the offerings.
