Get Started with Territory Planning

Learning Objectives

After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:

• Design a territory plan.
  
• Create a new territory alignment.
  

Effective territory planning can result in an increase of sales, a decrease in cost across personnel and travel, and an overall improvement in customer coverage leading to stronger relationships.

Consider these questions when thinking about territory planning at your company.

• Does your organization have territories?
  
• Is territory planning time-consuming for sales and SalesOps leaders in your organization?
  
• Are you often looking for a more efficient territory planning solution?
  

If you answered yes to any of these, look no further! You’ve come to the right place for answers.

In this module, we assume you are familiar with Sales Territories, formerly known as Enterprise Territory Management. If you’re not, that’s OK. Learn more about Sales Territories in Salesforce Help.

Territory Planning is an add-on product to Salesforce Maps. To utilize Territory Planning, the Salesforce Maps Managed Package must be installed and permissions to configure and use Territory Planning must be assigned.

Presenting Salesforce Territories in Sales Planning

While there are many ways to divide your sales territories, it’s time-consuming to manually comb through sales data to reorganize territories. If done incorrectly, you face an uneven distribution of opportunities–both current and future–across your organization. Unbalanced territories also negatively impact your business, whether a sales team is spread too thin or there are too many sales reps covering a territory. In either case, Territory Planning is the answer as part of the Salesforce Sales Planning solution to help successfully navigate the difficult territory planning processes companies face.

Territory Planning helps you analyze and design territories in a logical, scalable manner. It provides business leaders with the tools they need to save time and improve accuracy by focusing on three main features.

Let’s look at how these Territory Planning features work in a real-world scenario.

Case Study: Get Organized with Territories

Cloud Kicks, a custom shoe company, is going through a major territory realignment exercise. It implemented Territory Planning to manage these changes.

Cloud Kicks is expanding its sales team and adding additional territories. Cloud Kicks currently uses Salesforce Sales Territories to organize its territory alignment into groups of accounts and identify account owners. As part of its realignment, Cloud Kicks wants to use the annual revenue field to fairly distribute opportunities among sales reps. To do this, Cloud Kicks is focusing on three key areas.

• Realign territories to ensure reps can cover more accounts efficiently.
  
• Collaborate with leaders and the sales team on territory design.
  
• Establish territories that assign accounts in alignment with the company’s growth targets.
  

Linda Rosenberg, a Salesforce admin, uses Territory Planning to complete this realignment.

Create a Report

Territory Planning can be directly integrated with Salesforce reports. These reports can be created for any mappable object and display any field on that object. When creating a report, there are some required fields. These are:

• Object ID field
  
• Fields used to assign territories, like User Name, User ID, Territory Name, or Territory ID
  
• Latitude field
  
• Longitude field
  

Geocoded records are required. If records are not geocoded with latitude and longitude coordinates in your environment, use the core Salesforce Maps application to geocode records. Review the Salesforce Maps Configuration badge for more information.

In this case, Linda creates a Salesforce report to display accounts with the following key attributes: annual revenue, account category, and employee count. She adds Account ID, User ID, Longitude, Latitude, and some additional descriptive fields like Name, Category, State, Country, and Zip Code. These fields will measure territories and search for and reassign individual accounts.

Linda names the saved report Southeast Accounts by Annual Revenue.

Optionally, SOQL Custom Query Builder can be used to circumvent creating a report.

Plan the Design

In Territory Planning, there are two components of the design process.

• Data Sets: A collection of records that define your Territory Alignments.
  
• Territory Alignment: The proposed territory model for the group of records defined in the Data Set. An alignment provides the visual framework of your territory classifications. For example, territories may be classified as regions or districts.
  

Linda selects the Create Data Set button and names her data set Southeast Region: Enterprise Accounts.

She adds a brief description, then defines the scope of her territory boundaries.

The use of Territory Boundaries is optional. If defined, it applies to a selected country and provides additional geographical options. Linda selects the United States as the country and four additional options appear: Postal Code, State, County, and 3-Digit Postal Code. Linda selects 3-Digit Postal Code and continues with her design.

Depending on the country you select, the additional geographical options (postal boundary, county/district, and state/province/region) may differ.

Now she can select the reports to make up her data set. She reviews the list of reports displayed and selects the Southeast Accounts by Annual Revenue report she previously created.

You can select one or more reports when configuring a data set. If selecting multiple reports, each report has its own legend view and display as different symbols on the map to distinguish between reports. This helps users plan territories based on data from multiple objects if needed.

Reports are not directly linked to data sets. Instead, a snapshot of your report is taken when you create a data set. Make your territory planning decisions based on reliable numbers that won’t change between sessions.

Next Linda maps her object fields. (1) Unit ID identifies the unique value associated with a record, such as account ID, (2) Unit Assignment Field identifies the preexisting assignment, such as account owner, (3) Billing Latitude and Billing Longitude specifies the Geolocation fields, and (4) Selected Attribute fields, such as Annual Revenue, are used to analyze her sales territories. 

Practice Creating a Data Set

Now that Linda designed her data set, want to give it a try? You can use Trailhead Simulator to practice creating a data set.

Get to Know the Trailhead Simulator

The Trailhead Simulator is different from a Trailhead Playground. The simulator doesn’t store your progress. If you close your browser, the simulation starts from the beginning each time you launch it. Use the navigation controls at the bottom of the simulator to get back to where you left off. For the best experience, view the Trailhead Simulator on a laptop or desktop computer. Also note that not everything is clickable in the simulator, just the steps that are laid out in the simulator.

Launch the Trailhead Simulator. 

Create an Alignment!

There are a number of ways in which companies can organize their territories when planning the framework for a proposed alignment. Here are some common examples.

• By sales rep or service technician
  
• By size of business, such as mid-market and small business
  
• By managers assigned to different teams
  

At Cloud Kicks, the alignment focuses on sales reps. To maximize revenue growth, the proposed alignment includes additional territories and a model for reps to improve account coverage.

Linda creates a new alignment.

She names it Proposed Alignment and starts the building process.

She now has three options.

• Populate and customize a sample model with different hierarchy levels already displayed.
  
• Import and configure an existing alignment plan. This is often used when creating an iteration of an existing alignment.
  
• Import an existing model from Sales Territories.
  

Since Cloud Kicks already uses Sales Territories, Linda selects the Import Salesforce Territory Model button. Next, she selects the Southeast branch and identifies Account Executive as the territory owner role.

Then, she defines the owner name and the unit assignment value. She uses Account Owner ID, the same assignment ID value identified in the data set. This value ensures each record in the selected Salesforce report is aligned with the correct territory.

After confirming the owner name for each territory, she selects the Unit Assignment Option to Auto-Fill with Territory Owner Id field.

Finally, before completing the design, Linda selects the Automatically assign nearby containers checkbox. This feature automatically associates unassigned zip codes to a territory based on proximity to accounts. This helps eliminate any gaps in coverage. She selects Finish and the Southeast territory displays on the map.

Practice with the Trailhead Simulator

Now, you can follow steps in a Trailhead Simulator to familiarize yourself with creating an alignment in Salesforce Maps Territory Planning. You use the simulator instead of a Trailhead Playground to follow along and try out the steps. 

Launch the Trailhead Simulator.

Coming Up

Throughout this unit, Linda completed the required steps to get her realignment project underway. She created her report, added it to the data set, and imported the existing territory structure from Sales Territories. In the next unit, she makes changes by adding and removing sales reps to ensure all areas have coverage. Then, Linda reviews the immediate impact of her changes on annual revenue, and collaborates with business leaders before finalizing her proposed territory.

Resources

• Trailhead: Salesforce Maps Configuration
• External Site: Salesforce Maps Territory Planning Demo
• Salesforce Help: Set Up Salesforce Maps Territory Planning
• Internal Site: Install Salesforce Maps