BUSINESSMAPCENTRE SALES TERRITORY MAPPING
Jul 12, 2015
Getting Started With Sales Territory Mapping
• The management of mapping sales territories
varies from business to business
• Some companies may have territories that are
outdated or require rebalancing
• Whereas sales territory mapping maybe a new
concept to a recently established and growing
company
• The technical aspect of mapping sales territories is
challenging
• Your new territories may affect existing commission
plans
• Your sales territory design must also be backed up
by a solid justification of the design process
• This will help ensure that you have support for your
sales territory management from your sales team
Map Business Online helps the process of sales territory
mapping by:
• Offering an affordable online mapping solutions
• Providing demographic maps of England, Scotland and
Wales to input into the sales territory design process
• Allowing the export of supporting data to Excel for
administrative purposes and to support sales territory
discussions
Start Your Design Process
• Start with data that is meaningful to your company
• This could be your own historic sales figures, or data
from the latest Census such as population
demographics or information on social grade
• The trick in mapping sales territories effectively is to
upload data with a locational component – ensure you
have a full postcode, postcode sector (e.g. SW1 1),
local authority level, or county level areas associated
with your business data
• Importing your business data into an online web map
is a great place to start sales territory mapping
• Once initial sales territories have been mapped, you
can start to discuss the issues with your sales team
and have a better idea of how to manage sales
territories going forward using an online web map
Five Ways Territory Mapping Software Will Improve Your Business
• Now lets look at ways in which mapping software
will improve your business
• Whether you work for a small business or large
organisation, a small investment in territory
mapping software could help your business survive
and prosper
1. Territory Maps Define Ownership
There is a need for clear ownership and accountability
within any organisation. This is often split geographically.
Web mapping applications can make it very easy to split
the country up into precise territories.
• Once a sales manager has completed their sales
territory mapping, they can use it to assign accounts to
the reps or for more sophisticated analysis. Load in
customer data with purchasing information, and use
the maps to define hot spots and geographically show
where spending decisions are made.
2. Optimise Marketing Campaigns
Marketing activities often have a geographical focus.
New campaign ideas can be best evaluated by using
a test area, or by varying the approach across a few
comparable test areas. This can lead to big long-term
gains from your marketing spend.
• Test the campaign in areas with particular
demographic profiles, and tweak your
approaches to find a strategy that will give you
maximum success
3. Address Overlapping Sales Coverage
Overlapping sales territories are sometimes a necessity,
and one that your territory mapping software should be
able to support. A good mapping tool will let you
highlight, manage, or resolve the overlaps.
• Territory overlaps can arise due to historical account
relationships, the locations of reps, the needs of key
accounts, or simply because territories haven’t been
precisely geographically defined
4. Use Territories To Organise Your Customers And ProspectsMost businesses review their sales figures on a regular basis.
This will give you a simple view of the direction of your business,
but it pays to get a full picture of how and where the successes
are happening. Sales territories can give you a simple
geographical basis for taking a closer look at your sales pipeline
and metric.
• A sales manager or analyst can view sales data, customers,
or prospects by territory. For each territory, you could look at
prospect generation, sales activity, sales conversions,
customer spend, and try to understand why performance
varies between different areas.
5. Territory Mapping Helps You To Understand Your Business
Mapping software gives you the power to visualise
your own business data. We often see how valuable
this can be, whether the results paint a surprising
picture or finally confirm a pattern that has been
suspected for a while.
Even richer insights can come from comparing your
business data with other data layers
• Look at census data such as the numbers of
people of a particular age or socioeconomic
group
• Overlay competitor locations and see what
impact they have on your results by site or area
• Create drive-time or crow-flies areas around service
outlets or retail locations to view the impact of travel
distance
• View results by local authority, export them as a table and
then compare to other relevant datasets
• Load historical data and review changes over time
This understanding can help shape your strategy and make
you more effective, whether you are a sales rep, a manager
or run your own business.
How MBO Can Be Used To Generate Franchise Territory Mapping Areas
• Franchise territory mapping plays an important role
early in the franchising process, and helps to grow
the business quickly
• It is also encouraging for potential franchisees to
see that their allocated areas are clear, are based
on genuine market size considerations, and can be
protected as they develop new business
• Postcode boundaries will be the most useful
geography to build territories from
• Postcode boundaries allow distinct areas to be
defined where marketing activities are concerned
• You will then need to decide on what basis you will
allocate areas to overall territories. For instance, you
may wish to simply base your territories on population,
or you may want to target a particular demographic
• The best way to actually start defining territories is to
use an online mapping tool such as Map Business
Online, which has a free trial period of 30 days. Or you
could bring in a mapping professional to your project
and get the mapping done as a GIS service
Map Business Online helps the process of franchise
territory mapping by:
• Offering an affordable online mapping solution for
franchisors
• Providing demographic data for England, Scotland
and Wales to input into the franchise territory
design process
• Allowing the export of supporting data to Excel for
administrative purposes and to support franchise
territory discussions
• Allowing the instant mapping of territories if you
already have them defined as a list by postcodes
sectors or local authorities
• Gives franchisors the power to manually build their
territories from scratch
• Once your franchise territory mapping is complete,
you can target potential franchisees over large
areas, helping to grow your business quickly
• If things are going well, you can even re-define
territories in areas you have not yet sold to increase
profitability
If you find you need some help with any aspect of
franchise territory mapping, then map experts Lovell
Johns can offer many other custom mapping
services, above and beyond those provided by Map
Business Online.
There are a range of hardcopy and digital mapping solutions to help
both Franchisors and Franchisees, such as:
• Standardised franchisee Wall Maps
• Franchisee Digital Postcode Street Atlas, which allows you to print
PDFs showing street mapping of your whole area with postcode
sectors overlaid
• Updatable web mapping to show the status of available territories
to prospect franchisees
• The creation of a customer facing web mapping application to
point potential customers to their nearest franchisee