Once you have access to this kind of technology, territory management, route optimization, and activity tracking tasks will become easier and more accurate for your sales team.

Keep reading to learn what location analytics is, how to use this technology in a sales context, the benefits of location analytics for sales teams, and nine tools you can use for this purpose. Let’s take a look!

What Is Location Analytics?

When it comes to field sales, the term “location analytics” refers to the use of human movement to identify important sales-related trends, and extract insights from the available data to aid sales processes.

Field sales departments often refer to location analytics as “sales mapping”. Whatever you call it, this technology helps sellers visualize important information. When this happens, it becomes easier to make smart decisions that lead to sales, revenue growth, and ultimately, more success.

Sales Uses of Location Analytics

We know what you’re thinking, “That’s all great. But what does location analytics for field sales teams actually look like?” We’re glad you asked. Here are five important use cases:

Sales Mapping

Use location analytics to visualize your pipeline and understand where your sales come from. For example, prospects and customers can be represented as pins on a digital map. Said pins can then be color-coded to signify each prospect or customer’s place in your sales process. The result? Reps can look at the digital map on any internet-capable device and immediately know where to focus their efforts.

Route Planning

Location analytics can also be used to plan efficient routes between potential customers. Depending on technology used, reps can often input a collection of addresses into their location analytics tool at once. The app will then plan the perfect route to each destination. Some software will also track mileage for reps so that they don’t have to waste time on tedious data entry tasks and can focus on selling.

Territory Management

Location analytics technology makes it easy to cut territories and assign them to qualified reps. Where are your prospects? How can you divide them between your sales reps in an efficient and fair manner? And how do you make sure there’s no overlap between sales areas? Location analytics will help you answer these questions—in addition to monitoring individual territory performance in real time.

Sales Prospecting

According to recent research, more than 40% of sales professionals say prospecting is the most difficult part of their jobs. Location analytics technology simplifies the prospecting process. Reps can use it to quickly find leads in their territories that match their ideal customer profiles. Armed with a list of potential customers, sales reps can then work to close as many deals as possible.

Rep Tracking

Finally, location analytics for sales teams will help you keep track of your reps. Where are they? And how do they spend their time in the field? The right tools will give you this information. Once you have it, you can properly assess performance. For example, you’ll know if reps miss quota because they lack training or simply refuse to put in the required effort. You can then act accordingly.

Benefits of Location Analytics For Field Sales

Location analytics will help you improve your sales targeting efforts, enhance your sales strategy, make data-driven decisions, and increase customer engagement. Let’s dig deeper into each of these benefits:

Improved Sales Targeting

When you can access location analytics for sales teams, you’ll be able to identify high-potential areas. In other words, it will be easy to find territories with quality prospects that match your ICPs (Ideal Customer Profile). Just as important, you’ll be able to understand these customers on a deeper level. For example, you’ll have data regarding demographic information, which you can use to inform your sales strategy. Speaking of which…

Enhanced Sales Planning and Strategy

You wouldn’t drive from California to New York without GPS, would you? You’d almost certainly get lost along the way. Sales is similar. You need a plan if you want to meet quota and drive revenue. Location analytics will help you uncover key data points and identify trends. You can then use this information to adjust your approach to sales, which will lead to more opportunities, deals, and success.

Data-Driven Decision Making

Location analytics will also give you real-time data regarding where prospects are located and how your reps interact with them. This kind of information will help inform your general decision-making processes and coaching programs. It will also help you predict future results with greater accuracy. After all, when you know what’s happening right now, you can better guess what will happen in the future.

Increased Customer Engagement

Finally, access to location analytics will help your reps engage with customers in productive ways. This is because they’ll be able to personalize their marketing efforts based on where said customers live. (If selling solar panels, for example, you might contact prospects in Denver, CO during the summer months, when they’ll see a greater benefit from the product.) Personalization is a core tenet of effective customer relationship management. Get it right and sales will be much easier to come by.

Top 9 Location Analytics Tools for Sales Teams

Location analytics for field sales will make your team more efficient and successful. The question is, which tool should you use? Here are nine options you should consider investing in:

1. SPOTIO

G2 rating: 4.5 stars / 348 reviews

Best for: High-growth field sales teams

SPOTIO is the go-to tool for field sales teams—especially those that want to supercharge productivity and revenue. This is because SPOTIO is purpose-built with all of the features field reps need to succeed. Many of these features include location analytics tech, which provides visibility into sales activity, improves the sales process and increases rep productivity.

Key features:

• Cut territories based on geographic boundaries or by drawing on a map
• Generate leads that perfectly match your ICPs—all in just a few clicks
• Plan efficient routes between prospects and track mileage along the way
• View analytics to learn how different territories and reps are performing
• Track your reps’ travel paths in the field and verify check-ins with GPS
• Integrate SPOTIO with major CRMs, calendar apps, HubSpot and other systems

2. Maptitude

G2 rating: 4.7 stars / 137 reviews

Best for: Experienced sales reps

Maptitude will give your reps the ability to cut territories, optimize routes between prospects, and visualize sales data. Unfortunately, it’s not the most usable tool, which is why it’s suggested for experienced sellers.

Key features:

• Identify where your prospects and customers are
• Pinpoint common characteristics between buyers
• Visualize all of these data points on a digital map
• Create sales routes and reduce windshield time
• View areas with high market share and growth potential

3. Salesforce Maps

G2 rating: 4.3 stars / 319 reviews

Best for: Existing Salesforce users

Salesforce is the biggest name in CRM software. But this tool does way more than simply help sales reps manage customer relationships. It can also be used to map efficient routes between prospects.

Key features:

• Plot accounts, opportunities, and other Salesforce data on a digital map
• Use filters to help prioritize outreach to specific prospects and/or customers
• Adjust territories at any time to account for trends and to maintain performance
• Build efficient routes between sales meetings to save time and boost productivity
• Connect Salesforce Maps to many other Salesforce tools, or integrate with SPOTIO

4. CARTO SalesQuest

G2 rating: 4.5 stars / 75 reviews

Best for: High-tech sales teams

Carto is an in-depth spatial analytics software. When applied to the sales process, it enables reps to create effective territories and design efficient routes between prospects.

Key features:

• Quickly create analysis procedures with a drag-and-drop interface
• Build complex data visualizations inside your cloud data warehouse
• Design your own location-based apps with comprehensive APIs
• Optimize routes between locations to reduce costs and carbon emissions

5. Maptive

G2 rating: 4.7 stars / 34 reviews

Best for: Short-term field sales needs

Maptive is a popular sales mapping software. With it, users can turn their data into a “custom Google map in minutes.” The tool can also be purchased in 45-day increments, which benefits short-term sales needs.

Key features:

• Create custom maps with personalized markers and views
• Access Google Streets View from inside the Maptive app
• Filter sales data by category, date, number range, and more
• Get driving directions from one prospect to the next

6. GeoMetrx

G2 rating: N/A

Best for: Real-time U.S. demographics data

GeoMetrx is an intuitive tool that will help you locate demographic data in the United States. Learn everything you need to know about prospects in specific states, counties, and/or zip codes.

Key features:

• Access demographic data with unparalleled accuracy
• Create demographics, business, retail, crime, and other reports
• Enjoy curated insights to help understand the data on a deeper level
• Use an intuitive platform that makes it easy to tease out key insights

7. Esri ArcGIS

G2 rating: 4.5 stars / 528 reviews

Best for: Large organizations

ArcGis was designed to help you visualize, analyze, and understand your data. For sales, it enables reps to see where their prospects and customers are, then design efficient routes to meet them in the field.

Key features:

• Map information to discover important trends
• Visualize data on maps, charts, and infographics
• Personalize your maps with colors, symbols, etc.
• Design the most efficient routes to sales meetings

8. Geopointe

G2 rating: 4.3 stars / 282 reviews

Best for: Small businesses that use Salesforce

Geopointe is a top sales mapping app for Salesforce users. While Salesforce does have its own mapping solution (see above) Geopointe is easier to use and has fantastic customer support.

Key features:

• Optimize the routes reps take between prospects
• Find sales opportunities near pre-planned meetings
• Enable reps to check in and out of stops in the field
• Take sales notes directly inside the Geopointe app
• Map customers and visualize your Salesforce data

9. HyperTrack

G2 rating: 4.5 stars / 19 reviews

Best for: Tracking productivity in the field

Use HyperTrack’s low-code / no-code solutions to “build logistics apps for the future.” Once your sales team is set up, reps will be able to plan routes and management will be able to track rep progress.

Key features:

• Help reps plan the best routes to their various stops in the field
• Use geofence technology to always know where your reps are
• Integrate HyperTrack with Salesforce, HubSpot, and other tools

Boost Results With SPOTIO’s Location Analytics For Sales Teams

Your department will improve its productivity levels, decision-making abilities, and overall success when it commits to location analytics for sales teams. You just need to choose the right platform.

For most field sellers, the “right” platform is SPOTIO. Our app was specifically designed with you in mind. As such, it has all the features you need to plan efficient routes, track reps in the field, and collect location-based data. It can also be used to source leads, communicate with prospects, and build reports.

Book a free demo of SPOTIO today to see our industry-leading solution in action!

If you’re looking to maximize sales productivity and the value that your sales team brings to customers, it may be time to review and enhance your sales territory plan.

Good sales territory planning provides a framework to measure sales potential, set goals, and focus your team’s sales efforts for maximum success. It provides your sales team the guidance to properly identify and understand customers and prospects, assess and measure value, and support customers in a way that leads to loyalty.

Table of Contents

What is Sales Territory Planning 
Benefits of Sales Territory Planning
Factors to Consider When Planning Sales Territories
7 Steps to Writing a Successful Sales Territory Plan
5 Sales Territory Management Best Practices to Follow
Essential Tools to Plan Your Sales Territories
5 Ways to Validate a Sales Territory Business Plan

What is Sales Territory Planning?

Territory planning is the process of creating a plan to ensure your sales team targets the right customers (and the most profitable ones).

Historically, most territories were broken down by geography, but in today’s connected world, sales territories can also be divided in many ways, including:

• Industry
• Sales potential
• Customer type

With a clearly defined territory, sales teams can work strategically to address the needs of their assigned market. A strong sales territory plan allows you to:

• Ensure your sales team’s efforts are focused on the who, what, when, where and why that offer the strongest return on investment.
• Align salespeople to the regions, segments, and/or verticals best suited for their background and expertise.
• Partner intelligently across company teams to drive corporate objectives
• Optimize customer experience by aligning accounts with sales teams that understand their unique challenges and opportunities.
• Set the stage for long-term solid customer and market relationships.

Benefits of Sales Territory Planning

If you’re doubting the value of a strong sales territory plan, consider these inarguable benefits:

More time spent selling

A strong territory plan allows organizations to maximize their sales momentum by aligning the right sales teams to the right opportunities. Studies by industry analysts consistently show a decline in sales productivity due to factors such as extensive traveling, the need to learn and understand new segments, and administrative overhead.

With a clear sales territory plan based on geography and sector, salespeople can spend less time traveling and preparing for customer engagements and more time working directly with customers.

Better customer service

By aligning your salespeople to a set of accounts that aligns to their background, expertise, and geography, they are better able to understand customer needs and build solutions that align. With consistent territories, salespeople can build long-term relationships, leading to higher customer loyalty and repeat business.

Balanced workloads

Workload is measured in time and effort required to adequately manage all accounts in a given territory. A strong territory plan compares workloads and designs territories so that each salesperson is at full capacity, maximizing their potential.

To maximize rep production, you need to do some due diligence when it comes to assigning balanced territories.

Factors to Consider When Planning Sales Territories

When segmenting territories among your reps, you want to make sure they’re allocated fairly. To ensure this, ask yourself the following questions:

• Is the workload equally divvied up between each member of the team?
• Does the territory design provide equal compensation opportunities?
• Is there a good mix of existing and new accounts per territory?
• Does the territory route allow easy travel time management?

Once you’re able to answer the questions above, it’s time to consider:

1 | Revenue Source

Current Customers. Where are your best customers and prospects located? Geographic and industry-based clusters are the most common focus because it’s easier to get new customers in an area with existing customers. Historical sales data will become your new best friend as it’s the best predictor of future success.

A sales tracking software will give you a complete history of this data.

Inbound Leads. When inbound leads convert, focus on the demographics such as geography, industry and size. Then, build a strategy to divide them as evenly as possible across your sales force.

The focus needs to be on revenue generated from inbound leads as opposed to volume of leads.

Outbound Prospecting. Sales territory design for outbound efforts begins by first laying out the territories to work, then overlaying them with prospecting territories according to how you’re allocating salespeople.

For example, you assign two sales reps to each state (two territories) and one canvasser (one prospecting territory).

2 | Rank Your Team

Create a scorecard and evaluate your sales reps to identify who your top, middle, and low level performers are.

• How much is their quota?
• Do they consistently achieve this number?
• How many current customers and prospects are in their funnel?
• How many viable prospects are located within their territory?

3 | Rank Your Territories

Most Profitable (Least Risky). Evaluate which of your territories are most successful and double down on what’s already working.

Most Growth. If you’re more focused on the long-term instead of the short-term, focus on territories that haven’t been worked yet. It’s likely to take longer to become profitable, but will generate greater growth over time.

Learning / New Markets. To establish yourself in a new market segment or determine if it’s viable, send a canvasser into this territory to accomplish a specific task. This will help determine exactly what’s needed to succeed in that market.

4 | Track and Measure Metrics

Sales metrics are invaluable in understanding the success of every sales team within the company, and entire sales department as a whole. They help you to spot trends and determine efficiencies, and inefficiencies, within the company.

With sales enablement platforms like SPOTIO, you can easily pull results for:

• Team performance in relation to your sales funnel
• Data from custom statuses and fields based on KPIs
• Graphs representing team performance, best time and day to knock, etc.
• The number of attempts it takes to establish contacts, get leads and make sales
• This data gives you the information you need in order to assign balanced workloads across your sales team.

Actionable Data and Insight

With the help of territory management technology, sales territory data helps you accurately evaluate sales performance. This information helps you design effective sales compensation plans and ensure your sales teams are performing at their maximum potential.

Clarify ownership in complex organizations

In organizations with large and complex sales teams, roles and responsibilities are often tangled. With effective sales territory planning, territories are made clear from the get-go, ensuring that salespeople are clear about their target audience and not creating confusion for the team or the customer.

Resilience to change and turnover

Organizational changes such as personnel loss, mergers, acquisitions, alliances, and relocations inevitably effect customers and internal teams. With a strong territory management plan, change is easier to manage.

A well-documented sales territory plan allows new team member’s to ramp up quickly and avoid confusion regarding roles and responsibilities.

Team cohesion and morale

Strong territory planning optimizes the role of the team. By assigning complimentary teams to each territory, you create and environment which allows team members to benefit from each other’s strengths, share workload, and also avoid conflict that arises from unclear territories and boundaries.

7 Step Plan to Write a Successful Sales Territory Business Plan

The next logical question is, where do you start? In this section, we’ll provide an overview of each planning step, along with key questions and suggestions. Depending on your offering, industry, company size, or various other factors, you may use some or all these steps when building your territory plan.

1. Analyze your business goals and objectives

The first step to drafting a solid sales territory plan is bringing clarity to your company’s landscape, defining organizational goals, and evaluating industry trends. This is a basic step to ground you and your team on what you’re trying to accomplish with your sales territory plan.

As you go through the subsequent process, you should continually refer back to this data to maintain a pulse on whether your plan accomplishes what you’ve set out to do.

To get the juices flowing, start by answering these key questions:

1. What is your organization’s most current vision, mission, and north star objective?
2. What are the key trends in your industry or market?
3. What pain do your offerings solve for customers?
4. What are your sales goals, in numbers?
5. What is your conversion rate? Based on this how many prospects should you have in your funnel at any given time to ensure that you’re meeting your sales goals?
6. Are there specific products/services that you are selling more than others? Why?

2. Analyze your prospects and customers

The next step is looking deep into your customer base. In addition to understanding their businesses, challenges, and unique traits, it’s important to identify what makes them unique and what sets them apart from each other.

Key questions to ask yourself include:

1. Who are your most profitable and lucrative prospects and customers defined by industry, region, product, etc.?
2. What do these customers have in common?
3. Which of your prospects or customers offers the most profound growth opportunities for your company?
4. What are your customers buying today and what does this tell you about their challenges and opportunities?
5. Are their industries you serve with success? Are their industries that you’ve had less success with?
6. When customers and prospects object, what is the biggest reason why?

3. Determine your Total Addressable Market

Your Total Addressable Market (TAM) is the entire body of prospects and customers that fit your ideal customer profile. Traditionally, organizations use data including industry, location, size, and revenue to begin mapping their TAM.

While this is still important, technology and tooling makes it easier than ever to identify prospects within your TAM that may not be so obvious.

Using traditional and modern sources, even tools like social media, look for company and industry look-a-likes that may be a suitable candidate for your offering.

Once an ideal customer profile is solidified, the next step is to figure out how large the market opportunity is that fits the description. You may use a matrix to include a range of large and small markets which present large or small opportunities.

While estimating the size of your market used to be a struggle of guesswork and complicated calculations, there are now tools available to businesses to automate the TAM discovery process.

4. Perform a SWOT Analysis

A simple way to evaluate your position in the market is to perform a SWOT (Strengths/Weaknesses/Opportunities/Threats) analysis. Since we all have blind spots, a SWOT analysis is best performed with the help of a broader team, including other company leadership, as well as members or your sales management and sales rep teams.

• What Strengths will you build upon?
• Which Weaknesses do you need to mitigate?
• Which Opportunities in your marketplace are you suited to take advantage of?
• What Threats in your selling environment will you defend against?

In doing this analysis, you will start to see patterns that indicate areas of your business that require more or less attention for various reasons.

For example, a strength that’s also a large opportunity may need a dedicated territory. On the other hand, an area that aligns to a serious competitive threat may require special attention to protect your company’s place in the industry.

The SWOT characteristics you identify will not always be related to revenue or geography. They may be related to more obscure things like training needs of your sales team, gaps in systems and tools, or even gaps in your products themselves.

Doing this analysis will help you be aware of other ways to think about your business and territories.

5. Determine and Document Sales Territories

Based on the work you perform in the sections above, you should have an idea of how to divide your sales territories. It’s important to document these clearly, outlining details of each territory including things like:

• Geographic Boundaries
• Industry or Segment Boundaries (including any overlap and how that is addressed)
• Revenue Boundaries
• Product Boundaries
• Anything else that may be applicable to your sales organization

6. Devise an Action Plan

Similar to the SWOT analysis, devising an action plan is a group exercise that should include various stakeholders in the company, specifically the leaders of each of your identified territories. Just as well, the action plan should be built to be nimble.

In a world where market opportunities change every day, the sales territory plan should be built to follow, ensuring that your action plan keeps up with changing opportunities and threats.

Gone are the days of an annual territory and action planning session. It’s important that change management is built into the framework to ensure your teams are not caught off guard with changes.

Within each category, you should answer the following questions:

• What is the territory’s quota?
• What is the territory’s quota stretch goal?
• What is the territory’s closed business YTD?
• What is the territory’s gap?
• How much pipeline do I have today?
• What is the territory’s pipeline gap?
• What are my goals for the year?

In addition to the overall territory, you will need to spend time looking at top accounts and where they fit in your territory plan. List top accounts and explain why they are chosen (relationships, industry fit, target profile).  For each, in one sentence, be clear and focused on the outreach strategy.

Next, create an opportunity map and make sure opportunity plans are thorough. What’s the compelling event? Why now? What’s the strategy to engage with a champion and economic buyer? What’s the mutual success plan?

Finally, close out with strategies to build your sales funnel.

In addition to being responsive to external factors, action plans should be reviewed on a quarterly basis to ensure your plan isn’t going stale unintentionally.

7. Track Performance and Stay Adaptable

Once you’ve devised and implemented your territory plan, it’s important to regularly measure success in each territory and adapt as needed.

Metric reviews should happen on a regular, defined cadence such as monthly or quarterly, and should be automated using sales performance tools to avoid making this a manual, costly, and easily avoided overhead.

Measures you put in place will vary based on your unique company situation, but some important measures include:

Gross Sales

The most obvious measurement of sales success, gross sales is the sum of all sales that a territory carries out during a defined time frame. Gross sales is a useful metric because it shows the ability of sales professionals to make sales, regardless of what the profit margin is on those sales.

Gross Profit

This is the difference between the selling price for a product and the price the business paid to develop the solution. This measurement is important for businesses that want to encourage their sales forces to focus on high profit margins rather than just sales.

Total Unit Sales

The aggregated number of product units sold within a particular territory, regardless of price, profit or commission. This method of measurement is useful when a company mainly sells a single type of product.

Conversion rate

Conversion rate is the percentage of leads or appointments that result in a sale of some kind. Sales forces with a high sales turnover number are operating at a high level of performance.

Total Commissions

This is the amount of money the sales representatives for the territory in question take home as personal income. Although this measurement does not directly correlate to the competitiveness or degree of success of the business itself, it is effective to use as a means of motivating members of the sales force to achieve higher numbers.

Return Customers

A sign of true development and sustainable growth in a sales territory is the tendency of buyers in that territory to come back and buy again.

For this reason, one important measurement to make is the amount of revenue or profit coming from clients who have bought before. This amount may be expressed as a gross number or as a percentage of gross sales, gross profits or commissions. 

With each review, it’s pertinent to ask your leadership whether the data being measures indicates the need for an adjustment to your territory plans. If you’re proactively monitoring and adjusting, you will maintain a plan that keeps you relevant with your customers and industry.

5 Sales Territory Management Best Practices to Follow

Managing a sales territory is a skill that needs constant development. Moreover, you should adjust and adapt to changes in your area. With summer underway, you have half a year left to grow your business. Propeller suggests four sales territory management best practices for you to implement this week.

1. Using a call rotation schedule to keep in touch with accounts

During the strategy phase, you and your team determined how often to call on each account based on their needs.  Also, note whether it is a phone call or an in-person meeting. Put these in a CRM or a calendar to keep your schedule on track.

2. Note the seasonal account trends

Another essential part of managing sales territories you addressed when building strategy was to determine which accounts were the seasonal business. It’s an excellent idea to check in before the season arrives and reconnect, so you are in touch when the account is ready to buy.

3. Keep the focus on the long-term, account-based goals.

New business is fantastic; however, it should not distract from the goals set for the targeted account-based marketing goals you set. Teaching the team to balance new business development with account management is a vital skill for any salesperson.

4. Explore new ways to divide the leads.

Many sales territory plans are set up by geography, and the leads from that area go to that sales territory rep. However, not every sales territory plan needs to be geographical; the location of the lead is not always the best way to go.

In cases where your sales reps do not have in-person meetings, you can try dividing new leads based on account type (i.e., verticals) or the referral source. Some people divide leads based on the product in which the lead is interested or by the size of the account.

5. Look for cross-selling opportunities.

Analyze the products that an account buys and look for natural partner-products or services, i.e., the “Would you like fries with that?” strategy. Many times, customers might not realize that you offer the full suite of products and services and can make their lives easier by ordering from one supplier.

Essential Tools to Plan Your Sales Territories

Like any job, when you are planning sales territories, you need to have the right tools. The right tools will help you plan, build, and execute a sales territory plan. There is a multitude of options available.  Here are three essentials you need to set yourself up for success, improve productivity and close the best deals.

CRM: Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is a how your company keeps track of its customer information and history. Many CRM applications also offer data analysis to help companies with customer retention and account growth. CRM compile data from several sources, including live chat, social media, and email correspondence, among others.

CRM is a significant source for successful sales territory planning.

Spreadsheet: Spreadsheets are data organizers in a tab form that takes data entered in cells and leverages that into different calculations and values, including simple math as well as complex financial and statistical figures. When you have data from various sources, such as a CRM and online sources as an example, you can assemble all the data available in a spreadsheet for quick access and comprehensive analysis.

GPS: Geo Productivity Software (GPS) are software applications that combine standard geolocation and route optimization functions with CRM data to help salespeople address their most relevant and profitable account first. Moreover, the features help salespeople optimize their selling time with customers instead of traveling to and from customers.

Some of the more sophisticated systems incorporate traffic and weather in the optimization of the scheduling.

A 7-Step Template to Create Profitable Sales Territory Plans

Without a strong sales territory plan, your sales team might become disorganized. As a result, you reps may not produce the best results for your customers or your organization. This is obviously a problem. Fortunately, this seven-step template is the answer! Simply follow the process we outline below to build a profitable sales territory business plan.

1. Analyze Your Business Goals

What do you want your sales territory business plan to achieve? Answer the seven questions below to help define and understand your organization’s objectives in this area:

• What is our current vision?
• What are key trends in our industry?
• What pain do we solve for customers?
• What are our sales goals, in numbers?
• What is our current conversion rate?
• How many prospects do we need?
• Which products/services are most popular?

2. Study Your Customer Base

Now that you know what your goals are, take a moment to study your customers. When you understand this unique group of people, you can serve them more effectively.

• Who are our best customers?
• What do these customers have in common?
• Which customer segments offer the biggest growth opportunities?
• What challenges and/or opportunities do our customers meet every day?
• Which industries are we most successful in? Which are we least successful in?
• What are the most common objections our sales reps deal with?

3. Determine Your Total Addressable Market

Your Total Addressable Market (TAM) is the entire body of prospects and customers who fit your ideal customer profile. Use this formula to determine your company’s TAM:

• (Total # of Customers) x (Annual Contract Value) = TAM

Imagine you sell machinery to manufacturers in Texas. To find your annual contract value, multiply your average sales price ($1,000) by the average number of sales you make to each customer per year (3). In this scenario, your average contract value is $3,000.

There are roughly 17,000 manufacturers in Texas. So, your TAM would be $51M, because 17,000 manufacturers multiplied by an average contract value of $3,000 equals $51M.

4. Perform a SWOT Analysis

SWOT stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Ask yourself the following four questions to perform a SWOT analysis for your organization:

• What Strengths can my company build on?
• Which Weaknesses does my company need to mitigate?
• Which Opportunities is my company able to take advantage of?
• What Threats in the industry can my company defend against?

A SWOT analysis will help you determine which sales territories need your immediate attention.

5. Document Your Sales Territories

Now it’s time to either create or redefine your sales territories. Once you’ve taken this step, document the details of each territory to keep things organized. These questions will help:

• What location boundaries define my territories?
• What industry boundaries define my territories?
• What revenue boundaries define my territories?
• What product boundaries define my territories?
• What other boundaries will define my territories?

6. Devise an Action Plan

You’ve almost finished building your profitable sales territory plan. The next thing you need to do is outline specific data points to collect and goals to strive towards for each territory you create.

• What is the territory’s quota?
• What is the territory’s quota stretch goal?
• What is the territory’s closed business YTD?
• What is the territory’s gap?
• How much pipeline do I have today?
• What is the territory’s pipeline gap?
• What are my goals for the year?

7. Track Performance

Finally, take time to evaluate your efforts on a regular basis. That way you know if your territories are performing the way you want them to, and can make necessary changes. To make things easier on your team, commit to tracking a few key metrics, like:

• Gross Sales
• Gross Profits
• Total Unit Sales
• Conversion Rate
• Total Commissions
• Return Customers

5 Ways to Validate a Sales Territory Business Plan

Measuring your progress toward your goal is a crucial part of managing sales. By looking at specific parts of your process, you can determine what is working on your behalf and, perhaps more importantly, what is not.

Here are five questions you should ask to validate a sales territory business plan courtesy of Steve Andersen, President and founder of Performance Methods Incorporated (PMI).

1. Is your growth of strategic customer relationships on target?

It is critical that the customers you focus on provide new sales opportunities and growth, so ensure you picked the correct ones.

2. Are you adding to and advancing the opportunities in your pipeline?

Systems build excellent account management, and every salesperson should have a system for developing and moving accounts through their pipeline.

3. What is your close rate on targeted opportunities?

Close rates are the number of sales you get divided by the presentations you made. For example, if you close three deals for every eight presentations you make, your closing rate (or closing ratio) is 38%. The higher your close rate on targeted opportunities, then the more valid your sales territory business plan is.

4. How accurate is the sales forecast?

The ability to correctly predict the sales your territory will produce is a vital skill for managing a sales territory.

5. Do you have the right resources deployed to help your team?

Managing resources is significant in the overall strategy of a sales team. The right resources along with the right motivating activity can be the key to success in a sales territory business plan. Ensure you have both deployed appropriately.

Sales territories tells salespeople where they can do business. Proper sales territory planning by you and your team can help them take care of business. Work with your team in a collaborative way to help them target the right accounts that give them best results and you have built a foundation for success that benefits the salesperson’s, the company’s and your bottom-line.

And who doesn’t want that?

A 7-Step Template to Create Profitable Sales Territory Plans

Without a strong sales territory plan, your sales team might become disorganized. As a result, you reps may not produce the best results for your customers or your organization. This is obviously a problem. Fortunately, this seven-step template is the answer! Simply follow the process we outline below to build a profitable sales territory business plan.

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Questions or comments? Contact SPOTIO at info@spotio.com or comment below.

SPOTIO is the #1 field sales acceleration and performance management software that will increase revenue, maximize profitability, and boost sales productivity.

Want to see a product demonstration? Click here to see how SPOTIO can take your sales game to the next level.

Whatever the case may be, you’ve come to the right place!

In this comprehensive guide, we’ll cover everything you need to know about field sales, including what field sales is, why it’s important, the duties field sellers are asked to complete, the challenges they face on a daily basis, and how to build your own field sales strategy.

What Is Field Sales?

Field sales, oftentimes referred to as outside sales, is the act of selling products and/or services from outside of a typical office setting. To do this, professional field sales reps travel to prospects and engage with them in a face-to-face manner.

The opposite of field sales is inside sales, where sales reps sell to prospects from a distance. These kinds of reps don’t meet with leads in-person. Instead, they use phone calls, emails, text messages, etc. to connect with prospects.

Both field sales and inside sales have their benefits. We’ll talk about the specific advantages of field sales in the next section.

Why is Field Sales Important?

So, why would you want to employ a field sales team? Because there are legitimate advantages to doing so. Here are four of the most important ones:

Higher quota attainment

Studies show that the average field sales representative has a close rate of 40%. This is much higher than the 18% close rate attained by most inside sales reps.

Because field reps are able to convert leads into paying customers at a more consistent clip, they hit their quotas more often. In fact, the average field sales rep attains quota 65% of the time compared to just 55% of the time for inside sellers.

Stronger customer relationships

Field reps are generally better at building relationships with leads and customers than their inside sales counterparts. It makes sense when you think about it — field reps meet with prospects for in person meetings. They can look them in the eyes, shake their hands, and communicate more naturally. Face-to-face conversations also minimize misunderstandings, which is another relationship booster.

Better for complex sales cycles

Does your company sell complex products? Are they expensive, often requiring multiple decision-makers to greenlight before you get a signed contract in hand?

If so, you should definitely consider building a field sales force.

Field sales allows reps to meet with prospects in-person as we’ve already discussed. This enables them to build stronger, more trusting relationships, which is mandatory when pitching high-priced goods and/or services.

You wouldn’t buy a $10,000+ product from some random stranger who calls you on the phone, would you? Of course not! But you might from the flesh and blood human sitting in front of you—especially if you’ve just been talking for 30 minutes and enjoy their personality.

It’s also much easier to demonstrate complex products in person than it is via video-conferencing technology like Zoom and Google Meet.

Valuable source of customer insights

Last, but certainly not least, field sales allows sellers to glean incredible amounts of customer data. What does your target market struggle with? What do your current customers like and dislike about your products? What new features do they want?

The answers to these questions are usually much easier for field sales reps to attain because they’re able to spend more time with customers and get to know them.

Field Sales Roles And Responsibilities

Now that we’ve covered what field sales is and why it’s important, let’s talk about what field sales representatives actually do on a day to day basis.

Your job description as a field seller will vary depending on the industry you work in and the company you work for. Still, there are common duties that just about every field rep must complete. Let’s take a look at what they are:

Perform daily sales activities

If you’re familiar with sales at all, you know that field sales reps have to identify leads, get in contact with them, and attempt to sell products and/or services. We’ll talk about all of these things in the following sections.

But first, let’s discuss the other things sales reps do on the regular—the less flashy stuff, such as planning routes and updating CRM software.

• Planning Routes: As mentioned previously, field reps spend a significant portion of their on-the-clock hours traveling from prospect to prospect. This allows them to build stronger relationships and close bigger deals more often. But every minute a rep spends in the car is a minute they can’t spend closing deals. That’s why field reps need to minimize windshield time, which they can do by planning efficient routes between prospects. Software like SPOTIO makes this super easy to do. Simply plug in the addresses you need to travel to and SPOTIO will tell you how to get there without wasting time.

• Updating CRMs: CRM software, which is short for customer relationship management software, allows reps to easily store and recall important customer and prospect information. What was that lead’s name and what’s the best way to contact them? Your CRM will tell you—as long as you update it with these details. The best field reps spend time every day updating their CRMs with new information so that it’s there when they need it.

• Scheduling Follow-Ups: Field reps are asked to find prospects, nurture leads, and close deals. To do all this, they have to plan routes, update CRMs, overcome objections, learn about their company’s newest products… It’s a lot! The only way to get it all done is to use technology. Tools like SPOTIO will let you schedule calls and visit reminders, automate emails and text messages to send at specific times, and more. That way nothing falls through the cracks and you can consistently meet quota.

For more information on daily sales activities, read our full article on the topic.

Identify prospects

How do sales reps know who to make sales pitches to? It’s simple: they take time to identify potential customers and then approach them with an offer.

So, if you’re interested in becoming a field sales representative, you’ll need to learn how to identify prospects for your company. There are multiple ways to do this. For example, you can use websites like LinkedIn to source leads. Or you can use SPOTIO Lead Machine.

Image: SPOTIO’s Lead Machine enables reps to filter prospects using 200+ different data points.

Lead Machine is great because it provides 200+ different data points to help users find red-hot leads in the specific territories they’ve already been assigned to work.

Qualify leads

Have you found a few prospects to contact? Great, now you need to qualify them.

Here’s the truth: just because someone can buy your company’s product or service doesn’t mean they will. They might be strapped for cash. They might already use one of your competitor’s products. Maybe they’re just too busy to listen to your sales pitch right now.

You don’t want to waste your valuable time on these kinds of prospects, which is why you should qualify leads before you devote hours to them.

You can qualify your leads by doing online research, having a quick conversation with them, or asking a junior rep in your company to investigate them for you. However you do it, you need to learn if they want what you sell and if they have the money to pay for it.

Engage with leads

Once you’ve found and qualified a lead, you need to engage them. You can do this by calling them, sending a quick email, texting or visiting their place of business.

At this point, your only goal is to build a relationship with the lead. Don’t try to pitch your company’s products or services to sales leads yet — especially if you sell high-end products with serious price tags. That will probably backfire because you haven’t earned the lead’s trust.

Instead, try to book a future appointment with the lead. That way, you can sit down with them, show them the details of your offerings, and, hopefully, start talking about a deal.

Set appointments

To succeed as a field sales representative, you have to make appointments with potential buyers. If you don’t, you’ll have a really hard time closing deals.

Fortunately, if you’ve done a good job identifying prospects, qualifying leads, and engaging with these people, setting appointments should be a walk in the park.

This is especially true if you use a tool like SPOTIO, which syncs with your Google or Outlook Calendar and allows you to easily take notes before, during, and after your meetings. With SPOTIO, all of your prospect data is in one place!

Prepare and deliver sales presentations

Now that you have an appointment booked, you can begin preparing your sales presentation. Make sure you personalize it to the specific lead you plan to meet with!

For example, let’s pretend you sell cutting-edge accounting software. The lead you’re meeting with next week once complained that their current accounting software is difficult to use. As such, the lead’s team wastes hours a week fiddling around with the program.

Address this during your sales presentation. Show the lead how easy your company’s software is and how it will boost the team’s productivity.

When the day arrives, travel to the lead’s place of business at the appointed time and deliver your personalized sales presentation respectfully and professionally.

Build client relationships

You just closed your first deal as a field sales representative — congratulations! But your work isn’t done yet. You need to develop a real relationship with this person so they continue to buy from you.

This is especially important for subscription-based businesses. However, other kinds of companies can benefit from client relationships, too. Once you’ve built them, upsells and cross-sells will become much easier and more frequent.

Challenges for Field Sales Reps

As we’ve just seen, field sales representatives do a lot. So it’s only natural that they run into specific challenges from time to time. Here are four common ones:

Wasting time on admin tasks

Field sales representatives are hired to close deals for their companies, but there are many other things they have to do, too. Administrative tasks such as updating CRM software are necessary but take time away from a seller’s true purpose.

Image: SPOTIO enables reps to automatically log prospect interactions and transfer the data to your CRM.

One of the best ways to overcome this challenge is to invest in SPOTIO, which automatically tracks user sales activities, automates many of their messages with prospects, and otherwise eliminates the busy work reps have to do.

Finding qualified leads

It doesn’t matter how skilled you are, you have to have access to qualified leads to close deals at a consistent clip. The bad news is. Finding qualified leads is tough.

Fortunately, there are plenty of software tools that can help.

SPOTIO’s Lead Machine is a powerful prospecting solution for finding potential buyers. You tell Lead Machine where your territory is, and it narrows down leads using 200+ filters.

Handling sales objections

What do you do when you know that a prospect will benefit from your company’s products and/or services, but, after giving them your pitch, they say, “No thanks.”

You have two options: you can cut bait. Maybe they weren’t that great of a prospect after all and you should focus on other leads. Or, you can dig deeper and try to understand why this lead is rejecting your offer. What objections do they have?

Option one is easier. But option two will help you learn more about your target audience and close more deals. Overcome this challenge, you’ll be more successful.

Optimizing travel time

Finally, we have the dreaded windshield time, i.e. the time that field sales reps spend driving from one prospect to the next. It’s completely necessary. But time behind the wheel is time reps aren’t closing deals, which can be really frustrating.

Once again, SPOTIO can help reps overcome this issue. No, our platform won’t help you teleport from lead to lead. But it will use technology to help you plan the most efficient route between them.

With SPOTIO, you’ll be able to hit all of your leads in the most logical order, saving you time and gas money in the process.

Challenges For Field Sales Managers

Field sales reps aren’t the only ones who have to overcome challenges to succeed. The folks that manage them have struggles, too. Here are six of the most common challenges for field sales managers that you should be aware of:

Mapping and assigning territories

Territory mapping and assignment is essential to success in field sales.

Make your territories too big and your reps won’t be able to adequately cover them. Make them too small and your reps won’t have enough leads to fill their time. Oh, and make sure your territories don’t overlap or your reps will end up fighting over prospects.

Image: SPOTIO helps reps and managers geographically represent CRM data on maps.

Does this challenge make your head spin? Try SPOTIO’s Sales Territory Mapping feature. With it, you can cut territories using geographic boundaries or by drawing on a digital map. This kind of precision will ensure your reps never double up and bump into each other.

Tracking sales activities

As a field sales manager, you need to know how your reps spend their time in the field. It’s not that you don’t trust them to do their work. It’s that you need to understand what sales activities are successful and which aren’t. That way you can plan more effective sales strategies in the future.

SPOTIO offers a rep location tracking feature, which will give you real-time data on where your reps are and where they’ve been. (Note: this feature can be turned off.)

SPOTIO also automatically captures sales activities for reps, which means management professionals can easily see what their reps have and haven’t done. They can then use this information to inform their sales plans.

Maintaining rep productivity

Every department wants to be more productive and field sales is no exception. In fact, one of the biggest challenges sales managers face is making sure their reps maintain peak productivity levels as often as possible.

This is easier to do with tools like SPOTIO. For example, you can use SPOTIO to track your reps movements and activities, as we mentioned in the section above. You can then analyze this information to look for areas of improvement.

Image: SPOTIO GPS rep tracking feature enables managers to track rep location.

Maybe the location data shows your reps crisscrossing their territories as they travel from lead to lead. You can suggest they use SPOTIO’s Route Planning software to make sure they hit each lead in the most logical order.

Preventing leads from falling through the cracks

Is your field sales team underperforming? It might be because your reps aren’t following up with prospects as consistently as they should be.

Fortunately, the solution is simple: help reps develop effective follow-up sales processes. We suggest using SPOTIO’s Autoplays feature for this.

With Autoplays, field sales reps can create customized sequences of events and then automate them. For instance, once a rep secures a new lead, they can create an Autoplay that looks something like this:

• Day 1: Call Prospect
• Day 2: Email Prospect
• Day 3: Visit Prospect
• Day 5: Email Prospect
• Day 7: Call Prospect

Once a sequence is created, Autoplays will do one of two things: either remind your reps to engage their leads in the specific way the sequence tells them to or, if your reps have created email and text message templates, automate the sending of emails and text messages to the lead at the predetermined time.

Tracking rep performance

Are your reps underperforming? You won’t know until you track their performance.

SPOTIO makes it easy to track rep performance. With our platform, managers can see which tasks their reps are performing and the result of each. This will help you determine if reps are underperforming due to a lack of effort or training.

Reducing turnover

The last challenge that field sales managers face is the threat of turnover. If you’ve ever hired a promising sales rep, only to have them bail on you three months later, you know this is true.

Employee turnover is an expensive problem. According to PeopleKeep, it can cost a company up to 213% of a departing team member’s annual salary to replace them.

The sales industry is known for high turnover rates. It’s a demanding job that requires a thick skin, and not everybody can do it.

Still, as a field sales manager, your job is to keep your team on your team. The best way to do this is to create an environment they enjoy participating in.

Building a Successful Field Sales Strategy

Whew, we’ve covered a lot so far. But we aren’t done yet! Let’s talk about how you can build a successful field sales strategy for your company. This is where the rubber meets the road. Let’s make sure you’re ready to ride…

Set attainable goals

First things first, define what you’re trying to achieve via field sales. Do you want to move more products? Improve your department’s close rate? Something else?

Every goal you set for your field sales team should be SMART:

• Specific: Your goals should be clear and completely unambiguous. For example, say, “We’ll boost sales by 20%” instead of “We’ll boost sales.”
• Measurable: You should know exactly how you’ll measure your goals when you set them. “We’ll boost sales by 20%” is measurable. “We’ll make our customers happier” is not, because you can’t accurately gauge happiness.
• Attainable: Your goals should challenge your field sales representatives without pushing them too hard, as this will result in low morale.
• Relevant: Every goal you set should tie back to company objectives. Wanting to “increase upsell opportunities by 15%” is great, but only if these upsell opportunities will help your company achieve its biggest aims.
• Time-Related: Finally, your goals should have set deadlines. “We’ll boost sales by 20% by the end of the fiscal year.” If your goals aren’t time-related, your reps might slack off because there’s no urgency.

Define your sales process

Have you chosen a few SMART goals? Now it’s time to define your sales process. That way you can actually, you know, meet your objectives.

Here’s the truth: when your field sales reps know what to do in each and every scenario, they’ll become much more efficient and effective. Your job, when building a field sales strategy, is to equip your reps for every situation they’ll be in.

So think about your prospects and what it takes to make a sale. Then build a field sales strategy that will help your reps turn strangers into paying customers.

Create a sales compensation plan

There are a lot of ways to compensate your field sales representatives for their efforts. We cover the 10 most popular comp plans in this article.

The right compensation plan for your field sales force will:

• Motivate Your Reps: Are your reps inspired to make more sales? If the answer is “no,” you should consider choosing a new comp plan.
• Boost Rep Performance: Motivated reps are more productive than unmotivated ones. And productive reps generally outperform their unproductive counterparts. Make sure your comp plan motivates reps to perform their best at all times.
• Decrease Rep Turnover: The right comp plan will also help you attract top sellers to your field sales team and keep them employed by your company.

Improve your entire sales department with a quality field sales representative salary and commission structure for your team.

Set and track activity-based KPIs

Field sales is all about action. The most successful field reps are always doing something to close deals and move their careers forward. Help your team out by setting and tracking activity-based KPIs, such as visiting prospects, making calls, and sending emails.

The more of these actions your reps take, the more success they’ll have. And the more success your reps have, the more money your department will generate.

Image: Managers can track sales activity metrics across reps and territories in SPOTIO.

As a sales manager, you can track field sales activities with SPOTIO. With our tool, you’ll be able to tell how many prospects your reps contact on a daily basis, the communication channels they use, and the success rate they have with each one.

You can then use this information to adjust your field sales strategy when necessary.

Prospect with ICP data

If you’re unfamiliar with the term, ICP stands for ideal customer profile. Your company’s ICPs are the people most likely to buy your products and services. These are the folks your field sales reps should spend the most time on!

Your field sales strategy should include detailed ICP data. Your reps can use it when prospecting, preventing them from wasting valuable hours on prospects who will never make a purchase.

When you know your ICPs, you can use SPOTIO’s sales intelligence tool to find ready-to-buy prospects who fit your company’s exact parameters.

Automate tedious admin tasks

In decades past, field sales teams had to manually log prospect interactions, transfer notes to CRM databases, and perform other tedious administrative tasks.

No longer! Tools like SPOTIO allow field sellers to automate many of the “shoot me now” activities that every salesperson hates. This means field reps can focus more of their time on revenue-generating tasks that help them hot and exceed quota.

Assign sales territories strategically

We’ve already discussed how SPOTIO helps field sales managers cut territories. But your field sales strategy needs to cover how territories are assigned, too.

In general, we recommend assigning the most valuable territories to your top performing reps. This will ensure your department, as a whole, closes more of the highest-value deals in its collective pipeline.

Automate sales sequences

You’re building a field sales team. But that doesn’t mean your reps can’t utilize inside sales strategies. If your field reps aren’t using phone calls, emails, and text messages to contact leads, something has gone very wrong with your strategy.

The best thing about emails and text messages is that they can be automated. Imagine how many more sales your department will make when your reps don’t have to manually type out every email and text they send. WAY MORE!

When creating your field sales strategy, build sales sequences that include every communication channel your reps use. Then look to automate your sequences with a tool like SPOTIO’s Autoplays, which will simplify the entire process.

Once your department is set up with Autoplays, your field sales representatives will be able to close more deals in less time, leading to greater success.

Use a consultative selling approach

Consultative sales is a sales strategy where reps take an advisory role rather than a traditional sales role. As such, consultative sales reps recommend solutions to potential customers based on their needs.

Consultative selling helps field reps build trust with their prospects, ultimately allowing them to close more deals.

To adopt a consultative selling approach, simply teach your reps to:

• Actively listen to their prospects’ needs
• Asked questions about their prospects’ challenges and pain points
• Focus on finding solutions for prospects rather than repping products
• Offer insight to prospects without expecting anything in return

If your field reps can learn to do these things, their sales numbers will improve.

Map efficient sales routes

Yes, we’ve already talked about route planning. But it’s so important we need to mention it again in the context of building your field sales strategy.

Windshield time is the Achilles heel of field sales teams. Productivity levels and sales numbers go down when reps spend more time in the car. To minimize this issue, plan your reps’ sales routes in the most efficient way possible.

SPOTIO’s route planning software makes this tedious task a breeze.

Create a healthy level of competition

Salespeople thrive on competition. The trick is building a competitive work environment for your reps that also fosters teamwork and camaraderie.

You can do this with SPOTIO Leaderboards, AKA a digital scoreboard of sorts that displays important metrics such as knocks made, meetings booked, and revenue generated for every field sales representative on your team.

Leaderboards allows reps to see how their efforts stack up against their peers. It can also be used by management professionals to create fun competitions that motivate field sales reps to perform their best at all times.

Align the sales and marketing teams

Sales and marketing aren’t enemies! These two departments should always work together to help propel their company to new heights.

So, when creating your field sales strategy, look for ways to align your organization’s sales and marketing teams. You can do this by increasing communication.

For example, when marketing knows what kind of prospects sales needs, they can pursue more of these leads. And when both departments communicate on goals, they can help each other achieve them rather than fighting against one another.

Track performance metrics

How are your field reps doing? Are they meeting quota? If so, what’s the secret to their success? If not, why are they underperforming? You need to be able to answer these questions! Once again, SPOTIO can help.

Our platform will enable you to track field sales activities for each rep, as we discussed earlier, and the result of each activity they perform.

Want to know which team member has the best close rate? Interested in learning which communication channels work best for your reps? Maybe you just want to make sure that your reps’ pipelines are full. SPOTIO’s new My Reports feature allows reps and managers to quickly and easily build custom reports so that you are only looking at the metrics that matter most to your business.

The information inside SPOTIO will help you adjust your field sales strategy when required, and forecast future results more accurately.

Invest in continual training

Lastly, make sure your field sales strategy prioritizes training.

Field sales training can come in the form of annual conferences, employee events, internal cross-training, job shadowing, department mentorship programs, etc.

We won’t tell you how to train your team because every team is different and should be trained in a different way. What we will say is this: the best field sales departments are always looking for ways to improve their reps’ skill sets.

Boost Field Sales Productivity and Performance

Field sales is an exciting opportunity! Companies that employ these kinds of sellers will be able to sell complex and expensive products more consistently. They’ll also benefit from the stronger client relationships and detailed data these reps dig up.

Field sales representatives have it good, too, as many field sellers make a very healthy living for themselves and their families.

If you’re looking to build a field sales team for your organization, or want to start your career as a field sales rep, you should definitely invest in SPOTIO. Our platform is the ultimate tool for field sales and has been proven to boost revenue by 23%!

Contact our team today for a free demo of our software. See you on the inside!

In this post, we’ll explain how to create a winning sales territory plan, share 10 best practices for sales territory management, and finally, we’ll introduce tools that are helpful for managing sales territories of any size.

What is Sales Territory Management?

Sales territory management is the process of organizing and managing customers and prospects and sorting them by segment (such as geography, industry, or role). It helps sales teams stay organized, evenly distributes workloads, and improves sales productivity.

Types of Territories

In addition to geographical area, territories can be based on other sales data such as:

• Account type
• Industry segment
• Market potential
• Number of customer accounts

Many field sales teams don’t prioritize sales territory planning; even when they do, they often have trouble adapting and revising based on sales performance.

Why is Territory Management Important for Outside Sales Teams?

An effective sales territory management plan helps sales managers allocate resources and improve opportunities for sales teams. These are some of the key advantages of territory management:

Cover territories more strategically

Sales territory management helps your reps be more productive and ensures your best reps work the top territories and accounts. When reps have clear territories, routes, and objectives, they can spend less time planning their days and more time selling.

Assign balanced workloads

Defining territories can help you distribute work evenly across your sales team. Keep in mind, though, that sales territory management is an ongoing process. You may need to realign territories based on new objectives, personnel changes, or other factors.

Build stronger customer relationships

You can plan your territories to match reps with prospects and customers based on specific characteristics, such as personality or customer lifecycle.

8 Steps to Create a Winning Sales Territory Plan

1. Analyze Your Customers

You can plan your territories to match reps with prospects and customers based on specific characteristics, such as personality or customer lifecycle.

Some points to note about your customers are:

• Their locations
• Their budgets
• The products or services they purchase from your business
• What types of problems your products or services solve for them
• What types of events lead customers to buy (or not buy) your products or services
• When was the last time they purchased from you
• How often they purchase products

It’s also important to identify needs within the market that aren’t currently being fulfilled. This can help you to develop targeted messaging about your products or services.

2. Analyze and Develop Your Team and Resources

The next step is to analyze your business’s resources and personnel. You should have an accurate picture of the type and volume of customers that your business can handle.

Note the strengths and weaknesses of your team so you can develop and utilize strengths while simultaneously working to improve any weak areas.

3. Set Measurable Goals

Using the information you gathered about your customers, team, and resources, you should develop goals for your business.

Some goals to consider are:

1. Income generated per month
2. Number of sales attempts per week or month
3. Number of closed sales per week or month
4. Ratio of leads to sales closed per week or month

After identifying goals for your sales territory plan, you should create a measurable strategy for meeting each of these goals.

Each goal strategy should include:

Goal statement: Putting a goal on paper transforms it from abstract to concrete. The goal statement should address what you’re planning to achieve with various sales activities and what’s at stake.

Key milestones and deadline: The road to achieving a goal is much clearer when you break it into several smaller milestones. For example, if your goal is to attain $9k in monthly revenue for a given product, you can track progress by breaking the goal into smaller milestones, such as $3k by day 10, $6k by day 20, etc.

Metrics for measuring success in the field: Metrics such as leads created, leads contacted, and leads closed, available on the SPOTIO sales dashboard, offer great insight into productivity and can reveal how your sales team is working toward goals.

Goals should be realistic and manageable, but at the same time, they should push your sales team to expand and grow.

Need help hitting your goals?

4. Define Sales Territories

Based on the work you performed in the steps above, you should have an idea of how to divide territories.

It’s important to define the details of each territory, such as:

• Geographic boundaries
• Industry or segment boundaries
• Revenue boundaries
• Product boundaries
• Anything else that may be applicable to your sales organization

SPOTIO’s mobile Route Mapping feature.

5. Use A Territory Route Mapping App

Sales territory mapping ensures your sales team has time to visit all accounts in their territory. Planning routes used to be a manual process, but the most efficient sales teams use a route mapping app for this important function.

6. Assign Reps to New Sales Territories

Once you’ve determined your new sales territories, you’ll need to decide which reps will cover them. Start this process by looking at the workload of your current team — you may already have the people you need to cover the new territories, or you might need to hire additional staff.

Ensure reps have the right experience for your new territories. For example, if you have a new territory that includes several warm leads, you might want to assign your best closer to that territory.

7. Monitor Rep and Territory Performance

To ensure you have the right people covering your new territories, you’ll need to review certain sales targets, such as:

• Sales per client — the dollar value of each rep’s sales per client
• New contacts — the number of contacts your sales reps are bringing into pipeline
• Client acquisition rate — the percentage of leads that sales reps are converting into customers
• Event rates — this could be the number of appointments or calls scheduled, follow-up visits, etc.
• Average deal size — this is the average dollar amount per deal

8. Use Field Data Entry – “Notes as you go”

As you implement your sales territory plan, keep an accurate and up-to-date record of its outcomes using your CRM. This record will help you to track successful aspects of your plan, in addition to what parts of the plan are ineffective. Using this information, you can adjust and optimize your best sales territory plan as needed.

Often, reps have multiple meeting blocks and forget valuable nuggets of information they learned from each meeting. With a sales tool like SPOTIO, reps can jot down/add voice notes using their mobile device and sync them directly into Salesforce.

These mobile field notes are immediately available to your entire team, so reps have complete insight into all communication with prospects and clients.

10 Sales Territory Management Best Practices

1. Set Territory-Level Sales Goals

Using the data you’ve gathered about new sales territories, you can define sales goals. These may be specific, quota-based goals — like closing a certain number of deals within a specific time frame or number of visits — or open-ended goals, such as building relationships.

Setting goals is important because it will keep your reps on track. They’ll always know what to work towards next, and you’ll better understand the sales activities they complete every day.

Goals will also help you evaluate your sales department’s efforts. Is your team succeeding? Compare how successful your reps are to achieving the goals you’ve set for them. (Note: to properly track goals, you need to establish specific metrics and KPIs you can use to evaluate individual performance.)

Finally, goals will help you diagnose problems within your department. Are reps failing because they don’t have the necessary skills? Or are they slacking on the job? The right metrics will help you answer these questions. You can then implement a plan to help your reps achieve more team-wide objectives.

2. Prevent Territory Conflict

As a manager, how can you fairly assign territories? And once assigned, how do you ensure reps aren’t poaching accounts from fellow reps? To reduce the risk of territory conflicts, consider the following:

Number of accounts. The reps who perform better with smaller businesses need more accounts than reps who work with large accounts. Although the number of accounts varies, the total possible revenue goal for each rep should be equal.

ZIP Code. Make sure sales routes include a reasonable number of stops, in an order that minimizes travel time between appointments.

Vertical. Some people connect better with specific industries. Once you identify each rep’s strong suit, give them more accounts with the business types they prefer.

3. Prioritize the Most Valuable Territories

Assign your top performers to high-priority territories.

Keep in mind, the term “top performer” is relative. Your rep with the highest sales-per-client may not be right for a territory containing several small businesses that are slower to make purchasing decisions.

The question is how do you match reps to territories? Start by evaluating your salespeople. What are they good at? How much experience do they have? If you were to rank each rep in terms of ability, how would they stack up to each other? And which products do each individual sell the most of?

Next, consider the customers in each territory. Who are these people? What kind of businesses do they run/manage/work for? What’s their potential budget? And are they able to buy right now?

Finally, take what you know about your reps and the potential customers in each territory and find ideal pairings. For example, you might put your most prolific seller in a territory with buy-ready leads because the short sales cycles will help them close a ton of deals in a minimum amount of time.

Then you could put your second best seller in a territory with the highest-value prospects. They might not close as many deals as your top rep, but they’ll come close. And this configuration will allow each of your top sellers to excel, which will maximize overall revenue numbers for your organization.

4. Track Mileage and Expenses

Outside reps with a lot of ground to cover should receive some degree of compensation for their travel expenses (gas, meals, and basic vehicle maintenance).

Not sure what reimbursement plan is best? We’ve got you covered:

Mileage as a tax deduction

Full-time sales reps and independent salespeople can claim mileage as a tax deduction. The mileage works as an expense, and those with intensive sales routes can write off the standard rate for every mile they drive for work.

Standard mileage reimbursement

Mileage rates are subject to change in each tax year. The standard rates are determined based on market research that determines normal expense ranges for using a vehicle. The 2024 IRS rate for normal business use is 67 cents per mile.

Reimbursement based on sales routes

Salespeople are often reimbursed for mileage using the standard rates or a rate increase based on individual company policies.

Tracking mileage

Diligent mileage tracking is critical for reimbursement. Sales reps must document every mile to receive reimbursement or claim a tax deduction.

A spreadsheet that lists the date, starting mileage, ending mileage, total miles, and notes is easy to store on a clipboard and update daily. Mileage-tracking phone apps are also convenient; they track trips and allow sales reps to make notes about each trip. The best way to track mileage, however, is to use an automated feature — like SPOTIO Mileage Tracking — that records all trips without sales reps needing to remember to log their miles.

5. Create a Rotating Schedule for Contacting Customers

Your reps should contact customers regularly to ensure that their needs are being met. Create a schedule that defines when to contact prospects and customers, and specify the medium — phone call, email, or in-person visit.

SPOTIO’s scheduling and status view.

6. Meet Needs of Current Accounts While Finding New Leads

The best sales territory management plan should have a dual focus of providing services to high-value accounts while developing relationships with potential new accounts.

High-value accounts are those guaranteed to bring in a higher volume of sales in shorter amounts of time, compared to other accounts. While high-value accounts require attention, it’s also important to cultivate new accounts that will help your company grow.

7. Consider the Seasonal Needs of Customers

Depending on the type of products or services your business provides, your customers may have more seasonal needs. Consider this when deciding when to contact customers and prospects.

Identifying Seasonal Trends

Does your business change based on the calendar? If you’re in solar sales, for example, sales might dip in the winter months, though this likely depends on where your customers are based.

A potential customer in Montana, where the days are short and the snowfall is measured in feet, might not see the benefits of solar in January. But a customer in Arizona, where the sun always shines, will.

This is just one example. There are plenty of other seasonal trends you should watch out for. When you find one or two, apply them to your sales process to see how it affects your bottom line.

Strategic Planning

Identifying season trends is one thing. Adjusting your sales strategy to accommodate your findings is another. You need to get strategic and put your sales reps in the best position to succeed.

Don’t be afraid to change tactics, reconfigure sales territories, or even abandon certain areas altogether if they don’t produce sales. Sales reps can always revisit old territories in the future when they have a better chance to close a deal. Put thought into where your reps should be at all times.

8. Ensure Reps Can Access and Update Data In Real Time

Use technology that allows your sales representatives to update and access customer data in real time. That way all reps can view the most current customer information when needed.

Benefits of Real-Time Data

For our purposes, real-time data can be described as immediate information related to sales activities. Once you and your team have access to real-time data, you’ll enjoy a few benefits:

• Better Engagement: Real-time data will tell reps when prospects take specific actions, like visiting a website or clicking on a link in an email. They can then cater their sales tactics accordingly. This will lead to better prospect engagement, and eventually, more sales. Speaking of which…
• Increased Revenue: Real-time data allows sales reps to engage with prospects at opportune moments. This will help them close more deals, which will produce more revenue. Reps can also use real-time data to take advantage of upsell and cross-sell opportunities.
• Improved Forecasting: Real-time data will give you the information you need to make accurate sales forecasts. You’ll always know which stage of the pipeline prospects are in, and crucially, how long it typically takes prospects to progress to later stages. This will make forecasting easier.
• Sales Coaching Opportunities: Finally, real-time data will tell you how your reps perform in the moment. You can use this information to adjust your coaching efforts. A rep might generate tons of leads, for example, but close very few of them. If so, you can teach them new closing techniques to help them make sales at a consistent clip and increase revenue for your company.

9. Keep Thorough And Up-To-Date Customer Notes

Any communication with customers should be documented and accessible to sales representatives. Notes may include personal information such as the customer’s favorite food, in addition to more sales-specific information such as the customer’s budget.

SPOTIO’S note-taking function.

10. Monitor Sales Territory Performance

Frequently review the performance of sales territories and look for trends that might indicate adjustments are necessary. A territory that’s not performing as expected may be a sign that some fundamental factors about it have changed (such as businesses in the area closing or relocating), or that the territory quality is not ideal.

6 SPOTIO Features For Effective Sales Territory Management

1. Customer Mapping

What it does: Customer mapping software allows you to create a map of your territories. You can drop pins on specific locations, which allows you to track routes within territories.

SPOTIO’s territory management view with colored map pins.

Why it’s important:Customer mapping software can help you optimize sales routes. With SPOTIO’s Precise Location Tool, you can drop pins on a map, creating a visual way to design the most logical sales routes. This saves valuable time and money and helps your reps introduce more customers to your product or service.

2. Sales Tracking

What it does: Outside sales tracking enhances the sales process by providing real-time updates about the locations and activities of sales representatives in all your different territories.

Another view of SPOTIO’s sales tracking feature.

Why it’s important: This feature saves managers time by providing a quick and easy method to map out and assign territories to sales reps. It also helps managers quickly recognize areas where sales reps may be struggling and highlight any need for additional coaching or training.

3. Territory Manager

What it does: The SPOTIO Territory Manager enables managers to create custom maps of different territories for assignment to sales reps.

SPOTIO’S color-coded sales territory management view.

Why it’s important: The ease with which territories can be created, assigned, and viewed means that managers will no longer have to spend hours reviewing physical maps and manually drawing out territories.

4. Route Planner

What it does: SPOTIO Route Planner simplifies routes, making each day in the field as efficient as possible.

Why it’s important: This tool lets reps focus on driving and what they’re going to say in their next meeting. In addition, it can help them avoid unexpected delays by automatically rerouting to account for street closures or heavy traffic.

5. Lead Machine

What it does: Lead Machine is a lead management tool that organizes information related to leads and provides it to users in an easy-to-understand format.

Why it’s important: This tool helps to generate more sales by ensuring that leads are organized and easy to access.

6. My Reports

What it is: My Reports is a SPOTIO feature that lets managers and reps easily create reports using a variety of metrics. Once you set up your reports, you can store them in the cloud and share them with team members.

Why it’s important: This new feature allows users to zero in on the KPIs that are most important for sales territory management and access reports via mobile when in the field. Create reports by sales territory, by sales rep, or for specific metrics across your entire organization.

FAQ

How should I divide sales territories?

While managers generally consider geography when splitting up territories, you may also want to consider factors such as prospect company size, number of opportunities, and short-term versus long-term potential. Also, consider the strengths within your sales teams. One sales rep may be a great closer, while another is best at fostering new relationships.

How do you manage territories in Salesforce?

Managing territories in Salesforce is easy, with SPOTIO’s integration features. (See our blog post on this topic for more information).

Will SPOTIO integrate with my CRM and essential business apps?

SPOTIO integrates with more than 2,000 apps, including Zoho CRM, HubSpot CRM, and Netsuite ERP.

Our business has national, regional, and local territories. How would I set up those territories in SPOTIO?

With SPOTIO, you can set up territory hierarchies, giving managers access to all territory data, but restricting sales rep access to any parent territory data.

Simplified Sales Territory Management

Sales territory management can help your business grow by collecting and organizing all information and automating administrative tasks.

SPOTIO’s cloud-based territory management software gives you the insights you need to effectively manage your sales team and helps reps keep track of important information when they’re in the field.

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SPOTIO is the #1 field sales engagement and territory management app to increase your revenue, maximize your profitability, and increase your team’s productivity in just 2 weeks.

Want to see a product demonstration? Click here to see how SPOTIO can take your sales game to the next level.

But generating more sales is only part of the equation.

While sales effectiveness does well to improve conversions, there’s another component that should be a priority: sales efficiency.

Sales efficiency is the key to not only generating more sales for your business but also streamlining your sales processes so that you get more sales, faster.

In this guide, we’ll cover what sales efficiency is, why it’s essential to your business, and 12 ways to make your sales process more efficient than ever.

What is Sales Efficiency?

So, what is sales efficiency? How is it different from sales effectiveness?

Let’s dive into the definitions.

Sales Efficiency vs. Sales Effectiveness

Sales effectiveness refers to your sales team’s ability to convert prospects into leads — and eventually paying customers or clients — at each stage of your sales funnel. If your sales process is effective, you will experience more “wins” than losses every step of the way.

Sales efficiency refers to the speed of your sales operations. That is, how quickly you are able to convert users into leads/sales and while still generating the highest return on your investment. It is the revenue your sales team generates relative to the cost.

A sales process that is both efficient and effective will help reps close sales in a reasonable time frame, at a sustainable cost, and on the right terms.

Why Sales Efficiency & Effectiveness Should Be Your #1 Priority

Your sales team closing the majority of new prospects isn’t always an indication of success.

While sales quotas continue to rise, only 47% of B2B sales organizations hit their targets. The fact that the average sales rep only spends 39% of their time selling. As such, sales efficiency is key.

Calculating your sales efficiency is the best way to determine whether your business is on track. If there’s room for improvement, you will need both sales efficiency and sales effectiveness to move the revenue needle.

How Do You Calculate Sales Efficiency?

Here’s a simple formula you can use to calculate sales efficiency in a specific period:

$ Value Of New Revenue / (Sales + Marketing Costs)

For instance, if you earn $8,000 in new Q2 revenue and spend $4,000 on sales and marketing in that quarter, your efficiency score is 2.
Your sales process is efficient if your score is 2 or higher. A score of 1 indicates that your company is essentially breaking even, and a score of less than 1 means you’re spending more than you’re earning.

What is a Good Sales Efficiency Ratio?

A good sales efficiency ratio is between one and three. In other words, it should take your company 4 to 12 months for revenue to cover sales and marketing costs. If your company’s number is lower than this, you need to increase efficiency. If it’s higher, your sales team is on fire. Keep doing what you’re doing!

12 Ways to Improve Sales Efficiency

If your business is struggling with sales efficiency, just know that you are not alone. Many business owners are making sales efficiency their #1 priority, and you can too.

Here are 12 ways sales managers and sales teams can improve sales efficiency in your business.

1. Set Business Goals and KPIs

The first step in laying out your sales efficiency plan is to clarify your goals and how you will measure success.

Are your sales reps expected to close a set number of sales per month? A certain amount per sale? Make sure those expectations are set from the beginning.

We highly recommend using the SMART goals method to set goals that are measurable and realistic.

For example, your goal could be: Increase sales by 17% by the end of the next quarter.

Once you are clear on what your goals are, and what KPIs you’ll use to measure success, make sure you track sales activity closely. Identify any bottlenecks and fix problems in a timely manner to improve sales efficiency.

2. Identify Your Ideal Customer

Half of sales time is wasted on unproductive prospecting.

To make sure you’re going after the right prospects, you can use sales intelligence tools like SPOTIO’s Lead Machine to pull from 200+ data points, including demographics, location, and contact information.

Building your ideal customer avatar consists of four main components:

1. WHO they are (demographics)
2. WHERE they are (location)
3. WHAT they want (pain points and needs)

With this information, your sales team can focus on pitching exactly what your potential customers want to hear without wasting time on specs that won’t be of interest to them.

3. Create a Repeatable Sales Process

If you want your sales team to be efficient, you must outline a repeatable, consistent sales process. Having a go-to guide for qualifying leads, selling at the right moment, collaborating with the team, and other important sales tasks will help reps work better and faster.

The key steps in sales processes are:

1. Preparation & Research. Know the scope of your product, your ideal customer’s wants and needs, and your company’s unique selling point.
2. Prospecting. This includes the search for potential customers with the goal of moving them down your sales funnel. Detailed customer data can help you identify promising prospects.
3. Needs Assessment. This is a way for your sales team to dig deeper into what the prospect needs and what issue(s) they are trying to solve. That way, reps can custom-tailor a solution for them.
4. Pitch & Presentation. This is where your sales rep communicates the value of your product to the customer. It’s best that your rep establishes trust and hones in on what benefits your potential customer is looking for. Then they present your product as the ideal solution.
5. Objection Handling. The customer may have questions or concerns. Addressing objections presents another opportunity to establish trust and communicate how you are different from your competitors.
6. Closing. This is when the sale is made or the proposal is sent.
7. Follow-Up. Referrals are the highest converting lead source. Follow-up with customers to encourage referrals and repeat business.

Creating a sales process and tailoring it for each prospect can be rather time consuming. But with Autoplays, you can create automated outreach sequences for each prospect and funnel stage to ensure no lead falls through the cracks.

Creating a clear sales process ensures that reps are following the same step at every stage, and it can help you identify holes in the process. If leads are dropping off right before the close, you will be able to see this issue and address it quickly.

4. Define Daily, Weekly and Monthly Sales Activities

Sales activities are routine steps that bring new leads into the pipeline. Some examples include:

• Contacting new prospects
• Pitching your solution
• Following-up
• Creating awareness about what you have to offer
• Assigning territories
• Route planning

5. Align Sales and Marketing Teams

Often, miscommunication between marketing and sales teams causes inefficiency.

In fact, only 35% of salespeople think that the marketing team knows what content they need, and only a third of sales and marketing teams talk regularly. This is obviously a problem.

When marketing and sales teams are on different pages, the entire company suffers. For example, sales reps might not understand how marketing talks about products. And the handoff from one department to the other often lacks context, which enables sales reps to make sales at a consistent clip.

Fortunately, aligning both teams can solve these kinds of issues. Here’s how to do it:

• Create Shared Goals: Marketing and sales teams should work towards common objectives. A single objective, such as company revenue, will help ensure marketing and sales alignment.
• Build Personas Together: If your marketing and sales teams have different buyer personas, you’re going to have issues. Ask both departments to create unified personas. That way marketing produces the kinds of leads that sales can actually close on a regular basis.
• Commit to Communication: Finally, make sure marketing and sales professionals talk every month—if not every week. Is marketing able to generate the right kind of leads? Does sales need to change their approach based on marketing’s strategy? These are important questions. By communicating on a regular basis, you’ll be able to answer them and improve revenue.

6. Train Your Sales Reps Effectively

Did you know that 82% of B2B decision-makers think sales reps are unprepared?

Without proper training, sales reps may waste time and resources on approaches that don’t work, pitch to a customer too early, or draw out the sales process.

Sales managers should require new hires to go through in-depth training about effective prospecting and selling. It should address any common questions that sales reps may have during the process, as well as tips on how to handle objections from customers.

Providing ongoing training will also help your team stay sharp and up-to-date on the latest selling techniques.

7. Assign Sales Territories Strategically

Image: Screenshot of the SPOTIO territory management interface.

Strategic rep assignment is one way to prevent redundancies in your sales process. That is, it ensures that no sales reps are selling to the same areas/leads at the same time.

We recommend assigning your top reps to the most lucrative territories to ensure a better close rate on those high-ticket offers. Check out our guide on Sales Territory Management for tips on how to create your own efficient rep assignment strategy.

8. Reduce Windshield Time

Driving from meeting to meeting has a huge impact on a rep’s daily efficiency. Mapping efficient routes maximizes the amount of time reps spend selling and reduces their time on the road.

Route planning software is the best way to reduce driving time for reps when they’re in the field. You can use it to:

• Cutdown windshield time
• Easily find the most efficient route to one or multiple meetings
• Map and plan your day in a single tap

9. Sell to Customer Needs

The research you conducted around your ideal client persona will tell you what issues your potential customers are struggling with, what they need, and what they want.

Understanding their needs and articulating how your product is the best solution is the surest way to win them over.

While your competitors are hitting on all the features of their products, you will be speaking directly to your target customer’s strongest pain points. If you are able to drive home the benefits, it should be a straightforward sale for you.

10. Manage and Nurture Leads Effectively

Nurtured leads produce, on average, a 20% increase in sales opportunities versus non-nurtured leads.

It’s always easier to sell to a “warm” lead — someone who is familiar with your brand and has been primed for the sale — than a “cold” one. That’s why it’s essential to have a lead nurturing process.

The best system for doing this is a centralized CRM or lead management system. This software allows your sales team to see where prospects are at in the sales cycle so that they can follow up with them in the right way at the right time.

A CRM tool will increase sales efficiency by:

• Notifying your team when to follow up
• Helping your team tailor communications to where prospects are in the sales cycles
• Assigning priority to prospects that are farther down the sales funnel

11. Work on the Basics

Sometimes the easiest and fastest way to improve sales efficiency is to brush up on the basics. No matter how long you have been in business or how precise your processes are, there’s always room for improvement.

Fine-tune your sales process by considering new ways to find prospects, present sales pitches, or conduct follow-ups. Don’t be afraid to look at your existing system from a different perspective.

12. Maximize Rep Productivity

A recent study found that sales reps spend just 28% of their time on selling. That means that the rest of the time is spent on non-selling tasks like traveling, attending meetings, or data entry.

There are many handy tools that you and your team can use to maximize your time and efficiency. For example, reps can use the SPOTIO app to create notes when they’re in the field, and the information automatically syncs to your CRM. That eliminates the need for time-consuming data entry at the end of the day.

Look for opportunities to automate routine sales tasks that free up more time for reps to focus on sales.

4 Sales Efficiency Metrics To Start Tracking

The goal of a sales team is to be selling for as many hours in their working day as possible. With the sales efficiency metrics below you can learn just how efficient your current sales process is.

1. Customer Acquisition Cost & Customer Lifetime Value

Cost of acquisition, or CAC, is an essential metric for understanding efficiency as it lets you know if your resources are being allocated in the best way. Here’s the formula for calculating CAC for a specific period:

CAC = Total Marketing Spend / # Of New Customers

Cost of acquisition, or CAC, is an essential metric for understanding efficiency as it lets you know if your resources are being allocated in the best way.

Next, you’ll want to calculate your customer lifetime value (CLTV). The closer these two numbers are, the more unsustainable your sales process is. It also goes without saying that your CAC shouldn’t exceed your LTV.

A good LTV:CAC ratio benchmark is 3:1

CLTV = Avg. Value Of Purchases x # of Sales x Contract Length

Tracking your average customer acquisition cost over time also helps your company make smart decisions.

2. Lead Response Time

How long does it take sales reps to respond to new leads? According to recent research, 88% of customers want an email response within one hour. So, efficient follow-up can be crucial to a sale.

If you find that certain sales reps are falling behind in response time, it may be time for retraining. If lead response times seem to be gradually increasing, that could be a sign that the workload per sales rep is too much, and you may need to hire additional help.

3. Number of Sales Calls Per Rep

While analyzing sales efficiency on a team-wide basis is useful, it only tells a partial story. You also need to track sales metrics such as the number of sales calls or visits per week per team member.

Taking into account pre-call research, the actual call, and post-call CRM updates, you should allow an average of 7.5 minutes for each cold call.

60 Minutes / 7.5 Minutes Per Call = 8 Cold Calls Per Hour.

This metric helps you assess performance, as well as team member strengths and weaknesses.

4. Frequency of Customer Contact

Building trust with the prospect is an important aspect of an optimized sales process. By tracking the rate of client outreach, you can make sure your team is putting in the right amount of time to create a long-lasting relationship.

You can also use this data to understand what sales tactics work best with your customers.You may find that more touch points convert better for certain customer personas.

Boost Your Sales Efficiency

Sales efficiency is the #1 priority for businesses that want to close more sales and get the best ROI for their sales investment.

Close rate alone is not an accurate measure of sales success; there are many metrics to track and steps to take along the way to ensure that your sales productivity is at its highest.

Is your sales team as efficient as it could be?

See how SPOTIO can boost your company’s sales efficiency, qualify prospects, and develop better processes. Request your demo today.

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SPOTIO is the #1 field sales engagement and performance management software that will increase revenue, maximize profitability, and boost sales productivity.

The Winner’s Edge: Secrets of High-Performing Sales Teams

Understanding the State of Field Sales:

SPOTIO’s State of Field Sales study surveyed hundreds of field sales representatives, managers, and leaders to uncover the most pressing challenges and the best practices driving success. Our goal is to equip sales professionals with the tools and knowledge needed to excel in today’s competitive landscape.

Top Challenges in Field Sales:

Field sales teams face a range of challenges, both external and internal. Externally, a slowing economy, intense competition, and shifting customer buying behaviors are common hurdles. Internally, teams struggle with high rep turnover, management difficulties, and a lack of accountability. These obstacles can significantly impact sales performance and quota attainment.

Quota Attainment—A Critical Metric:

One of the most striking findings from our study is that, on average, only 53% of B2C field sales teams achieve their quotas. This statistic underscores the importance of adopting strategies and practices that can drive better results. During the webinar, we discussed six key steps to sales success that high-performing teams consistently implement.

Six Steps to Sales Success:

Metrics Matter:

• Visibility into sales activities is crucial. High-performing teams prioritize sales performance management, giving them a 23% edge over others. By leveraging sales tracking and visibility, teams can make informed decisions that create processes to boost performance.

Improved Decision-Making:

• Data-driven decision-making allows managers to identify top-performing reps and areas needing improvement. This approach leads to better resource allocation and targeted support for underperforming reps. Enhanced visibility into sales processes helps streamline sales enablement efforts.

Effective Talent Management:

• Clear visibility into performance data helps reduce rep turnover by showing a transparent path to success. Quick ramp-up times for new hires ensure that they contribute to the team’s success sooner. Automating tasks and using efficient processes further enhances productivity.

Enhanced Sales Forecasting:

• Accurate and timely data helps predict sales outcomes, reducing the end-of-month or quarter uncertainty. This reliability in forecasting leads to more strategic planning and execution, ensuring that sales targets are met.

Streamlined Processes:

• Simplifying and refining sales processes is key to improving productivity. Automating tasks allows reps to focus on high-value activities such as sales prospecting and closing deals. This efficiency ensures that teams can maintain a high level of performance consistently.

Empowering Sales Prospecting:

• Providing reps with the right tools for sales prospecting is essential. High-performing teams equip their reps with mobile-ready tech solutions that offer real-time data and insights. This empowers reps to engage with prospects more effectively and close deals faster.

Polling Insights:

• During the webinar, participants identified qualifying leads, competition, and changes in customer buying behavior as top challenges. Interestingly, inflation, economy, and lack of visibility were not highlighted as significant concerns, emphasizing the importance of internal processes and tools.

Actionable Insights:

• Emphasize the importance of top-of-funnel metrics.
• Use data to compare rep performance and identify areas for improvement.
• Foster a culture of continuous improvement and accountability.

Summary:

We encourage everyone to ask questions and engage with SPOTIO. The 4th edition of “State of Field Sales” report is available for those seeking deeper insights into field sales success. 

By focusing on these takeaways, field sales managers can better understand the current landscape, address challenges more effectively, and implement strategies to enhance their team’s performance and achieve higher quota attainment.

Recent research shows that 63% of manufacturers consider marketing a “high priority”. It makes sense: good marketing produces quality leads, who can then be sold to by sales teams.

The question is, how do you market your manufacturing business effectively? The tips and tricks in this article will help. Once you implement them, you’ll fill your pipeline with industrial sales leads.

Let’s get started!

9 Ways to Generate Qualified Manufacturing Sales Leads

Does manufacturing lead generation make your head spin? These nine strategies will simplify this all-important task for your sales team. That way you can engage more prospects and close more deals.

Define Your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP)

Who does your manufacturing business sell to?

You need to have intimate knowledge of these companies. For example, you should know what industry they’re in, how many people they employ, and the amount of revenue they produce. You should also know what the buyers at these companies’ goals are and the challenges they face on a daily basis.

When you have these details, assemble them into an ideal customer profile (ICP). If you’re unfamiliar with the term, an ICP is a fictional character that represents your target audience. It should include demographic and psychographic information, like we discussed in the paragraph above.

Prospect With ICP Data

Now that you’ve created an ICP for your sales team, you can use it to find quality leads.

What does that look like in real life? If you’re a SPOTIO user, navigate to our platform’s Lead Machine feature and use the filters to find leads that match your ICP. For example, you might search for automotive companies that have been in business for 10+ years and produce $1M+ annual revenue.

If you’re not a SPOTIO user, compare the leads you generate via other means to your ICP. Those that match can be added to your CRM and contacted. Those that don’t can be cut loose.

Use a Multi-Channel Approach

Quality manufacturing leads won’t help your business if they just sit in your CRM. You need to contact these companies and pitch them your products. Just make sure you do it the right way.

What is the “right way” you ask? Take a multi-channel approach. In other words, contact your leads through a variety of channels, like in-person visits, phone calls, emails, and text messages.

This will help you and/or your sales reps generate more responses. After all, potential customers have options if they decide to engage. They’re not forced to call you back if they hate talking on the phone. They can send you a quick text message instead to start the sales process.

SPOTIO’s industry-leading Multi-Channel Communication feature will automatically log customer interactions for your sales reps. It can also be used to automate email and text message sequences.

Purchase Lead Lists

What if you didn’t have to generate your own manufacturing sales leads? What if they were handed to you on a silver platter? Would you be interested in that? Then let’s talk about lead lists.

A lead list is exactly what it sounds like: a list of leads that sales teams can contact and pitch products or services to. You can buy them from lead generation companies. Just make sure the company you work with is reputable, the leads on the list match your ICP, and you have enough budget.

A lot of sales teams have been burned by lead lists. Many of the lists out there are full of low-quality prospects—or prospects that your competitors have already contacted. That said, if you find the right list, it can pour rocket fuel on your sales efforts. This is especially true if your sales team is brand new.

Attend Trade Shows And Events

Trade shows and other industry events can be a great way to meet manufacturing leads.

Buy tickets to these gatherings and attend the networking sessions. Better yet, purchase a booth and run product demos in the exhibition hall. Do what it takes to connect with potential buyers.

While this isn’t the most cost effective manufacturing lead generation tip—event tickets, airfare, lodgings, etc. aren’t cheap—it can produce some of the best leads. Almost every person you meet will be your target audience. And they’ll actually want to talk about manufacturing with you. Win!

Optimize Your Website for Conversion

Your company’s website can be an incredible source of manufacturing sales leads. You just have to optimize it first. Here are a few tips to help in this area:

• Match the design of your website to your brand’s identity
• Ensure your site is responsive and looks good on mobile devices
• Make it easy to navigate to different web pages and contact your sales team
• Offer valuable resources in exchange for email addresses (more on this below)
• Take advantage of search engine optimization (SEO) techniques and use keywords

Website optimization is a BIG topic. But the tips above will get you started. Do your best to implement them. Then experiment with different ideas to see if you can increase your manufacturing leads.

Use Gated Resources to Capture Leads

As mentioned above, you can offer valuable resources in exchange for contact information. Said contact information can then be used to engage potential customers in the sales process.

“Valuable resources” come in all shapes and sizes. You can offer ebooks on relevant topics. Or case studies that explain how past customers benefited from your company’s solutions. Or research reports that reveal important information about your industry. Or anything else your target audience wants.

Collect and Promote Social Proof

Reviews and testimonials and other forms of social proof build trust.

Once you have them on your website, you’ll generate more industrial sales leads because your target audience will have confidence in your brand. They’ll think, “These other companies enjoy working with this manufacturer. Why wouldn’t we enjoy the process too?” Then they’ll agree to listen to your sales pitch.

The best way to collect social proof is to simply ask your best customers to review your company on relevant websites. If they’re up for it, ask if you can interview them for a case study as well.

Nurture Leads With a CRM

Last but not least, use a CRM to nurture new leads.

You can do this by contacting potential customers at regular intervals. For example, you might contact them the first time to see if they want to buy your products. Then contact them again to share an industry article you read. Then contact them a third time to see if their needs have recently changed.

You’ll want to track all of your follow-up messages in your CRM. That way you know exactly who you contacted, when you contacted them, and what you contacted them about.

Not sure which CRM to use for your manufacturing company? Give SPOTIO a shot!

Engage Manufacturing Sales Leads With SPOTIO

Your business won’t grow without a steady stream of manufacturing leads. After reading this article, you know exactly how to generate them. Now you just need to implement the tips we shared.

You know what else will help with manufacturing lead generation? A quality CRM and sales engagement platform like SPOTIO. Use our tool to find potential customers, schedule appointments, automate communications, track sales, build custom reports, close deals, and a whole lot more.

Sign up for a free demo of SPOTIO today to see if it’s the right solution for your manufacturing company.

This is especially true in the distribution industry. Proper territory management will help your sales team optimize sales coverage, provide better customer service, boost efficiency, and more. The question is, how do you manage your territories effectively? That’s what we’ll discuss in this article!

Read on to learn everything you need to know about territory management for distributors, including its importance, key factors to consider, and best practices to make sure things go smoothly.

The Importance of Territory Management for Distributors

Effective territory management can have a significant impact on your sales numbers.

This is because success in this area often leads to streamlined operations, better customer service, and more sales opportunities. Let’s take a close look at each of these important benefits:

Streamlined Operations

Sales territory management will help you balance your sales resources appropriately.

For example, you can reduce travel time for busy reps by focusing their efforts on specific geographical areas. This will make them more efficient, and save your company money in travel-related expenses.

Proper territory management also accounts for market potential. By aligning reps’ sales capacity with the number of buyers in a certain area, you’ll ensure each rep maintains peak productivity. After all, they’ll have plenty of prospects to contact, but not so many that they get bogged down in minor details.

Better Customer Service

As mentioned above, territory management prevents distribution companies from overextending their sales teams. This means reps can respond to inquiries quicker, leading to higher customer satisfaction.

Also worth mentioning, territory management is a form of segmentation, which will enable your reps to implement personalized sales plans. For example, reps can learn about the specific pain points and behaviors of prospects in their territory—then devise custom strategies to win new business.

Increased Sales Opportunities

Lastly, territory management for distributors often leads to more sales.

How so? It’s pretty simple: effective territory management allows sales reps to spend more time finding quality prospects, catering to existing customers, and uncovering new opportunities.

This is all possible because reps receive balanced workloads. As such, they aren’t responsible for an unrealistic number of prospects/customers and can better serve their target audience.

Key Factors to Consider For Distributor Sales Teams

As you can see, the benefits of sales territory optimization are impressive.

Of course, you have to cut your territories the right way to enjoy these benefits. Otherwise, you and your sales team will experience the same challenges you already do.

Thankfully, territory management for distributors supports a wide range of market segments, including customer size and geography, as well as specific product types and customer needs. You just need to focus on a few key factors to find success. Those key factors are:

Market Potential

Market potential can be defined as the revenue a certain territory could generate.

A territory’s market potential is typically influenced by demographics, such as population and income levels. Though, it should be said that broader industry trends can affect market potential as well.

To succeed at territory management for distributors, your reps need to understand their territories, AKA the greater metropolitan areas they’ve been assigned. When they grasp customer buying habits and trade patterns in their specific territories, they’ll be able to optimize their sales strategies and close more deals.

Your competition can also impact market potential. Fortunately, you can overcome this challenge by training reps to showcase your company’s unique advantages to potential customers.

Sales Team Capabilities

Think about the reps on your sales team. Which of them is most likely to close a big deal for your team?

Generally speaking, the most successful sales reps are the ones who spend the most time selling. In other words, they’re reps who minimize admin tasks—often through the smart use of technology. These are the reps that should be assigned to the areas with the highest sales potential.

But this isn’t the only factor to consider. The strengths of your sales reps should also be matched to the needs of each territory. Together, these two rules of thumb will help your company drive more revenue.

Finally, account for rep capacity. Rep A might be the best pure salesperson on your team. But if they’re already swamped with other prospects, you should probably assign new leads and/or territories to Rep B.

In a nutshell, effective territory management pairs top sellers with high-potential sales areas, while accounting for territory needs, as well as each individual rep’s strengths and current workload.

Geographical Constraints

Last but not least, consider the physical space you ask your reps to manage.

Territory size is an important factor. Large areas usually contain more prospects and take longer to traverse, both of which could lead to less productivity and higher travel expenses.

There’s no hard and fast rule for territory size. Just make sure that your reps aren’t overwhelmed by potential customers and can serve each of them in the ways they deserve.

We should also talk about the unpredictability of field sales. A prospect might cancel a meeting with one of your reps. Another meeting might run longer than your rep intended.

When reps have the right insights (like the insights available in SPOTIO), they can maximize their time in the field. When meetings get canceled, for example, reps can access the SPOTIO mobile app, pinpoint other opportunities in their territory, and make a spontaneous visit to a different potential customer. Doing so will help reps stay productive—but it’s only possible if territories are designed correctly.

Territory Management Best Practices For Distributors

Territory management for distributors isn’t rocket science. But it does require a strategic approach. The best practices below will keep you and your sales department on the right track:

Clearly Define Each Territory

Your reps should never think, “Wait, where does my territory end again?” They should have clearly defined borders. Luckily, you can define said borders in a myriad of ways. For example, there are:

• Geographic boundaries
• Industry boundaries
• Revenue boundaries
• Product boundaries

In other words, you can define territory boundaries however you want. Just make sure that the parameters you choose make sense for your company and are explicitly clear to your sales reps.

Segment High-Value Sales Territories

Once you’ve decided how you want to segment territories, you can pinpoint high-value areas.

A “high-value” area is a territory with a lot of sales potential. You want to assign these locations to your best available reps. Just remember, “best” is relative. Your highest revenue earner might not be an ideal fit if they specialize in enterprise sales and the territory in question is geared towards small businesses.

Also, like we talked about in a previous section, you don’t want to overwhelm your salespeople. One of your reps might be perfect for a certain territory. But if they’re already busy with other prospects you should give the territory to someone else on your team. Or, at the very least, assign the first rep’s current prospects to another seller so they can focus their energy on the new territory you want to give them.

Focus On Existing Customers

Most sales departments put a special focus on finding and converting new leads. But don’t forget about your existing customers. These people/companies are potential goldmines for two reasons:

1. They’ve already purchased your product(s). If they enjoyed the process, they’re much more likely to buy from you again—and you won’t have to go through the same song and dance as before.
2. They can provide you with cheap, high quality leads, AKA referrals. Referred leads are more likely to buy from you than cold leads because there’s built-in trust. Don’t forget to ask for referrals!

Tools like SPOTIO make it easy to visualize existing customers on a visual map. Doing so will make it much easier to draw territories that include previous buyers, and thus increase your referral rate.

Balance Rep Workloads

When it comes to territory management for distributors, balanced workloads are essential.

Strike out in this area and some of your reps will be so bogged down by prospects they’ll make mistakes. Said mistakes could lead to missed opportunities, lost sales, and a tarnished reputation.

Other reps won’t have enough prospects to sell to, which will lead to discontentment. Said discontentment could lead to department in-fighting. Friendly competition between sales reps is a good thing. (Side note: foster competition with leaderboards.) But an all-out war for potential customers is very, very bad.

The best way to avoid these two scenarios is to simply cut and assign territories equally. That way every rep has the proper amount of prospects and existing customers to serve and sell to.

Set Territory Sales Targets

You’ve cut new territories and assigned them to the appropriate reps. Now what? Give each territory a specific sales target, so each rep knows what success looks like.

Your goals can be quantitative or qualitative. An example of a quantitative goal would be, “Close 10 deals per quarter.” An example of a qualitative goal would be, “Build quality relationships in the area.”

To develop sales targets, consider your overarching mission and the data available to you. If you’re trying to break into a new area, building relationships might be a good goal. But if you want to focus on sales, consider the number of prospects and competitors in each territory, as well as your rep’s close rate.

Monitor Rep and Territory Performance

You’ve assigned all territories to your reps. Now you can sit back and relax, right? Not quite…

You need to monitor individual rep and territory performance. Are your territories generating as many sales as you thought they would? Which one is performing best? Do your reps feel over or under worked?

These are important questions. By monitoring performance, you can answer them with confidence. Then you can make necessary adjustments to achieve company goals more consistently.

Regularly Review and Adjust Territories

Don’t just monitor rep and territory performance, as we suggest above. Act on the information you glean. Put another way, review and adjust your territories on a regular basis.

You may find that Territory A has more prospects than you thought, and the rep you assigned to the territory is drowning. You should probably split that territory in half and assign part of it to another rep.

You should also monitor the way your reps spend their time with each customer.

Why? Because every customer has unique needs. One might need to renew their contract or subscription with your company. Another might have been MIA for the past nine months.

The way reps approach these two customers should be different. Good news: when reps have access to in-depth territory data, they can make real-time adjustments to their sales processes. Doing so will help them close more deals, leading to greater personal and organizational success.

Tools like SPOTIO make it super easy to monitor the metrics that matter to your organization. You can then use that data to reconfigure territories when needed—all within the SPOTIO platform.

Manage Your Sales Territories With SPOTIO

If you want to succeed in the distribution industry, you need to learn effective territory management for distributors. Don’t worry, after reading this article, you have all the information you need. All there is to do now is implement the tips, tricks, and best practices we covered in the sections above.

Know what else will help you manage your territories? SPOTIO!

Our platform makes it easy to cut territories based on geographic boundaries or by drawing on a map. Once a territory is cut, you can quickly assign it to a rep, then monitor their performance. The result? Zero territory overlap between reps and exact data you can use to achieve team-wide success.

Sign up for a free demo of SPOTIO right now to learn if it’s the right tool for your sales team.

The industry is expected to grow to 530.61 billion in the US alone by 2029. In other words, there’s plenty of opportunity—as long as you know how to generate telecom sales leads effectively, of course.

Fortunately, there are a few tried and true strategies you can implement to make sure this happens. We’ll share seven of the best ones in this article! Keep reading to learn about ideal customer profiles, unique value propositions, and other prospecting techniques you can use to boost telecom leads.

7 Ways to Generate More Telecom Sales Leads

You won’t succeed in telecom sales without a steady stream of quality prospects.

Good news: the seven strategies below will help you drum up more telecom leads than you and your team know what to do with. Let’s take a look at these proven lead generation tactics:

Build Your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP)

We’ll start with a definition.

Your ideal customer profile (ICP) is a fictional representation of the companies or individuals your team sells to. Ideally, your ICP should include demographic and psychographic information.

Building ICPs for your sales team will keep your reps focused. They’ll know the right prospects to look for during the prospecting process, and can tailor their sales approach to meet said prospects’ needs.

The result? More interest in your telecom services, shorter sales cycles, and ultimately, more sales.

Craft Your Unique Value Proposition

Why should prospects buy from your company, not the competition?

The answer to that question is your unique value proposition. You might offer better service. Or lower prices. Or a thousand other things that make prospects think, “Yes, I want to buy from them!”

Take a moment to write out your company’s unique value proposition. Make sure it speaks directly to your target audience and includes the benefits of your brand. Then distribute the finished document to reps.

Here’s a quick template you can use for telecom lead generation purposes: [Your Company] enables [Your Ideal Customers] to [Unique Benefit that Your Products/Services Provide].

In SPOTIO’s case we might say something like, “SPOTIO enables field sales teams to generate leads, communicate with prospects, and track sales faster and more reliably than they ever could before.”

Use ICP Data To Prospect Smarter

40% of sales reps say prospecting is the most challenging part of the sales process. Do you feel the same? You don’t have to. Instead, use the resources at your disposal to prospect smarter.

What do we mean by that? Simply this: the right tools and a proven approach will streamline the prospecting process for you and your reps. Here’s how to go about it the right way:

First, only target prospects who match your ICP. Second, use a tool like SPOTIO to automatically generate leads based on specific criteria. For example, you can choose to target prospects in certain locations, with specific job titles, whose companies produce a minimum amount of revenue, etc.

Prospecting this way will help your sales team connect with high-quality leads and improve its close rate.

Use Paid Ads To Reach Interested Prospects

If you have some budget to burn, consider investing in paid ads. There are plenty of options available.

For example, you can retarget people who visit your company’s website. Or use Google’s In-Market Audience’s feature to advertise to potential customers across the entire Google ecosystem. Or use LinkedIn to target prospects based on industry, job title, company size, etc.

The point is, paid ads will help expose your company’s brand, products and/or services to the telecom leads who matter. AKA prospects who match your ICP and are the most likely to make a purchase.

Assign Reps To Purchased Lead Lists

Lead lists are a high risk, high reward proposition.

Choose the wrong list and you’ll waste time and money on bad-fit leads. Choose the right list and your sales pipeline will be inundated with potential customers who want what you sell.

Make sure the lead list you purchase matches your ICP data and includes the kind of details your reps need to make sales. If possible, review a sample of the lead list before you buy it.

And remember, quality always trumps quantity. A smaller list of ready-to-buy telecom sales leads is better than a large list full of garbage information. Invest in the former for better results.

(Note: With SPOTIO, you can easily import lead lists to your account. This will make it extremely easy for you to assign potential customers to the qualified reps on your team.)

Go To Trade Shows And Events

Trade shows and other events can be a great source of B2B telecom sales leads.

Attend one of these get-togethers and you’ll be able to meet with and sell to a ton of prospects at one time. Even better, most of these prospects will be ready to buy—assuming you attend the right events.

Research trade shows, conferences, etc. in your industry. Then talk to event organizers about buying tickets, renting a booth, and/or distributing marketing materials during the gathering.

Finally, brainstorm ways to capture attention at the trade show. For example, you might consider hosting a contest or raffle at your booth to drum up interest and help telecom leads remember your brand. Then plan to take pictures of your time at the event so that you can post them on social media.

Launch a Referral Campaign

Are you ready for one last telecom lead generation tip? Look for ways to increase referrals.

One of the best ways to do this is to launch a referral campaign. Doing so will encourage existing customers to tell their friends and family about your telecom company.

First, offer your customers a reward in exchange for referrals. Your reward could be anything that your customers value: discount offers, free products, gift cards… The list goes on and on.

Second, make it easy for customers to refer their social circles. For example, you can dedicate a page on your website to referrals. Or create a simple form that customers can email to others.

Third, thank your customers when they spread the word about your telecom company. This will make them feel valued and increase the likelihood they refer more people to your business in the future. And the more referrals your sales team receives, the easier it will be to generate B2B telecom sales leads.

Engage Telecom Sales Leads With SPOTIO

There you have it, seven ways for your sales team to generate B2B telecom sales leads.

All you have to do now is implement the tips we shared in this article. Once you build an ICP and craft a unique value proposition you’ll be able to prospect smarter. After that, you can experiment with paid ads, purchased lead lists, live events, and referral campaigns to see which works best for your team.

Just remember, all of these things are easier to do with the right technology. For field sales teams, the “right technology” is usually SPOTIO. Our tool was designed to meet your unique needs:

• Lead Generation: Use SPOTIO to quickly find red-hot leads. Our platform integrates with Google Places and includes 200+ filters. That way your reps can easily find quality prospects.
• Territory Mapping: Use SPOTIO to cut territories by geographical boundaries (state, county, city, zip) or by drawing on a digital map. Then assign them to the most qualified rep on your team.
• Task Automation: Use SPOTIO to automate a variety of tasks and boost productivity. Capture prospect data, log visits, and even send emails and text messages on autopilot.
• Sales Tracking: Use SPOTIO to track sales and forecast future results. Then generate custom reports that only include the data you care about, and share them with company leadership.

Sign up for a free demo of SPOTIO to determine if it’s the right tool for your telecom sales team!

Competition is fierce, buyers often come to the table with preconceived notions—notions that must be adjusted to make sales—and prices continue to plummet in an attempt to win business.

We’re here to tell you that success is possible in this space. But you need to train your reps to overcome the challenges in front of them and close deals. A strong manufacturing sales training program can help.

In this article, we’ll explain what manufacturing sales training is, why it’s important, how to build an effective manufacturing sales training program for your department, and more. Let’s get started!

What Is Manufacturing Sales Training?

Manufacturing sales training is a specific kind of sales training that helps professionals close more deals in the manufacturing industry. It typically includes information about the products/services being sold, tips to analyze customer needs, proven negotiation and closing techniques, and more. Those who go through manufacturing sales training are generally more confident and competent in their roles.

Why Is Manufacturing Sales Training Important?

Now that we know what manufacturing sales training is, let’s talk about why it matters to sales departments like yours. Here are four reasons you should invest in this kind of sales training:

Enhances Product Knowledge and Confidence

As mentioned above, the best manufacturing sales training includes information about the products and/or services its reps are asked to sell. It makes sense. Reps can’t close deals if they don’t understand their offering’s top features, use cases, and competitors—at least not at a consistent clip.

It gets better. Once reps have deep product knowledge, they’ll be more confident. Since confidence breeds trust, the bedrock of sales, those who have it tend to drive more revenue.

Shortens Lengthy Sales Cycles

Generally speaking, manufacturing sales cycles are long. Reps that succeed in this industry find ways to shorten them by identifying quality leads, meeting with decision makers, and learning prospect pain points.

Manufacturing sales training will teach your reps how to do these things. The result? Shorter sales cycles, lower cost of acquisition, and ultimately, more revenue for your company.

Increases Customer Satisfaction

Happy customers are worth their weight in gold.

How so? Happy customers make repeat purchases, which shortens sales cycles (see above) and increases revenue. They also recommend companies to their professional and personal networks.

So, how do you increase customer satisfaction? You build rapport with potential buyers, understand their needs, and provide them with viable solutions—all things you learn in manufacturing sales training.

Drives Brand Awareness and Advantage

Would you rather buy a box of Captain Crunch or a generic brand of corn and oat puff cereal? Sales are much easier to make when potential customers know about the company and/or product being sold to them.

Manufacturing sales training will teach your reps how to strengthen brand awareness by showing them how to leverage case studies and testimonials. It will also help them position your company’s products or services as the top solutions, which will build credibility in the marketplace.

What Are The Challenges of Manufacturing Sales Training?

The manufacturing industry is difficult to navigate. There are numerous pitfalls you need to avoid to find success. Said pitfalls should be communicated to sales reps. Here are the most common ones:

• Competition: The manufacturing space is crowded. To find success, sales reps have to cut through the noise and convince potential customers to buy their products, not someone else’s.
• Low Pricing: Thanks to increased competition, prices in the manufacturing industry have taken a significant hit. It can be extremely difficult to grow a company on such small margins.
• Preconceptions: Buyers have access to an incredible amount of product information before they ever talk to a sales rep. This allows them to build preconceptions, which reps often have to adjust.

These are very real challenges. But a stellar manufacturing sales training program will help your reps overcome them, quickly and consistently. You just need to make sure your program covers the right topics.

Core Topics for Manufacturing Sales Training

What should manufacturing sales training look like for your company? Every company is different, of course. But the best training programs cover core topics like:

Technical Product Training

Your sales reps should be product experts. If they don’t know what your product can do, how to do these things, and why these features matter, they’ll never drive enough revenue to justify their salaries.

So, when building a manufacturing sales training program, teach reps the ins and outs of your product. This will enable them to demo products effectively, answer customer questions with confidence, quickly overcome objections, and negotiate with potential buyers in more productive ways.

Understanding the Manufacturing Sales Cycle

Your reps also need to understand how manufacturing sales works.

The process is often long and complex. Why? Because most manufacturers are in the B2B space, which means they sell to other businesses rather than individual consumers.

Businesses often have more specific requirements than individuals. More people are involved in the buying process, too. According to recent research, it takes seven people to make a B2B purchasing decision. In other words, reps have to convince seven people to buy their product, not one or two.

Your manufacturing sales training program needs to educate and prepare reps for this process.

Strategic Account Management

Price cuts make it difficult to grow business operations. One of the best ways to avoid this scenario is to teach reps strategic account management skills during your manufacturing sales training sessions.

“Strategic account management” is a fancy term that basically means, “Get to know your customers, learn about their needs and pain points, and build strong relationships with them.”

Once reps learn to manage accounts effectively, they’ll be able to serve customers better. This almost always leads to more sales and greater loyalty—all without having to compete on price.

Adapting to Changing Market Dynamics

If you’ve been in the manufacturing industry for a while, you know things are always changing.

Competitors come and go. Prices fluctuate. Customer preferences change. It’s a lot to keep up with, which is why your manufacturing sales training program should be updated regularly to reflect new trends.

When reps are prepared to confront these new trends, they’ll be able to relate to customers on a more personal level than before and pitch products with more confidence.

Digital Tools and CRM for Manufacturing Sales

Finally, make sure your manufacturing sales training program teaches reps to use your CRM software (or reports from your ERP).

Every sales department needs a quality CRM. But said CRM won’t benefit your reps if they don’t know how to upload, organize, and take advantage of the information it contains.

Fortunately, most CRMs have detailed training for users. So you might not need to create product tutorials yourself; only link to the resources already available to you on the provider’s website.

(The advice above applies to all software in your company’s tech stack. If your reps use route planning apps, sales enablement tools, sales intelligence software, etc. make sure they know how it all works.)

Best Practices for Manufacturing Sales Training

The core topics above will help you create a strong foundation for your manufacturing sales training program. Now you need to elevate your approach with the following six best practices:

Utilize a Variety of Training Techniques

Choose multiple ways to educate your team.

For example, you might have each of your reps participate in different roleplaying scenarios. Or use gamification techniques to increase team-wide motivation. (Leaderboards are great for this!)

Don’t forget to optimize your approach to sales management either. If you practice active listening, identify bad-fit prospects, develop sales scripts, invest in the right technology, etc. you’ll put your team in the best position to succeed. Just as important, your reps will enjoy working for you and put in extra effort.

Coach Sales Reps To Push Past Boundaries

The best sales reps are fearless. They regularly venture outside their comfort zones to try new things. Doing so allows them to discover new sales techniques they would have otherwise missed.

As a sales manager, you should encourage your reps to push past these kinds of boundaries during the manufacturing sales training process. It will help them develop a knack for learning and exploration, which will serve them well in the future. It will also help them build confidence in their own abilities.

This gets at a deeper truth: the best sales leaders are serious about sales coaching. Don’t just manage team performance. Get down in the weeds and help your reps improve their skills on a regular basis.

Educate Reps to Engage Early in the Buying Cycle

Prospecting is critical to your team’s success in manufacturing sales.

The question is, what makes a good prospect? The answer is different for every company. Generally speaking though, good prospects want what you sell, but are still at the beginning of the buying process.

When reps engage potential customers early in the buying cycle they’ll have less competition for each sale. This will naturally reduce the number of hurdles said reps must overcome to close deals. It will also help reps avoid price as their’ only value proposition, which is never a position you want them to be in.

Incorporate Continuous Learning and Microlearning

The way you present your manufacturing sales training program matters. We suggest creating bite-sized lessons and updating them on a regular basis to ensure the information is current.

Why bite-sized lessons? Because microlearning has been proven to be highly effective. When reps can read and/or watch short lessons on their phones they’ll do so more often—mostly because they can fit the lessons in between other activities. Microlearning also promotes better knowledge retention. Win!

Teach the Art of Skillful Negotiation

Negotiation is an important part of the manufacturing sales process. Unfortunately, most sales departments go about negotiation the wrong way by treating it like a specific step in the sales cycle.

The truth is, negotiation happens from the first moment your reps engage a prospect. And it doesn’t end until the prospect becomes a paying customer or walks away from the deal.

Once reps learn this important fact, they’ll be able to negotiate with greater skill and effectiveness.

Use Data and Analytics for Personalized Training

Finally, track your manufacturing sales training program to offer personalized advice to your reps.

Tools like SPOTIO will help you track the number of visits and calls your reps make, as well as the number of emails and text messages they send. You can use this information to adjust your coaching efforts.

For example, you might find that Rep A makes a lot of visits, but doesn’t close many deals. You can then work with them to ensure they’re courting quality leads, making strong pitches, etc.

SPOTIO Simplifies Manufacturing Sales Training

A solid manufacturing sales training program will help your reps gain product knowledge and confidence, shorten sales cycles, increase customer satisfaction, and build brand awareness.

The trick is to create a program that truly helps your sales reps. To make this happen, include the core topics above in your curriculum. Then use the best practices we outlined to make your training effective.

Know what else you can do to increase manufacturing sales? Invest in quality technology.

SPOTIO was specifically created for field sales teams like the one you lead. As such, it has all the features your reps need to increase productivity and sales. Some of these features include lead generation, route planning, customer mapping, multi-channel communication, and reporting tools.

Sign up for your free demo of SPOTIO today to see if it’s the right technology for your sales team!