With changes on the financial, industrial, and political fronts, the territory plan that made sense in January may be different in May.
Research found that 78 percent of business professionals credit AI-supported automation for helping them pull insights from data they typically wouldn’t be able to access. But are managers using data often enough to manage changes that impact sales success? For instance, maybe you’ve asked or heard questions like the following:
- Who has handled Patty’s accounts since her promotion in March?
- How did the recent acquisition of Frank’s account affect the customer’s purchasing status?
- A new sales rep closed a sale—in another rep’s region. How did this happen? More importantly, who gets the commission?
In this article, we’ll discuss the reasons why these questions arise and how frequent territory planning can help you stay on target in a constantly shifting market.
The Problem: Territories in Constant Change
There are loads of factors that impact territories, such as market shifts, customer behavior, and changes in the sales team. Ignoring these dynamics can result in ineffective territory assignments, missed opportunities, and decreased revenue.
Here’s how:
- Dynamic Market Conditions: Markets are constantly changing due to competition, economic shifts, and technological advancements. Sales managers must regularly assess these changes and adjust territory plans to address current market dynamics.
- Customer Preferences: Customer needs and preferences evolve. Regular territory planning helps sales managers identify these changes and adapt their strategies to meet these demands better.
- Sales Team Performance Monitoring and Improvement: By evaluating performance metrics continuously, managers can allocate resources, implement corrective actions before issues interfere with sales goals, and empower their sales teams to achieve better results. This could include personal experience in addition to metrics.
“A sales rep might discover that a new competitor is making inroads with healthcare companies in Georgia, which means you urgently need new messaging and competitive intelligence,” says Paul Bookstaber, a writer for Salesforce, offering an example. He goes on to suggest that managers gather and document this shared knowledge in broader syncs with the rest of the sales team and in collaboration with product and marketing teams so people in different functions can work on a solution together. “This feedback loop will make your territory management more resilient to changes in market conditions.”
The Solution: Frequent Territory Planning
Frequent territory planning ensures that sales strategies remain aligned with the ever-changing market landscape, maximizing revenue opportunities and enhancing overall sales effectiveness.
When you consider the regular changes in sales teams and regions, the advantages of increasing the frequency of territory management are easy to appreciate. Improvements in sales performance and increased revenue growth can help sales team morale soar.
But there’s more. Adjusting territories quarterly instead of once per year, for example, enables organizations to adapt quickly to changing market conditions, capitalize on emerging opportunities, and provide personalized support to sales representatives.
Pivot to Fit Changing Market Conditions
Agility is key to staying ahead of the curve. In a fireside chat hosted by Fullcast, Abhi Ingle, COO of revenue operations at Qualtrics, recalled a time during the pandemic when the company needed to pivot to adapt to new and urgent federal regulations. Qualtrics quickly realized that other companies were likely facing the same challenge. It responded by creating a solution that would allow companies to ensure their employees’ safety, well-being, and insurance compliance and achieve compliance.
“And the company just totally turned on a dime,” Ingle said. “We changed our messaging. We changed our targeting. So we targeted the right customers. . . . We had to change the campaigns, change the messaging. . . . If we had not done that in a holistic manner, we would have had marketing changing tack, targeting the right customers, sales people going into the tone deaf earlier track. That wouldn’t make sense. And then implementation resources not lined up to address the fact that we have a new solution on the market. That had to be done in a very interconnected manner.”
Not every pivot has epic proportions, but the fluid nature of market and sales conditions reinforces the need for fresh perspectives on GTM strategies of any size.
Act on Emerging Opportunities
Whether developing new products or services to meet evolving customer needs, adjusting pricing strategies to remain competitive, or, as in Abhi Ingle and Qualtrics’ case, refining messaging and services to resonate with emerging market segments, frequent territory planning provides the framework for proactive decision-making.
Personalize Sales Rep Support
With a deep understanding of each sales territory, managers can provide personalized coaching and mentorship to sales reps based on their unique strengths and challenges.
Whether celebrating milestone achievements, offering incentives for exceeding targets, or providing opportunities for career advancement, personalized recognition and incentives motivate sales reps to perform at their best and drive results.
A proactive approach to territory planning enhances sales performance and revenue growth while boosting sales team morale and retention. With frequent territory planning, companies can stay agile, responsive, and well positioned to navigate changing market conditions and achieve sustained success in today’s dynamic business landscape.
Fullcast was built for RevOps leaders by RevOps leaders to bring together all of the moving pieces of our clients’ sales go-to-market strategies and automate their execution. We seamlessly connect go-to-market planning activities with tactical sales execution, enabling your operations, sales, finance, and customer success teams to make continuous adjustments in response to real-time strategy changes. From territory management to performance tracking, we operate with speed, agility, and AI-powered automation.
