The best approach to
successful field team management is effective
territory planning that allows targeting the right customers, setting goals and
priorities and ensuring sales growth. Effective territory management is vital
for field teams performance, so there are many things to be considered prior to
assigning of field reps to customers. In this article we’ll talk about several
ways to develop meaningful territories for your field team that allows maximum
use of their potential.
Territory planning is one
of the most time-consuming and challenging processes for field team managers.
In order to divide territories in a way that makes sense a field team
manager should at least analyze the previous data from current customers
including financial data, order amounts, points of sale locations, frequency of
previous retail visits. This allows field team managers to identify the key
goals of territory planning and provide territory distribution that makes
sense.
The first way to divide
territories between field reps is the
historic method based on prior experiences and results when field team
manager estimates either sales or penetration from the previous period. After
territories are divided between field sales reps they start perform retail
visits to the customers. When field reps start performing retail visits they
concentrate their efforts on high-return customers or customers that are easy
to interact with.
As the number of sales
representatives grows the unevenness in territory distribution occurs.
Eventually some field reps tend to work with loyal customers they have acquired
at the beginning of their work and the other reps suffer trying to build thei
customer base from dormant and no-return customers. While at first glance it
may seem to be fair to the field team’s pioneers this way of territory
distribution has negative impact on retail performance. Field representatives assigned to loyal customers
tend to relax, and low-return customers feel constant field reps turnover that
no way contributes the effectiveness of customer relationship management. The
rational solution in this case is to force the distribution of loyal,
low-return and dormant customers between sales representatives.
The most common way of territory planning is to divide your territories by area code. This way allows a field team manager to clearly define the spheres of responsibility for each field rep. In this case a field rep gets all the customers in certain area code and has to fulfill sales plans performing retail visits to points of sale, and to expand customers base in designated boundaries. Despite this way of territory planning seems to be simple and logical, it does not take into account a number of nuances, which may impact the success of territory planning.
For example, one customer can have multiple
locations that are scattered in different areas. In this case the application
of area code division will result in several field reps attending one customer.
This complicates the analysis of field teams
performance and may cause territory overlap and conflicts between field
reps. In this case it’s better to assign all the customer’s points of sales to one
field rep that has the best performance on this customer’s locations in order
to increase the efficiency of field teams management.
Now we can see that the more
sophisticated way of territory management is to divide territories by categorizing customers. Customers can be
categorized by sales space, attendance, merchandise turnover, by the same
products or similar needs. It only depends on your business specific needs and
characteristics. After all points of sale are categorized each sales
representative gets all the stores of one category or an equal number of stores
from each category. This division allows field reps to concentrate efforts on
defined categories applying specific standards of sales and customer
interactions.
Utilizing the above methods provides a base to divide
your territories in a most efficient manner. Setting up up territories depends
on the area of business and primary goals that are planned to be achieved. When
drawing boundaries never forget that the main goal of territory planning is to
maximize the time spent with customers and to minimize the time spent filling
out paper forms, traveling between customers' locations and visiting
low-return customers.
Keep in mind that field team management automation by virtue of a retail audit
software solution simplifies territory management and analysis of field
teams performance. Retail audit software also provides route optimization and
automated data entry minimizing time to collect retail data. To learn more
about how to improve your territory management visit www.visitbasis.com.
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