You could think that once you've made your sales territory design using your sales territory mapping application of choice , you can leave them be and just focus on handling sales and the reps. Well that is a big mistake “the reality is all sales territory alignments decay over time and if nothing's done the decay is detrimental to sales in the long-term.

Recently we helped a customer with their sales territory design and realignment. It's a company we had worked with several time before. In fact we had designed their sales force alignment four years back. In those four years the company’s business had not seriously changed much. No important product launches and no changes to the teams size. It had been 4 years of steady-as-she-goes stable expansion. At the start of the project I had believed there would only be 1 or 2 changes (I assumed most managers would price stability). I was wrong. When we took another look at the alignment it had decayed. By this I mean there were incontiguous territories, repugnant territories and a wide adaptation in the workload and potential across sales force. In short “it had been a mess. In those 4 years since the last sales territory design project the alignment had been pushed, pulled and poked in each way possible. After pondering this for some time I identified the following reasons explaining why sales territories decay:

The biggest source of sales territory mapping decay is due to accommodating short-term circumstances, where there's a non-permanent change to the sales force alignment which is meant to be reversed inside six months but actually take much longer. For instance if a rep goes on maternity leave their territory may be covered, in their absence, by the three or 4 bordering reps. This would appear much more fascinating than leaving the territory empty for two to six months (or a year if its Canada). But nevertheless there is at least some brief decay to the field force alignment. And of course on occasions reps do not return to work after motherhood leave, leading to long-term decay to the alignment.

The second most heavy cause of alignment decay is accommodating sales reps circumstances. Taken one-by-one the reps circumstances are usually reasonable. The most common being, “I live just outside of the territory, can I have the zip code where I live aligned to my territory?”. Other I have run across over the years include:

– My girl/lover/fianc/folks lives in this zip
– I drop my youngsters off in school in this zip-code
– My Dad/Godfather/Fraternity Brother owns an account in this zip code

All of the reasons appear to have at least some validity. But reps change; and these affectations of the alignment have a tendency to remain unspotted, leading to sales territory alignment decay.

The 2 reasons given so far are orientated around the sales rep and their private circumstances. There are also business reasons explaining why the territory alignment rots. There are changes to the client segmentation. For example, an account may at first be a low potential account “but after the launching of a new release (i.e. a change to the product portfolio), in a new class, the account might be bumped up to top priority status (which needs more calls). Or an account may naturally grow and have to be reclassified. No matter what the reason, the results is change to the workload of the territory, which when added up with other changes to the division results in a decay in the balance of the territory alignment.

If you accept that sales territories decay you need to carry out regular audits. We might counsel and yearly sales force alignment audit (which we can help you with). As regards the suggested frequency for a full realignment; that’s a subject for another article.

Steve Maughan is president of Cozmix, focusing on sales force strategy and sales force design. AlignMix is Cozmix ‘ sales force mapping and sales territory design solution

categories: sales territory mapping

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