Sales Territory design Developing sales territories Route planning Specializations in territory design

Geographical areas assigned to each sales person to achieve the market goal and cover the selected market optimally.

Objectives of developing sales territories o To provide proper coverage o To provide efficient customer service o To control sales expense o Assist in setting of quotas and performance evaluation o Contribute to sales force clarity and motivation o Distributors area is defined o Better for promotion and merchandizing efforts

Procedure for setting up/revising sales territories

Select a basic geographical unit Determine sales potential Combine units into tentative territories Perform workload analysis no. of salespersons Adjust for coverage difficulties Assign people to territories

Criteria to be considered
(A) Relative ability of salespeople based on key evaluation factors: (1) Product knowledge, (2) market knowledge, (3) past sales performance, (4) communication, (5) selling skills (B) Salespersons Effectiveness in a Territory Decided by comparing social, cultural, and physical characteristics of the salesperson with those of the territory Objective is to match salesperson to the territory

Management of territorial coverage

 Routing is a travel plan used by a salesperson for making customer calls in a territory Benefits of or reasons for routing:
Reduction in travel time and cost Improvement in territory coverage

Importance of routing depends on the application:

Nature of the product Important for FMCG Type of jobs of salespeople Important for driver cum salesperson job, but creative selling job needs a flexible route plan

Setting up a Routing Plan

Identify current and prospective customers on a territory map Classify each customer into high, medium, or low sales potential Decide call frequency for each class of customers Build route plan around locations of high potential customers Computerised mathematical models are developed

Commonly used routing patterns are :

Straight Line Pattern Base First Call C C C 2 1 4 5 3 Major City Pattern

Clover Leaf Pattern

 Scheduling is planning a salespersons visit time to customers. It deals with time allocation issue How to allocate salespersons time? - Sales manager communicates to salesperson major activities and time allocation for each activity - Salesperson records actual time spent on various activities for 2 weeks -Sales manager and salesperson discuss and decide how to

Assigning sales person to territories Horses for courses Sales persons vary in knowledge, skills, energy, market relations. Optimum assignment of territories workload, market build up (mostly for industrial goods), potential (equality of opportunity) Starting point (centre / HQ of territory) Beat / route planning to improve