Sales territory mapping sounds like something out of a treasure hunt. And while you won't find any literal gold, mastering territory mapping can lead to a bounty of successful sales.

Think of sales territory alignment as a way to segment your market across your field sales team. We design territories to drive sales and ensure current customer satisfaction divided by certain criteria —like geographic location or vertical type.

In this article, we explore the different types of sales territories and walk you through how to create a map to support your sales goals.

By the end, you'll be prepared to design a sales territory strategy that boosts your bottom line and empowers your team to reach revenue goals.

Common Types of Sales Territories

When it comes to sales territory mapping, one size doesn't fit all.

You might target markets based on a number of different criteria —like business priorities, company size, and evidence pulled from CRM data.

The sales territory plan ultimately depends on your company’s business model and strategic direction. You want to design territories that ultimately support your large business goals.

Still, there are some tried and true ways to design territories, create maps, and segment your market.

Let’s look at different types of sales territories.

Geographic Sales Territories: Classic Sales Territory Management

Geographic territory mapping is perhaps the most straightforward method. It segments your market geographically based on physical boundaries like regions, states, or cities.

This type of sales territory mapping is ideal for businesses with geographic region-specific teams or those selling products with strong local demand (such as real estate or a delivery company).

Pros:

• Clear-cut customer location boundaries make it easy for sales reps to understand their geography and areas of responsibility;
• Allows reps to become local experts, building strong relationships within their geographic territories.

Cons:

• Market potential can vary significantly between geographic areas or even zip code, leading to imbalanced workloads;
• May not account for population density differences in geographic territories (e.g., urban vs. rural areas);
• Can limit cross-regional opportunities if strictly enforced.

Custom territories that take population density and demographic data into account can help prevent the above disadvantages.

Industry-Specific Sales Territory Mapping: Diving Deep Into Verticals

This segmentation strategy creates territories based on different industries or sectors, allowing your sales team to specialize and leverage in-depth knowledge to build stronger client relationships.

Pros:

• Can position your company as a go-to solution provider within certain sectors;
• Facilitates better understanding of industry-specific challenges and needs to drive sales.

Cons:

• Requires significant investment in training and industry-specific knowledge development;
• Market coverage and size can vary greatly between industries, potentially leading to workload imbalances;
• You may miss opportunities in emerging industries or cross-sector prospects.

Customer Segment Sales Territories: Tailoring Your Market Segmentation

This method divides your market according to distinct customer segments, such as business size, customer behavior, or demographic characteristics.

It's suited for companies serving a wide range of customer types or those prioritizing personalized experiences.

Pros:

• Allows for highly personalized sales strategies tailored to specific customer needs (such as a small business vs. enterprise);
• Enables sales teams to gain deeper insights into potential customer behaviors and trends.

Cons:

• Requires demographic data analysis and ongoing adjustments to maintain accurate market segmentation;
• Can be complex to implement and manage, especially for larger organizations.

Use intelligent software to easily segment territories and analyze your data in the same place.

Product-Based Sales Territories: Specializing Your Territory Performance

In this approach, territories are defined by product lines or services.

Product-based territories are a good choice for companies with diverse product offerings that require specialized knowledge to deploy the appropriate strategy.

Pros:

• Allows sales reps to become product experts, enhancing their ability to solve customer problems;
• Can lead to more effective strategies for cross-selling and upselling to customer base;
• Useful for companies with complex or technical products that require in-depth understanding.

Cons:

• To segment your market via product may create silos within the sales team, potentially missing opportunities for integrated solutions;
• Can lead to multiple reps contacting the same customer for different products;
• This type of territory planning might not align with customer types who prefer a single point of contact for all their needs.

Operational efficiency is the key to ensuring your sales process runs smoothly across existing territories. Use a territory mapping software with an interactive map to help your field sales team collaborate.

Account-Based Sales Territory Mappin g: The High-Touch Approach

This sales territory management strategy assigns specific accounts to individual sales reps or teams, regardless of geography or industry.

Sales organization's often use this for key account management or when dealing with large, complex clients.

Pros:

• Enables highly personalized, high-touch service for important accounts;
• Allows for a deep understanding of specific customer segments, their business needs, and processes;
• Can lead to stronger, long-term client relationships and higher customer lifetime value.

Cons:

• Territory management here is resource-intensive, limiting the number of accounts each rep can handle;
• May create over-dependency on specific reps for certain accounts;
• Can be challenging to scale as the business grows.

How to Design a Sales Territory Map Step-By-Step

Creating an effective sales territory map is both an art and a science.

Here’s a breakdown of the sales mapping process into manageable steps, featuring exclusive insights from our Best Practices for Sales Territory Planning panel.

1. Gather Relevant Sales Data And Put Your Analytical Hat On

The strength of your sales territory map depends on the quality and depth of your sales data.

You don’t just design territories in a vacuum, so this step is all about context — building a comprehensive picture of your market landscape and current performance.

First, look within. Your CRM is a treasure trove of insights into target markets, with customer data like:

• Customer locations;
• Buying behaviors;
• Sales histories;
• Lead source;
• Conversion rates.

As you collect and spreadsheet this sales data, you’ll begin to identify patterns and trends among successful accounts.

“Maybe you've done well in streaming media or quick-service restaurants. That's a good way to start predicting that McDonald's is a lot like Burger King, and you’ll probably have similar potential there based on those characteristics."

Richard Sgro, Senior VP at Insight Partners, notes that even if you don't have a data science organization, you can always find commonalities in customer data.

“Maybe you've done well in streaming media or quick-service restaurants,” he explains. “That's a good way to start predicting that McDonald's is a lot like Burger King, and you’ll probably have similar potential there based on those characteristics."

Look beyond your sales channel as well. Supplement internal data with external market research, such as industry reports, demographic statistics, economic indicators for different regions, and competitor analysis.

At this point, you should also assess your current performance. Analyze how well you're currently serving different areas. Look for:

• Over-served areas where you might be wasting resources
• Under-served areas with high potential
• Mismatches between territory potential and sales performance

By the end, you should have a clear picture of your market landscape, your current territory performance, and the opportunities that lie ahead. This foundational work will be crucial as you move into the next steps of defining territory boundaries and assigning them to your sales team.

Before you move on, double-check your work. Your data analysis should be thorough, and your insights solid. As the saying goes, "Measure twice, cut once." In sales territory mapping, solid data is the measure that ensures your strategy is cut to perfection.

2. Define Your Territory Boundaries

After you analyze your data, use your data-driven insights to start sales planning for practical realities and strategic goals.

Based on your previous data analysis, decide which type of market segmentation makes the most sense for your business.

Matt Haller, CaptivateIQ’s Partnerships Manager, sees this sales process as a consideration of how you’re going to “carve and cut up all of those accounts and stack the ones you want to go after so you have a better idea about how you’re going to cover the market and organize your resources.”

“There’s a whole world out there, so how are you going to carve and cut up all of those accounts and stack the ones you want to go after so you have a better idea about how you’re going to cover the market and organize your resources?”

For Matt, maximizing your market coverage is just as important as “creating equitable earning opportunities” for all of your reps.

When you design territories, consider factors like total market potential, number of existing accounts, number of promising leads, and typical sales cycle length in each segment.

Don't forget the real-world implications of your territory design:

• For field sales reps, consider travel time and costs (such as food & beverage);
• For inside sales teams, think about time zone differences and geographic regions;
• For all sales territory designs, take into account any cultural or language considerations.

You also want to design your territories with business goals in mind.

Ask yourself: How will these territories impact business development? Does our sales territory plan accommodate new hires? Can existing territories be easily split or combined as needed?

As you go through the sales mapping process, remember that perfection is the enemy of progress.

Your initial segmentation strategy and territory boundaries don’t need to be flawless, just should good enough to start with and flexible enough to evolve.

3. Assign Territories to Your Field Sales Team  

Now that you've defined your territories, it's time to assign reps.

Start by putting a magnifying glass on your sales team. Look at:

• Individual strengths and weaknesses;
• Experience levels;
• Product knowledge;
• Industry expertise;
• Performance history and current sales performance.

Once you assess your team, align rep capabilities with customer characteristics in each territory.

For example, a rep with deep knowledge of the healthcare industry might be best suited for a market segment with a heavy medical client base, while a rep who excels at relationship building could be perfect for a territory with several key accounts.

Sales territory assignments are just as important as sales territory alignment, so make sure to analyze your data to balance territory placement.

Within reason, consider rep preferences. You can't always accommodate everyone's wishes, but understanding your reps' inclinations can boost employee morale, sales productivity, and performance.

There’s also the matter of existing relationships between sales reps and your customer base. While you shouldn't let this dictate your entire strategy, it's worth considering for strong customer relationship management.

“When we're designing our territories, our primary goal is to be able to look back at our data and show that there's a relatively similar equitable earning opportunity and that everybody has the same opportunity to overachieve in the market.”

We touched on this earlier, but it bears repeating: Give each rep a fair shot at success with equitable territories.

As Matt puts it, "when we're designing our territories, our primary goal is to be able to look back at our data and show that there's a relatively similar equitable earning opportunity and that everybody has the same opportunity to overachieve in the market. That's our first principle, our north star of territory design."

The goal is to balance workload and new opportunities for field sales reps.

When you assign territories to the team, explain the rationale behind your decisions to foster understanding and buy-in.

If you're reassigning territories, plan for smooth handovers.

Matt suggests making an incentive to successfully hand off an account to a new rep. That way, “the old rep has some kind of financial incentive. We know they're going to lose some opportunity, but if we're taking a good account away from them, let's actually put some dollars behind that transition."

Finally, use sale territory assignments as a tool for professional growth. Assigning a promising rep to a challenging territory could be a great development opportunity.

4. Implement and Monitor Your Sales Territory Plan

Creating a a strong and equitable territory map is only half the battle.

The real challenge — and opportunity — lies in effective sales territory management. This is how you implement your sales territory plan, monitor its performance, and tweak accordingly.

A sales leader's first order of business is to provide training so that the sales organization understands how to operate within the new territory structure.

This might include:

• Education on new territory mapping software or sales processes;
• Guidance on how to manage territories from newly assigned accounts or industries;
• Strategies for collaborating across territories when necessary.

You’ll also need to set up a tracking system (via a spreadsheet or territory mapping software) to monitor KPIs for each territory, such as:

• Sales volume;
• New customer acquisition;
• Customer retention rates;
• Pipeline health;
• Quota attainment.

Set up regular territory review meetings with the entire team to discuss performance, challenges, and opportunities.

“A good principle is having some sort of feedback loop or cadence. So how do we course correct if we need to throughout the year, who do we pull into that to make it happen?”

Don’t forget that this is a team effort.

Establish a system for your sales reps to provide input on their territories and for you and other departments to support sales territory mapping as needed.  

Christopher Michaud, Senior Director at Simon-Kucher & Partners, finds that "a good principle is having some sort of feedback loop or cadence. So how do we course correct if we need to throughout the year, who do we pull into that to make it happen?”

On that note, stay flexible and be prepared to adjust sales territory mapping as needed.

Don't create territories rigidly. Your sales territory map is a living document that should evolve as your business grows, market conditions change, and new opportunities arise.

Elevate Your Sales Territory Management With CaptivateIQ

Even the most well-designed territory map can fail if it is not supported by a robust sales compensation strategy.

Make sure that you have the right tools in place to support your business goals.

As a leading platform for incentive comp solutions, CaptivateIQ is designed to seamlessly integrate with and enhance your sales territory management efforts.

Learn more about how we can help you create and modify commission structures that align with your evolving territory strategies and monitor sales performance in real time.