When account planning at Salesforce we work to balance the territories among our sales representatives.  This way we cover all the gaps, maintain a high morale, and ultimately drive more wins. 

Cover the gaps – to help develop your team

Our balancing act starts with segmentation.  It’s important to divide our sales teams up by targeted business size in order to make sure there are no coverage gaps.  If we focus certain members of our teams on particular segments we know for sure we are not missing out on any business sizes.  Your segments will range from small businesses to large corporations. Match your reps with the appropriate segments based on their skill set: newer reps with the smaller businesses and your more seasoned reps with the larger accounts.  This will allow you to develop your reps while giving them a manageable workload and ultimately giving them more chances for wins!

Balance by area type – to keep it fair

It’s also important to balance your territories by region, especially when considering your team’s morale.  Consider this scenario: half your team is working a high paced urban area and the remaining portion of your team is working the slow moving rural areas.  When you go to measure rep performance, the rural half of your team probably won’t rate very well based on the nature of the region they’re covering.  They would probably not be very happy.  You want your reps working a mixture of both urban and rural areas so you can measure and reward your reps based on their talent and performance, not just on the volume of sales possible for the region they are working.

Hear more about territory planning in the video:

Win more

Ultimately, by balancing territories you spread potential risk among your team and diminish its potentially fatal blow.  Balance your team.  Measure and reward your reps. Win more!