Companies with a thorough knowledge of their sales structures in foreign markets are already ahead of the game. GfK GeoMarketing’s consultants have planned and optimized hundreds of sales structures. Read on to find out more about the most important criteria for your 2009 sales territory planning.

“My colleagues are responsible for generating a yearly turnover of between 4 and 5 million euros per person, providing our customers with expert consultancy services for 24 product lines and closing an average of 1.8 business deals each workday,” details Jenny Sandro, director of sales for a metal pipe and components manufacturer. Most sales directors are able to quote by heart similar up-to-date figures on the sales frequency, product margins and turnover volume generated by their external sales team members.

Sales structure often a blind spot

Unfortunately, this detailed knowledge often doesn’t extend to questions about the sales potential of a particular sales territory or the turnover draw of a given business location. Other questions for which it is often difficult to get precise answers include: Can all sales territories be efficiently accessed? What is the regional market share? Which tools are used for territory optimizations? Unfortunately, many sales managers launch into vague generalities when confronted with these kinds of queries.

Sales territory planning demands attention

Many companies do not seriously address sales territory planning issues until confronted with a significant sales problem, such as the departure of an important member of the external sales team or the rise of a competitor in an area of operation. When something like this occurs, everyone begins asking the “where” questions: Where are the exact locations of our customers? Where is our external sales team active? Where is the greatest potential for new customer acquisition? Where are our competitors located?

Luckily, DISTRICT, GfK GeoMarketing’s sales territory planning software solution, is specially designed to generate precise answers to these and many other questions. 

Step 1:

Achieving insights through cartographic illustrations

The first and perhaps most important step is to objectively display the existing state of your company. The geomarketing software solution DISTRICT makes this very easy, allowing you to visualize your sales structure on high-quality digital maps. This straightforward step usually reveals significant insights regarding areas of strength and weakness – e.g., areas in which customers are underserved by external sales staff. The results of this preliminary assessment can easily be distributed to all those concerned – an important step in ensuring that any changes implemented later will be understood and accepted.

Step 2:

Making objective comparisons using external market data

The second step involves importing external market data such as competitor locations or relevant business sites into DISTRICT. GfK GeoMarketing’s consultants can advise you as to what kind of data should be imported based on your situation. An important aspect of this step is to carry out an objective comparison of your company turnover with the actual market potential. Whether a given sales area is actually underperforming or already achieving the local market potential is something that you can definitively establish during this step.

Step 3:

Quickly achieve your optimal sales territory structure

DISTRICT provides numerous easy-to-use tools for realigning and optimizing your external sales structure, allowing you to apportion your active sales territories objectively, efficiently and fairly. The software lets you specify which factors should be weighted mostly heavily in your restructuring – for example, potential, new customer acquisition, accessibility, natural barriers, sales staff’s places of residence, etc. If desired, you can give equal weight to all criteria. DISTRICT offers tremendous flexibility and customization, allowing you to produce various restructuring scenarios so that you can select the variant that precisely corresponds to your goals.

Fully exploit your market potential

The company for which Sandro works used DISTRICT to carry out a systematic analysis of its external sales territories for the first time last fall. This analysis revealed, among other things, that a significant number of metal processing subcontractors had established themselves in the areas around the city of Leipzig in Eastern Germany over the course of the past decade. Although offering many potential customers, these businesses had been ignored in the company’s sales plans. Thanks to the analysis, Sandro’s company stationed an additional sales team member in this area to develop the region’s potential. This is but one example of how a GfK GeoMarketing sales territory optimization can boost a company’s performance. In the case of Jenny Sandro´s company, greater transparency and market exploitation was achieved, as well as the introduction of an employee bonus scheme, which significantly increased motivation.

Sales territory revision in just one afternoon!

Sandro is planning on carrying out a new sales structure optimization this fall. This isn’t because the previous revision was incorrect, but rather simply because the external factors affecting a business are constantly changing. For example, the additional sales force member added after the previous revision has now found his footing and is ready to expand the geographic area for which he is responsible. Thanks to DISTRICT’s user-friendliness, this adjustment could be carried out over the course of a single afternoon. Moreover, maps of each stage of the process were produced in order to facilitate greater transparency and ease of negotiations among employees and business partners. The entire restructuring – from planning phase to implementation – was carried out very speedily. This saves Jenny Sandro precious time so that she can concentrate on her core duties: the successful sale of metal components.

For additional information on how GfK GeoMarketing can help you with your sales territory planning needs, please visit www.gfk-geomarketing.com/territory_planning