Dwight Eisenhower once said, “Plans are nothing; planning is everything.” We couldn’t agree more. With all the tasks sales teams have to accomplish every day, week, month and year; planning is essential.
Territory Design and Management
People tend to think primarily of territory design when planning out their sales strategy for the next year. But, just as important, is your continual evaluation and management of those territories. What looked like the ideal design in Q4 of last year might not look as good halfway through this year.
But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Instead, let’s talk for a moment about territory management since it is an absolutely VITAL part of any sales strategy. Whether your team has a territory-based or account-based strategy, geolocation solutions can not only improve your territories but alleviate a lot of the stress related to planning territories.
Geolocation leverages the data that you already have within your Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system to streamline the territory planning process. Instead of pulling reports and trying to match up ZIP codes with key buying information such as number of customers, market share, and company size, you can actually SEE everything on a map. And, if you want to make changes, you can easily work within the map to move things around. But not to worry, nothing will be finalized until you update the records (which can also be done from the map with a few clicks).
As you re-evaluate your territories throughout the year, either due to team changes or account changes, you can once again go back to your map to easily shift your territories around and find the plan that best fits your current needs. With the ability to shift territory boundaries without make any permanent changes, you can easily find your new territory distribution.
Routes
For any field sales rep or manager of a field sales team, you know how valuable the right route can be. When you are trying to maximize your time out in the field, you don’t want routes that aren’t optimized or unavailable on your mobile device.
Geolocation will once again leverage the power of your CRM data to not only minimize the amount of effort required to create routes, but also find the BEST route for your day.
When evaluating various geolocation solutions, you will want to make sure you choose one that empowers your sales teams to:
- Add and reorder stops
- Optimize routes to help save time
- Save routes for later use
- Access everything from their mobile device
With an optimized route available on your phone, you are off to a great day of selling!
Plan Your Day
Now that the sales team understands their territories and has built the perfect route for their trips, geolocation solutions can help with a few finishing touches.
First of all, if your geolocation solution leverages Google Map’s API, you have access to additional information while you are out on the road. Find a coffee shop to set-up your computer or a great, local restaurant to eat lunch.
Second, the best geolocation solutions allow sales leaders to gain insights into their reps behaviors with out-of-the-box check-in functionality. This allows sales reps to check-in once they arrive at one of their stops and record their meeting notes directly into their CRM. Reps can even use built-in talk-to-text functionality to minimize the amount of typing they need to do during their busy day.
Geolocation is critical to a sales teams’ success, it empowers them to plan and understand their territories, optimize their routes, and provide an overall plan for the day. As our friend Alexander Graham Bell once said, “…planning is the key to success”, which means there’s no time to waste! Get your 2019 strategy in place now with the help of geolocation.
To learn more about how geolocation can benefit your sales team, click below to read our blog post, Increase Sales Using Geolocation Technology.
