Establishment of sales territories facilitates matching selling efforts with sales opportunities. Sales personnel are assigned the responsibility for serving particular groupings of customers and prospects and provide contact points with the markets, Territorial assignments lend direction to the planning and control of sales operations.
In establishing sales territories management is taking an important step toward accumulating knowledge on the company’s strengths and weaknesses in serving different markets, Through utilization of this knowledge in planning sales operations, managerial efforts to improve competitive position become increasingly effective.
Realistic sales planning is done on a territory-by-territory basis. Characteristics of customers and prospects vary from one sales territory to another, and sometimes even from one county to the next. The territory is a more homogeneous unit than the market as a whole.
Breaking down the total market into smaller units makes control of sales operations more effective, Assigning responsibility for achieving specific objectives to subordinate line executives and individual sales personnel brings selling efforts into alignment with sales opportunities, Direction is lent to gathering information on individual performances, and comparisons of performances with 155 sales opportunities present in each territory provide sound bases for appraisal.
