A sales territory plan takes different forms depending on if you're leading a team or if you're an individual rep. In either case, it boils down to one thing: strategy.
If you're a manager, a sales territory plan is a strategic breakdown of how you organize your business, assign reps, track activity, set goals, and grow sales across a team.
It answers these questions:
If you're an individual rep, your sales territory plan is the roadmap for how you're going to own the patch of dirt you've been assigned—whether that's a zip code, a list of accounts, or a vertical.
It answers three questions:
We'll break down each, starting with sales territory plans for managers.
If you manage a team of outside reps and you don’t have a clear sales territory plan, you’re not leading as effectively as you could be.
Structure creates the conditions for reps to thrive. High-performing teams have crystal clear territories. Their sales targets are realistic and based on data. Critically, leadership is steering the ship and moving everyone in the right direction, without needing to micromanage.
Here's how to build a sales territory plan that actually generates revenue.
Be intentional about creating territories. Putting thought into your territory strategy upfront will pay dividends down the road. Many outside sales leaders simply assign accounts to reps without much thought. They're inadvertently creating inefficiencies. There is no single way of segmenting customers that works for everyone, so adjust accordingly. Here's where you can get started:
Some companies simply assign the highest revenue accounts to their top performers. This likely works best in highly competitive fields where ensuring you win and keep business is a must. It also can help you retain top talent. The other side of the argument is that you don't cultivate other reps by giving them good opportunities to grow, so they end up leaving for a greener pasture. This assignment strategy can also create inefficient territories that cost you in the long run by capping how many visits reps can realistically hit on a regular basis. The solution is to be more intentional about territory assignment.
Too many sales managers will simply throw a new rep into a low-performing territory and say, “Go get ‘em.” That’s not leadership. That’s a setup for churn.
Here are a few ways you can be thoughtful about territory assignments across your team:
Remember one key thing: be clear when assigning territory. Don't overlap.
Territory planning software (like RepMove) automates and organizes territories. If you don't have budget for a new tool, start with a spreadsheet. It will keep everyone honest—from your reps to your own forecasts.
You need visibility into your team's actions in order to drive growth. Don't implement something and create busywork unless you will actually use the data you're gathering. Do it right and you will identify if territories are overloaded, underperforming, or full of untapped revenue.
Outside sales is straightforward. You generate more sales from more visits. Only a certain percent of customers and prospects will be ready to buy. It's a numbers game. Success starts with a plan for how often you'll visit customers and create new opportunities through prospecting. Too many reps end up treating every customer (or prospect) equally and devote an equal amount of time to all of them. This is not an efficient approach to sales. Break customers down by priority, starting with your highest value accounts in Tier 1 receiving the most frequent visits. Here's a starting point for a visit cadence.
An approach that priortizes rep time committment by revenue potential lays a good foundation for growing sales.
To start out, you need to track rep performance. If you don't use a sales call report template, download this one. Have your reps fill it out weekly and use it to populate your sales territory plan report.
But if you only look at rep performance, you miss half the story.
Let’s say one rep’s struggling. Are they a bad rep—or is their territory simply not working? KPIs (key performance indicators) help you measure success and failure. Create KPIs for every territory and rep to identify the root of issues and find solutions.
Here are a few common KPIs to get you started:
If a territory is getting actively worked but generating little revenue, it potentially needs a strategy reset. If it has few relative sales calls but is generating outsized revenue, it probably needs more coverage. Without building measurement into the territory, you will be hard pressed to know the reasons behind the numbers.
Territory plans should not be static. They need to be constantly analyzed and reviewed as any number of variables can change. Do quarterly business reviews with your entire team and ask these questions:
Sales is in constant flux so your plan should adapt with it. And if a territory starts showing signs of stagnation, reassign it. Don’t be sentimental. Be strategic.
Your reps can be great, your product can be amazing, your CRM can be beautiful—but if your territories are a mess, you're leaking revenue every day.
A sales territory plan gives your team focus, structure, and ownership. It gives you a way to lead based on data. And it gives the company a clear runway to scale. Build the structure now, and your team will thank you later—with results.
Top outside sales reps have a plan every day they hit the road. Many reps do not. They fall into the "star rep" category. Unfortunately, that doesn't make them star salespeople. It means they drive from one part of town to another and back, and so on. If you plotted out their stops it would create a star pattern.
This happens because they don't have a plan. Without a plan, they're just out driving in circles hoping something happens. Hope a strategy is not. A sales territory plan, however, is the ideal starting place.
Open a map. It could be Google Maps or it could be a physical map. You just need to visualize your accounts and prospects. Drop pins (or draw pins) on their locations.
Think density. Think travel time. Think routes that make sense.
Your biggest accounts should be your anchors. Plot them first. Then build customer clusters around them. If you're spending more time in your truck than in front of customers, you're already putting yourself behind the eight ball.
Pro tip: Upload your customer list to RepMove to automatically visualize your territory. You can also plan routes and track notes (among many other features). Start a free 7-day RepMove trial (no credit card required).
Too many reps treat every account equally. The 20/80 rule is a common refrain for good reason. It's not unusual for 20% of accounts to generate 80% of revenue. Effective use of time grows numbers while ineffective use will likely result in diminishing returns over time.
Here's a straightforward way to kickoff customer segmentation:
Don't be afraid to trim the fat. If a customer hasn't returned your call in 12 months and buys once a year, don't visit them every Tuesday morning.
Revenue is a result of a good process. A process comprises activities. You can't control if a customer chooses to buy. But you can control how many customers you call on, how much time you devote to prospecting, and how many follow-ups you follow through on.
Your sales territory plan metrics should include:
If your goal is $1M in new sales this year, break it down into simple terms. What's your average deal size? What percentage of visits turn into sales? It's a simple formula. Visits = (Target New Sales/ Average Deal Size) / Conversion Rate. Reverse-engineer the win. Say 25% of visits turn into sales and you average $2,000 per deal. Visits = ($1,000,000/$2,000)/.25. That's 2,000 annual visits. That breaks down to 167 monthly visits, 42 weekly visits, and 8.3 daily visits. You know your number. Now you need a strategy to hit it.
You know you need to hit X number of stops. Now you need to fit them into your calendar. Using your customer tiering and visit cadence in addition to looking at customer clusters, start building sales routes. Do these realistically add up to the number of stops you need to hit? If not, it's time to fill the gaps with prospecting. The good news is your territory is probably full of opportunity.
Think about these questions before you start prospecting:
Your plan needs whitespace analysis. Identify companies you should call on or visit. Use prospecting tools to identify prospects (or Google). Ask current customers for referrals or leads. Walk into offices cold and ask to speak to whoever's in charge of your area. Grind, intelligently, and win.
Hoping the day brings you opportunities will result in one thing: failure. You need to build a weekly rhythm. Create time blocks, and most importantly, follow them strictly. Create a tight schedule and give yourself margins for the fires that inevitably pop up.
Then revisit your sales territory plan every month. Look at the data. What's working? What's not? Don't get romantic about poor prospects. Don't be afraid to reclassify accounts. To hit high numbers, you need to have high standards. Good reps build plans. Great ones evolve them.
Put in the work. Build the plan. Watch your numbers climb.
