Territory planning for a team that covers several cities

One salesperson drives four hours each way to a town that buys little. Another holds three cities of distributors within an hour of home and cannot visit them all. Nobody planned it that way. A territory can start as a favour: the first salesperson lived in one town and took it; the next joined and got "the rest". To split accounts across several cities fairly, rank the reasons in this order: how long it takes to reach the account, how much the account could buy, and how well it is served today. Habit, as in "this is who always went there", comes last.

Why changing a territory feels like an attack

After some years, the old map is baked into commissions, friendships and the owner's assumptions. Moving a town feels like punishing the person who held it. That is why you need numbers on the table before anyone talks about moving anything. A sheet turns "you have too much" into a statement everyone can read.

The sheet: one row per account

Build it before anyone is moved. Each row carries a name and four fields written in plain words.

Account | Minutes door to door from the salesperson's base, one way
        | Potential per year: small / medium / large, with a reason
        | State today: active / slipping / dormant / never opened
        | Visits it needs: how many in a cycle, and why

Take travel time from a map and check it against what the team says, because the team has driven the road and the map has not. Potential needs two people, the owner and the senior salesperson, in one room, and a reason written beside every "large". An account called large because "they are a big name" is not the same as one that stocks your product category and has asked about a second item. For state, use your last invoice or enquiry date, not memory.

From the sheet to territories

Start with time, not kilometres. Two hundred kilometres of highway can be shorter than forty of town traffic. Then count each person's selling days after office days, collections and festivals. As an illustrative figure, a person with eighteen days a month for visits and a typical visit costing half a day on the road has room for roughly thirty-six visits; your own numbers will differ.

Estimate how many visits each account needs. A large, slipping account might need a visit each cycle. A small steady one might need a phone call and an occasional trip. Add them up per cluster of accounts. The cluster should fit the days available with some slack. If it does not, either drop a visit frequency or serve the far accounts by phone or through a distributor.

Then check balance. Total potential in each territory should fall within a comfortable range of the others. If one patch holds most large accounts, split it, or give that person a different job such as key accounts only.

Border towns need one written rule

Pick one rule and write it. The simplest: a town belongs to the salesperson whose base is closer by travel time, and ties go to the one with less total potential. Another is that border accounts belong to whoever opened them. Either works. A town claimed by two people and written down by neither is where quarrels breed.

A dairy-equipment supplier across Anand, Mehsana and Palanpur

Here is an invented example. A supplier of milk-chilling units and dairy equipment based in Anand, with two field salespeople. One lives in Anand and one in Mehsana. Between them they cover village cooperatives and private dairies around Anand, Mehsana and Palanpur.

For years the Anand salesperson also took Palanpur, because that was where the salesperson had started. The drive was long, the dealers few and the territory quiet. The Mehsana salesperson, close to dense clusters of small dairies, was visiting them often for small orders.

The owner built the sheet and planned from map distance. The first plan gave Palanpur to Mehsana on paper, since it looked close. It collapsed in the first month. A stretch of road work doubled the real driving time, and the Mehsana salesperson, who had never been consulted, said so in the review. The owner repeated the exercise with each person timing three real trips. Palanpur became a shared patch that both salespeople visited in turn, so each knew the dealers, instead of belonging to one. Orders from accounts the Anand salesperson had opened stayed credited to that person for a period agreed with them, whoever visited, and that rule was written on the sheet. Palanpur sales stayed small; the gain was that Mehsana's small dairies got more visits.

How to move accounts without a fight

Show the sheet before you show the new map. Ask each salesperson which three accounts they would hand over and which three they want. People may volunteer the accounts that bore them, and sometimes those are the ones that need a fresh face.

Make the handover visit a joint one: the old holder introduces the new one. And decide in writing how orders are credited during the change, before anyone asks.

When a new map is not the answer

If there are simply too few people for the number of cities, no map helps. Count the visit hours you need against the hours you have. If the gap is wide, the options are fewer accounts, more selling by phone, a distributor in the far towns or another hire. A new map will only tidy the shortage. For how dealers handle similar splits, see furniture dealers and territories.

Skip it too if the data is thin. With no invoice dates and no enquiry history, the "state today" field is guesswork, and you will plan around guesses. Keep the enquiry sheet first; a simple CRM or sheet for a small trade business is a place to start.

Pull last invoice dates this week

Add the last invoice date and the travel time to every account row. Even that shows who drives furthest for least. Territory planning is the service that builds the full allocation with you, and the rest of our sales work sits under sales. To start, tell us what you need.