For sales teams operating in multiple states and even larger ones, dividing and conquering sales responsibilities is a crucial aspect of their business strategy. However, many organizations find that the Salesforce Sales Territory feature is too complicated to manage, or does not come with the features they need. Without these territories set up properly in your system, you restrict your ability to quickly and consistently assign records, report out, and segment the user's experience. This is why our team has developed a custom process for creating sales territories in Salesforce.
In this article, we will dive into the strategy and technical implementation of this territory mapping. Of course, it is worth noting that every organization is different, and this means the build of this solution may need slight adjustments to fit your team’s specific needs.
Before starting any kind of technical implementation of your territories, there should be a clear understanding of what they will be used for. This will help inform your process, including where these territory values should live in your CRM.
If these territory assignments are used to segment accounts and keep your reps focused on targets in their territory, then the account level may be all you need. If your team focuses on the location of the individual contacts and leads – becoming more common in a remote working world – then you may place these values at that level.
The key here is intentionality and planning within your sales organization prior to building. The best solution is one that everyone can agree on.
Once you have your planning settled, you can begin creating your sales territories in Salesforce using the steps outlined below.
Note: In this example, we are assuming these territories are account-based, and determined by zip codes.
To start, create an excel document with headers for every piece of information you need to include for each territory. Typically, this is the zip code or state of that territory, the salesperson responsible for that territory, the territory name, city, state, etc. You will have a row for every territory or state, as shown below.
For those who do not know, an “object” can be roughly defined as a grouping of fields that represents something in real life. For instance, a contact is an object that represents a person in real life. A custom object is used to represent things not currently captured by the out-of-the-box groups.
So, to house the information we just put in our Excel, we will create a custom territory object.
Now that you have your object, it should be placed where the team can access it. This is why you need to create a new tab. This Tab can then be placed on your interface in the next step.
Under your tab setup, you can choose which apps this object and tab can live within.
As mentioned before, an object is roughly defined as a grouping of fields. Now that we have the object, we need to create the fields needed for your sales territories in Salesforce.
Note: These should match the headers from your Excel file.
Using your Excel file prepped at the beginning, you can now import your territory information into Salesforce. Here is a nice how-to series from Salesforce support on how to import data.
Next, you can connect your completed territory to your desired object. The corresponding fields from the territory object can also be created and brought over to your account (or whatever object you are connecting to territories).
The new territory field will now show on the account page.
Now that you have a location to pass your territory information, you can populate this by creating a record-triggered flow that will populate our lookup field and any other fields you would like to pass from one object to the next
Note: Flow Automation will almost always be specific to the team. The screenshot below is one example that provides general guidance.
The walkthrough above is a custom solution developed by our Salesforce team. As a partner of Salesforce, our team is constantly looking for solutions that are as unique as our clients and their challenges.
If you would like assistance creating sales territories in Salesforce, or any customizations needed for your team, contact us.