Sales goals are achieved through the hard work and expertise of your sales team. Results are driven by the managers who set the goals, and the sales people on the road or on the phone who contact customers, answer questions, and overcome obstacles until the sale is made. So how can business mapping software add value to this process? How can a tool like Map Business Online help a sales team be more efficient at achieving sales objectives?
Online business mapping tools can organize a sales team’s rules, goals, and people geographically. Map visualizations help to define the sales structure, the customer network, and tie the milestones required to achieve goals to areas of accountability. Maps helps sales people understand objectives through the visual presentation of boundaries, reference information, and customer locations.
Cleary Define Sales Accountability
A successful sale department is made up of a team of associates who clearly understand their roles and their responsibilities. Specific customer accounts are typically assigned to sales people and specific geographic areas are often defined as sales territories. Sales goals and objectives for individuals, for each sales territory, and for the overall group, are tied to the overall sales goals. It is after all, in everyone’s best interest that everyone performs well.
Sales territories, as defined by a business mapping tool, anchors the interrelated sales structure in geographic reality. This territory structure serves to tie everyone together as a team focused on clear goals. Clearly defined geographic areas of responsibility and shared monetary goals and results keep a dedicated sales team focused, informed and engaged in growing sales on behalf of the organization.
A business mapping tool easily defines geographic areas of responsibility. ZIP code or country territories become visual reminders of where account responsibilities lie. Sales goals by dollar value are easily aggregated into territory market analysis. Other relevant optimizing elements can be used to define the territory assignments tying the sales structure to industry types, consumer populations, or expendable income levels by area. Demographic data and location-based business analysis will help identify lucrative areas of potential sales growth.
Customer and prospect address lists are imported from active CRM software, on top of sales territories for quick sales rep reference and tactical planning. Regular use of these critical databases in a mapping application serves to underscore the value of a CRM, increasing utilization of that critical sales investment.
Clearly defined areas of account responsibility drive an efficient sales force:
- Sales overlap is kept to a minimum if not completely avoided
- Sales people easily visualize what their next activity should be
- Shared sales map views encourage shared success strategies and healthy competition
- CRM utilization is enhanced
A shared territory map drives sales growth
Share the Big Picture
A sales team needs to understand their place in the big company picture. Understanding their company’s sales strategy, product plan, and even a five to ten-year business plan, means the sales team feels both motivated and secure, allowing them to focus on the business at hand.
Business mapping software can provide a beautiful and informative platform for developing and communicating long-term business strategies.
Strategic presentations could begin with product plans and business maps that define the potential market for future product releases. Specific geographic areas targeted for growth, show vision and growth potential motivating your sales team. An informed sales person, aware of long-term product plans and possible business infrastructure enhancements, has a better business story to share with her customer.
Customers crave stories that include long-term plans. Business mapping has a great example of this. Most of my customers are still sore from the loss of Microsoft MapPoint and want to know that their MapPoint replacement will be around in five or even ten years.
Shared Maps Improve Communication
By sharing regular sales result through business maps a sales team works together to analyze both successful and failed strategies; honing their overall sales approach while keeping their focus on annual goals. Business maps are a natural platform for a monthly or quarterly sales review meeting. Maps encourage discussion.
Territory results keep the sales associates aware of their standing. A little competition is healthy. Sales managers must work to keep that competition fair and balanced as products, customers and sales reps come and go. The sales meeting serves as a key element of the sales process where the experience and inexperienced sales people come together, compare notes and discover what works.
Some business mapping includes the ability to set up collaborative team mapping, focusing your best minds on shared and editable maps with a goal towards solving problems and improving metrics. Think, accounting and sales departments working together to lower accounts receivables average collection days.
Shared sales map discussions include:
- What new approaches and new markets are working in any territory
- The identification and resolution of sales overlap and legacy account distribution
- Story telling that builds collaboration and inculcate proper sales behavior
- Fewer distractions from the sales process
Day-to-Day Tactics
The business map also serves as the platform for travel and call planning for inside and outside sales reps. Each sales person has access to a map with their territory displayed and their customer and prospect lists available at a click.
Tactics may be up to the individual representative or directed by a manager. Either way, travel and route plans derived from a business map allow reps to substitute new call stops in the event of a cancellation. Travel expenses tend to drop for companies that share sales territory maps. CRM utilization is clearly enhanced as sales reps learn to manage their shifting route appointments. CRM customer databases are easily uploaded to a business map for local storage and regular review.
Shared territory map views prevent duplication of effort due to sales area overlap. Legacy accounts always require decision-making to balance sales workloads, customer preference, and compensation. Business maps enable territory overlap alerts like a ZIP code shaded black to denote overlap. Remember, awareness is halfway to solving a problem.
And inside sales people may not be driving around the countryside but they can still benefit from geographic views of their account lists. Focusing on certain areas helps bring into focus local issues and could help identify new areas of opportunity. Imagine being the lighting company that figures out that new LED lighting systems are being installed in five cannabis grow facilities in Montgomery Country following marijuana legalization referendums. A whole new industry that could replace a fading major legacy account. This kind of thing happens everyday in sales. Here in Maine, biotech and brewery businesses have replaced the once dominant paper industry. Keep those eyes wide open and ears to the railroad track.
By leveraging a reasonable investment in business mapping software businesses of all types will encourage sales growth and improve profitability through increased sales, lowered expenses, fewer distractions, and a happier wide-awake sales force. If your company has a sales organization, your business stands to significantly benefit from shared business maps.
Share your business plans, define areas of responsibility, and encourage a collaborative environment. These are the steps along the path of sales growth.
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Find out why over 25,000 business users log into www.MapBusinessOnline.com for their business mapping software and advanced sales territory mapping solution.
Contact: Geoffrey Ives geoffives@spatialteq.com or Jason Henderson jhenderson@spatialteq.com (800) 425-9035
MapPoint users please consider www.MapBusinessOnline.com as your MapPoint Replacement.
