Territory Management is a system by which customer accounts are grouped based on a defined set of criteria. This makes for easy sharing of customer accounts among sales teams in your company. In Zoho CRM, the territory management feature lets you:
- Create territories and specify criteria that defines a territory.
- Build a territory hierarchy in addition to the role hierarchy in your account.
- Access predefined reports on territories, such as, Star performers across territories, Overall Sales Cycle Duration among territories, Revenue By Territories, etc.
- Create custom reports on territories.
- Set multiple forecast targets for users belonging to multiple territories.
Territory management need not be a requirement for every organization. You need to decide on the usage of territories for your organization’s sales structure and data-sharing model. This document will guide you and help you decide if Territory Management is required for your company.
Role compare to Territory
- You do not want the sales team from any specific region to access the records of another region.
- There may be a few important prospects that you want to share with the senior sales reps from two different teams, in two regions.
It may become a complicated process to achieve this using roles and data sharing rules alone. On the other hand, with territories based on a defined set of criteria, you can extend the Zoho CRM data-sharing model in your Zoho CRM account and easily share records with various users in different teams. This will ensure that the teams are focused towards a goal to achieve the sales target set under the different times zones.
Before You Move to Territory Hierarchy
Before you plan to set up Territory Management in your Zoho CRM account, consider the following topics that will help you determine if Territory Management is suited to your organization.
- Sales Structure and Sharing Needs – A CRM data sharing structure, which requires individuals belonging to multiple territories to access multiple customer accounts.
- Forecasting – Forecasts based on territory hierarchy. The need to set forecasts targets for each territory a users belongs.
- Administration – Territories can be managed as individual units to reduce the burden on the administrators.
Sales Structure and Sharing Needs
How is your data shared with other users?
It is crucial to analyze if the role-based hierarchy, data sharing rules, groups and assignment rules provide the best options to share accounts as per your sale structure.
Your organization may have the need to share records based on the products or services, revenue, zip code/region, or industry, and not based on the record ownership. For such a complex and collaborative sharing model, you need territories that ensure effective grouping of customer accounts and sharing records with different sales teams.
Does the sales structure in your organization require you to share customer accounts with many people from different teams?
An organization’s sales structure may either be linear or a complex matrix, where data sharing is one to many.
Zoho CRM Territory Management will be right for your organization :
- Your company’s sharing needs depend more on account’s characteristics rather than the individual ownership of the records.
- Your organization has a matrix sales structure, which requires individuals belonging to multiple territories to access multiple customer accounts.
Forecasting
When you switch to Territory Management in Zoho CRM, forecasts will also change to suit the territory requirements. When a user is part of multiple territories you may need to set different sales targets for the user, as you will have different targets set for each territory.
Territories, on the other hand, are easier to manage. For example: Your sales structure is demarcated based on region. A sales executive who takes care of customer enquires that come from China is a star performer in your team. You decide to give this sales rep additional responsibility, to handle customers from Japan. In this example, territory management gives you the flexibility to add the user in China and Japan sales territory to where the sales executive can access the customer records from both the countries.
When complex data sharing rules and role hierarchy do not meet the requirements, territories are a much easier option to maintain as individual units that will also reduce the burden on the administrators. Visualizing your organization’s sales structure in a territorial hierarchy can help decide if Territory Management is the option for you.
Your Decision
Make sure you choose the right data-sharing model for the smooth running of your business. If you would like to find out how Territory Management will suit your business needs, you can also refer to the online help for more details on how it works.
To conclude. use territory management if you:
- Have a complex sales structure with the need to often change users to different sales teams/territories.
- Need to segment customer accounts based on the account characteristics rather than the record ownership.
- Want an easy to maintain process for the administrators to manage sharing of data among multiple users of different teams.
- Require multiple forecasts targets for users belonging to different sales territories.
