Pete Furseth: Sales Force Territory Design: A case for geographic B2B sales territories

Salesforce territory design is a process that most sales organizations labor over on an annual basis. Often business-to-business sales organizations align on geographic sales territories. Usually, this involves grouping sales units (geographic units) into larger geographic groups, called sales territories. This paper will explore how to create an optimal sales territory design that balances two fundamental constraints, equitability in the addressable market and geographic compactness. Equitability ensures that each salesperson has the same opportunity to sell and achieve sales quota. Compactness ensures that the sales territory includes sales units that are close to one another and, more specifically, adjacent to one another. This optimal territory design is then applied to a business-to-business sales organization.