Sales territory mapping for your brand in supermarkets: 10 key techniques

Despite the boom in online sales, having a field sales force remains the norm in many industries. However, physical prospecting generates significant costs. This is why companies are led to organize the territory they cover into distinct sectors, in order to promote the overall profitability of sales operations.

Today, Sidely takes you on a journey to discover the fundamentals of optimized sales sectorization.

On the agenda: an overview of the key concepts to master, a focus on BtoB sales, and finally a list of 10 key practices dedicated to brands that go through large-scale retail distribution.

Sales sectorization: definition and challenges

Sales sectorization refers to dividing a geographical region into specific sectors in order to facilitate the management and implementation of a company's sales activities.

The objective is to optimize the sales, marketing, and distribution strategy. Indeed, sales sectorization allows for better targeting of customers and adjusting resources and efforts according to the specific characteristics of each sector. An intelligent division of sectors makes it possible to optimize sales route planning, in order to increase revenue and profitability.

According to this principle, each sales representative works with the prospects and clients of a geographical area for which they have exclusivity.

Beyond profitability, a well-thought-out division helps frame actions and prevent sales reps from spreading themselves too thin. Companies thus ensure that the market is properly covered and coordinate their expansion or market share defense strategy at the territorial level.

An optimized sales sectorization must therefore contribute to several objectives: 

• Maximize revenue; 

• Increase profitability by optimizing travel costs;

• Effectively cover the targeted demographic;

• Fairly distribute the prospecting workload among sales reps; 

• Identify business development opportunities;

• Defend market share;

• Enable the company to adapt to market changes.

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Criteria for sales sectorization

The criteria for sales sectorization can vary depending on the company's activity, but they often include factors such as: 

• Population density;

• Purchasing power;

• Buying habits;

• Local competition;

• The quantity and quality of transportation routes and means, etc.‍

Companies selling in BtoB use economic characteristics related to corporations: 

• Number of companies per sector; 

• Company size (revenue or workforce);

• Decision-making power (headquarters vs. branches, etc.);

• Overrepresented industries (pork in Brittany, Champagne in the east, etc.).

Furthermore, reaching a finer level of granularity usually requires creating segments, such as: 

• Status: prospects / Active clients / Inactive clients;

• Current offering (number of products, upselling opportunities, etc.);

• Accounts linked to group agreements;

• Users of a competing solution, etc.

• Brands selling through large-scale retail distribution form marketing segments: store strata (convenience, hypermarket, etc.), type of business (integrated versus independent), business objectives (numerical distribution, mandatory assortment, merchandising, promotions, etc.).

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Difference between sectorization and segmentation

Sales sectorization and sales (or marketing) segmentation are therefore two distinct, although closely related, concepts: 

• Sales sectorization focuses primarily on the geographical division of a region or market into specific sectors, taking into account structural and external characteristics of your company (population, local buying habits, etc.);

• Sales (or marketing) segmentation is a broader concept that goes beyond geographical division. It aims to divide a market into distinct target groups based on various criteria, which can be internal to your organization (active client, relationship-based, current offering, strategic client, etc.). The goal of segmentation is to better understand the specific needs of customers within each segment and adapt marketing strategies accordingly. It is used in particular to personalize offers. Segmentation can include geographical sectorization, but it goes far beyond this simple criterion. Discover how to define your marketing segmentation in large-scale retail distribution.

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When should you review your sales sectorization?

Sales sectorization is never set in stone. Many events will justify its revision, starting with changes in the sales strategy itself. New goals usually lead to reorganizations in the field. Changes in the sales force, in turn, bring inevitable and often beneficial adjustments. This is also one of the reasons why category managers in large-scale retail distribution usually advance quite quickly.

However, in other industries, it is common for field sales reps to burn out on their sector after a certain period. They may need new challenges, or have reached the end of the road with certain prospects they never managed to win over. Reorganizing sales sectors can thus bring a breath of fresh air to sales reps, but also to the prospects themselves, who do not always have the ideal chemistry with the assigned sales rep. 

⚠️ The reverse is also very common: some contracts are closely tied to the relationship between the sales rep and the client. Be sure to carefully evaluate the impact of zone changes!

Main challenges in dividing territory

Dividing a territory into fair sales potentials can be problematic for companies. The most common difficulties are as follows.

• Geographical scope: the variable size of sectors can be a tricky problem: a geographical area that is too small can frustrate the field sales rep, who will quickly feel they have exhausted the interesting targets in their territory. Conversely, giving "too" large a sector to a sales rep is the best way for them to get scattered in their daily work. Worse still, a very large pool can reduce the value of prospects in their eyes. It is therefore necessary to limit the number of targets so that your sales reps realize that the pool is not infinite and that no sale should be taken lightly.

• Data and criteria taken into account: effective sectorization often relies on accurate and up-to-date data, and many companies have insufficient sales databases. Determining sectorization criteria is also a complex issue. Sometimes you will need to score or weight your criteria in order to prioritize them.

• Consistency of sales action:  it is also recommended to properly strike a balance between the global strategy that applies to everyone and the personalization that allows tactics to be adapted locally.

• Collaboration: defining an optimal sales sectorization often involves close coordination between different departments of the company, such as marketing, sales, and operations management.

The specificities of BtoB sectorization

Organizing prospects or clients into distinct target groups takes on a particular dimension when selling to businesses (Business To Business).

Indeed, in addition to income disparities, decision-making is a fundamental criterion. For example, if you target mid-sized companies (ETIs), note that nearly 40% of headquarters are located in the Ile-De-France region! The Auvergne Rhône-Alpes region comes in second (13%).

Furthermore, while only 287 companies were considered large enterprises in 2015, their workforce represented almost 4 million people, which is larger than the workforce of micro-businesses!

For all these reasons, companies generally avoid territorial division where 1 sales rep = 1 department. Structural disparities lead most companies to divide territories according to their respective sales potentials.

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Sales cycles and sales profiles

However, the size and type of targeted companies impact the sales cycle. It is generally longer to sell a framework agreement to a group than to get a purchase approved by an independent client.

For example, the world of large-scale retail distribution is divided into two categories of players: integrated and independent. The former apply the group policy, while the latter have relative autonomy regarding the choice of suppliers to reference.

In other words, listing with integrated players such as Carrefour or Auchan requires negotiating with central purchasing offices, whereas to sell your products to independents like Intermarché or Leclerc, you will need to convince the directors of each point of sale directly, even if you are suggested in the banner's assortment.

Depending on your target and its territorial network, you will therefore need to recruit different profiles: 

• For long sales cycles, you will look for negotiator profiles. These tacticians know how to conduct discussions over several months, shift contacts skillfully, and keep their cool in the face of destabilization techniques that buyers excel at;

• To develop local sales, you look for profiles who thrive on one-shot deals. These category managers love closing quickly and measure their utility and value by the number of new sales made on a weekly or monthly basis.

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10 keys to successful sales sectorization in large-scale retail distribution

Does your brand want to develop its distribution network? Here are the 10 keys to integrate into your thinking to achieve the best sales sectorization: 

1. Sales objectives

Sales objectives help determine how to prospect territory: a brand that wants to improve its market share in a banner and another that wants to increase its distribution rate will organize their prospecting in completely different ways, and their sales sectorizations will reflect their sales and marketing strategy.‍

2. Market analysis

For a national brand, utilizing panelist data is often inevitable. These actors provide an in-depth analysis of market trends, competition, and also buying habits, geographic location, store size, specific distribution channels, etc.

3. Types of networks

Define the priority network(s), integrated or independent: the organization of sales resources and prospecting will differ depending on whether decision-making is centralized (central purchasing offices and banners) or partially delegated (independents). These distinct strategies can also impact sales recruitment.

4. Intelligent CRM

Use a CRM that integrates structural data such as the concept of decision-making (headquarters, facility, etc.) and the group or banner branching, etc. Your category managers must be aware of the stakes of correctly "filling in" the CRM: data is at the heart of sales sectorization.

This CRM must also integrate a sales route planner: the graphical representation of geographical sectors can be misleading, and your sales reps do not travel as the crow flies! Here, technology is what will optimize the cost per trip or the revenue / prospecting cost ratio. 

5. Numerical and weighted distribution

Know how to appreciate the importance of geographical sectors according to the performance of the businesses located there. To evaluate the quality of your network at the territorial scale, two strategic indicators are at your disposal: ND and WD.

6. Determine your sales front

This set of points of sale crucial to your brand's development can be the subject of specific sales intensity (frequency of visits, layering of objectives, etc.).

7. Customer scoring and frequency of visits

A good customer scoring system allows you to evaluate the importance of each customer account in your sales strategy. Thus, some accounts may be visited less frequently, and sometimes a phone call may suffice to confirm orders. But be careful not to abandon the field to your competitors. No matter how spaced out the visits are, they must allow for a complete assessment (shelf inventory, number of facings, merchandising, competition, etc.).

8. Factor in profitability

Integrate the logistical dimension into your sectorization: a national brand may face delivery costs and times that vary greatly depending on the location of the points of sale. It is important to adapt sectorization in order to preserve margins and guarantee the proper execution of distribution contracts. For growing companies that wish to avoid over-sizing their resources, partnerships should be considered: have you thought about shop-in-shop to gain representation at lower cost in certain sectors? What about a supplementary sales force to grow while limiting financial commitment?

9. Monitoring and adjustment

Set up key performance indicators (KPIs) to evaluate the effectiveness of your sales sectorization. Monitor results regularly, gather feedback from distributors and consumers, and adjust your strategy accordingly.

10. Work on your communication 

Sales volume always reflects the motivation level of your field sales reps. And they attach enormous importance to the notion of merit and managerial fairness. It is therefore extremely important to explain why and how you decided to distribute the target groups. This exceptional communication deserves at least a group meeting - or even an event if it is a major change in the company's life - but also individual interviews in some cases. Here is a scenario that illustrates this principle.