Sales Territory and Assignment Setup for the Vision Corp. Use Case

This topic explains the use case for the sales territory setup detailed in this chapter. The fictitious Vision Corp. divides its field sales organization for the US into two regions, East and West.

Each regional sales organization includes two salespeople, one sells laptops and the other servers. A sales support organization helps out with sales of technically complex server products. The organization includes a sales administrator who monitors and refines the territory assignment and two inside sales representatives who qualify leads.

The Organization and Use Case

Here's the Vision Corp. sales resource hierarchy you set up earlier.

The sample Vision Corp. sales hierarchy includes the following individuals. Each name is followed by their resource role, their resource organization, and their manager's name: William Taylor, CEO, Vision Corp; Peter Apt, Vice President, Global: High Tech (reporting to William Taylor); Bob Boyle, Sales Vice President, US Direct Sales (reporting to Peter Apt); Martin Conway, Sales Vice President, US Product Sales (reporting to Bob Boyle); John Dunbar Sales Administrator, US Product Sales (reporting to Martin Conway); Alex Smith, Support Manager, Sales Support (reporting to Martin Conway); Mateo Lopez, Sales Manager, US Products West (reporting to Martin Conway); Michael Rhodes, Sales Manager, US Products East (reporting to Martin Conway);Peter Branch, Product Specialist, Sales Support (reporting to Alex Smith); Marilyn Richie, Product Specialist, Sales Support (reporting to Alex Smith); Lisa Jones, Salesperson, US Products West (reporting to Mateo Lopez); Julian Henderson, Salesperson, US Products West (reporting to Mateo Lopez); Kristen Garrity, Salesperson, US Products East (reporting to Michael Rhodes); Sean Goodkin, Salesperson, US Products East (reporting to Michael Rhodes). Two inside sales representatives report to Martin Conway: James Ng, Inside Sales, US Product Sales and Waleed Abbas, Inside Sales, US Product Sales.

Sales Territory Setup

Vision Corp. creates territories using the address and product dimensions. Here's a diagram that shows the sales territory structure:

The top territory, US Product Sales, is the overall catchall territory.

The territory is owned by Martin Conway and includes the sales administrator John Dunbar. John Dunbar can troubleshoot any accounts and opportunities that are assigned to the overall catchall territory and also to the West and East catchall territories. By monitoring the catchall territories, John can refine the territory structure over time and fill in any gaps.
The Sales Support territory owned by Alex Smith has blank (no value) entries for Address and Products coverage. No accounts and opportunities are assigned to him because he only manages the product specialists working for him.
Peter Branch and Marilyn Richie are assigned to help with opportunities that involve their products, Sentinel Servers or Green Servers.
The inside sales representatives don't have any territories because they qualify leads assigned to them using rules you set up as part of the Leads chapter.

Diagram of Vision Corp. territories. The top territory, US Product Sales, is owned by Martin Conway and John Dunbar. The top territory has three child territories: West, owned by Mateo Lopez; Sales Support, owned by Alex Smith; and East, owned by Michael Rhodes. The West territory includes the West Laptops territory, owned by Lisa Jones, and the West Servers territory, owned by Julian Henderson. The Sales Support territory is divided into the Sentinel Servers territory, owned by Peter Branch, and the Green Servers territory, owned by Marilyn Richie. The East territory includes the East Laptops territory, owned by Kristen Garrity, and the East Servers territory, owned by Sean Goodkin.

Here are the key entries for the territories:

Entries in the Product dimension column are the product groups in the sales catalog. Selecting a product group includes all the product groups and products nested within the product group.
Vision Corp. is forecasting sales only. There's no forecast for the sales support organization. For this reason, the Enable Forecasting column value for the overlay territories is set to Overlay Only. For the prime territories, the value is Prime Only.
The Sales Support territory has no coverage values so it doesn't get assigned to any accounts and opportunities. Because each child territory automatically inherits the coverage of its parent, you must delete the coverage to make it blank. For details, see the Create a Territory with No Coverage topic.

Territory Name	Territory Owner	Territory Type	Address	Products	Enable Forecasting
US Product Sales	Martin Conway John Dunbar	Prime	Any	Any	Prime only
East	Michael Rhodes	Prime	Arkansas and all the other states in the eastern US	Any	Prime only
East Laptops	Kristen Garrity	Prime	Arkansas and all the other states in the eastern US	Laptops	Prime only
East Servers	Sean Goodkin	Prime	Arkansas and all the other states in the eastern US	Servers	Prime only
Sales Support	Alex Smith	Overlay	Blank (no value)	Blank (no value)	Overlay only
Sentinel Servers	Peter Branch	Overlay	Any	Sentinel Servers	Overlay only
Green Servers	Marilyn Richie	Overlay	Any	Green Servers	Overlay only
West	Mateo Lopez	Prime	Alaska and all the other states in the western US	Any	Prime only
West Laptops	Lisa Jones	Prime	Alaska and all the other states in the western US	Laptops	Prime only
West Servers	Julian Henderson	Prime	Alaska and all the other states in the western US	Servers	Prime only

How It Works

Vision Corp. runs the assignment process once a day in off-peak periods to assign new accounts or opportunities and qualified leads. Here's an outline of how assignment works for accounts:

The application assigns an account to both the prime and overlay territories using the state the account is located in. A new account in Alaska gets assigned to West Laptops, West Servers, Sentinel Servers, and Green Servers territories. The owners and members of these territories gain access.
If the account information is missing a state for some reason or is in a country other than the US, then the application assigns the account to the US Product Sales. Sales administrator John Dunbar reviews and troubleshoots the accounts assigned to this catchall territory.

The application assigns opportunities and qualified leads using the address information from the account and the product in each opportunity. For forecasting purposes, each opportunity line is assigned individually to territories and the territory owner gets to forecast only that line, but the territory owner gains edit access to the whole opportunity and the territory is listed on the opportunity Sales Team tab:

An opportunity for green servers in an Alaska account, gets assigned to the West Servers prime territory and to the Green Servers overlay territory.
An opportunity for laptops in the same Alaska account, gets assigned to the West Laptops prime territory only.
An opportunity for both green servers and laptops in the same Alaska account, gets assigned the West Laptops, West Servers prime territories and the Green Servers overlay territory. All three territory owners gain edit access to the opportunity and the territories show up in the opportunity Sales Team tab. Although each territory member gains access to the opportunity as a whole, the forecasts for each of the prime territories include only their specific products.
If an opportunity for the Alaska account includes a product not included in any of the territory coverages, then the application assigns the West territory.