1. Implementation Reference
  2. Overview of Territory Management Features

Overview of Territory Management Features

Sales territories form the fundamental infrastructure of sales management because territories define the jurisdiction that salespeople and channel managers have over accounts, contacts, households, partners, and associated transactions.

Territories provide the rules for automatically assigning salespeople and other resources to accounts, contacts, households, partners, leads, and opportunity line items. The structural hierarchy of territories defines resource responsibilities and controls access to customer and sales data.

Note: If your salespeople forecast only the opportunities they own and you don't need to assign accounts, leads, or opportunities to them automatically by address or other criteria, then you can skip implementing territories per this chapter. Everything you need is in the Forecasting chapter, including a brief territory setup. A process sets up a territory structure that mirrors your sales organization hierarchy. Opportunities are assigned to the opportunity owner's territory. The opportunity revenue gets included in the owner's forecast and passed up the management chain for adjustment and approval.

Summary of Features

Territory Management includes these key features:

  • Use territories as the basis for forecasting, quota distribution, compensation, and analysis of sales performance. Forecasts roll up according to the territory hierarchy.

  • Use territories to assign resources and secure access to accounts, contacts, households, partners, leads, and opportunities.

  • Assign channel sales managers to partners and partner transactions within their territories.

  • Define territories by logical boundaries called dimensions. Examples of these include address, industry, product, customer size, sales channel, and organization type.

  • Define territories by selecting a list of specific accounts, contacts, households, or partners.

  • Model territory realignments and perform what-if analyses to find optimal territory changes.

  • Analyze metrics to understand the results of changes to the boundaries of each territory or to understand the ongoing performance of active territories.