How many times have you heard colleagues across sales operations teams and sales management complain how tedious planning sales territories (sometimes referred to as “patches”) can be? Probably quite a few! Regardless of the way this process is being conducted in your organization, one thing is certain: Salesforce data will be used, and some decisions will have to be reflected in Salesforce in the form of account owners, opportunity owners, or various other ways.
In this article, we will explore how you can empower your operation teams to assess and optimize their end-to-end planning processes right within Salesforce.
What Is Territory Planning?
A simple Google search will help you to roughly define territory planning as the way that broad geographical areas are split into smaller sections – each of them being handled by a specific person or team. Simple, right?
When it comes to larger enterprise organizations, this process is anything but simple. If we focus on how sales territories are defined, sales and revenue operations teams have to consider a large number of aspects (geographical or not) to ensure an equitable split and increased efficiency, all while maximizing the revenue potential. Additionally, as go-to-market strategies have to constantly adapt, planning might end up as both a scheduled effort and an ad hoc situation managed on a case-by-case basis.
What Is Salesforce Territory Planning?
Salesforce Maps Territory Planning is a Salesforce product which not only helps to prevent potentially unbalanced territories, but also allows the sales operations manager to focus their efforts wisely, by making all mechanisms available in one place: your Salesforce CRM.
Out-of-the-box functionality can be used to make use of various data sources, filter to only the data that is needed for the particular planning scenario, model potential territory changes in different ways, ask for feedback, and then reflect any changes right within Salesforce, as required.
Setup and Configuration
To make use of territory planning functionality, the Salesforce Maps Territory Planning managed package has to be installed first. Similar to other managed packages, it can be installed in a sandbox prior to the production installation. A link to the package will be sent to you once the product is purchased.
OAuth User
Data creation and optimization requests are handled through an integration user, which will require a license along with the Maps Admin Permission Set and the Salesforce Maps Territory Planning Permission Set license.
Since you will have to be logged in as the user in order to click the Authorize button below as a one-time event, this is not a scenario where the new Salesforce Integration User License can be used, as UI access is needed for the initial setup.
Enabling Users
As far as users go, everyone will need to have the Salesforce Maps Territory Planning Permission Set License assigned, along with the SF Maps Territory Planning Permission Set. Additionally, it is recommended that all admin users should have the Maps Admin Permission Set assigned as well, which enables access to all settings.
Within the package configuration page, you can (and should) also define the Area Roles, especially if you are using Enterprise Territory Management in Salesforce already.
Ready, Set… Plan!
Now that the initial setup is taken care of, let’s move on to the functionality that really makes Territory Planning stand out. Before you get started, be sure to navigate to the Territory Planning tab within the Salesforce Maps app. Alternatively, you can simply search for “territory planning” in the App Launcher.
Datasets
As mentioned above, Salesforce data will inevitably be part of what is used when properly planning the split between territories for your sellers. One key advantage when starting to use Territory Planning is the ease of access to Salesforce data; Salesforce reports and/or SOQL queries can be built and selected to obtain exactly the data combination the user is looking for.
While there is a limit of 250K records that can be processed in one alignment, the number of records within the selected data source is displayed immediately on screen. Prior to this, you may or may not have selected boundaries (Countries), but even if you haven’t, the data can still be properly filtered here using different attributes.
Once the source of the dataset is established, additional details are determined on the next screen. In Territory Planning, units are the actual records to be assigned. In this example, we’re looking at records of the account object.
The selection in the Unit Assignment field will be important as we progress through planning, as this is what will be used for territory assignment. In this scenario, we will use the Owner ID field, which will later determine the association when building the alignment.
Alignments
Now that the Salesforce data to be considered for this exercise has been established, it’s time to create an alignment. First of all, it’s imperative to clarify that these alignments are just scenarios – similar to how an admin would build a field in a sandbox, this is how a sales operations manager would build a proposed shift in the assignments. Nothing they do within the alignments will take effect in Salesforce before publishing.
During the alignment creation, users can start with a territory sample which can then be amended, or the model can be imported directly from an already existing alignment, enterprise territory management, dataset, or CSV.
Note that if the CSV option is chosen, the Area and Parent columns will have to be mapped. This is, however, a handy way to bring external data directly into Territory Planning, especially at the very beginning.
Once these aspects are sorted out, the alignment is created and users can get into the specifics and available options for properly distributing the units.
Attributes
Taking a step back to the dataset creation, regardless of the source chosen initially, here is where the first attribute selection happens. Your sales operations team will have to ensure that all data points they need from their source are selected to be available afterwards when editing the alignment.
Even though the attributes have been introduced from the dataset, you can pick and choose which of them to display to make your view more actionable. Additionally, the label can be updated to a different text, which may make more sense while working on the alignment.
On top of the readily available data points, you can create your very own Calculated Attributes, which are extremely similar to Salesforce report formulas – the look and feel is almost identical, and you can use the standard operators, as well as functions to manipulate the existing Unit Attributes.
Optimize
The automated part of balancing territory allocations with Territory Planning is the “Optimize” button found on the top right-hand corner of the screen when opening an alignment. This option allows the user to automatically assign units based on certain criteria, such as priority or – why not – a maximum value of a certain attribute. Territories can be balanced on any numerical value.
Once the optimization has run, all proposed changes can be revised in the bottom part of the screen prior to choosing whether or not the optimization should be applied. Users can have visibility into how every single attribute is changing, as well as how units may shift territories (unless they are locked). If you’re unsure which optimization priority to choose, check here for background on the available options.
Manual Intervention
Realistically speaking, the planning process has a long way to go before becoming fully automated, considering the potential changes into the GTM Strategy, resourcing, and overall goals. Salesforce has considered that manual changes will happen, and need to happen, in order to tailor the alignment without being limited by the technology.
Backfilling territories can be done in just a couple of clicks by simply changing the owner of a particular area. Additionally, new territories can be created as needed, with the option to revise the rules, as well as assigned users upon creation.
On top of this, the left-side panel available within the Map component has quite a few handy tools to make the manual intervention even faster – for example, you can select a certain portion of a territory to be reassigned to a different one following the optimization.
Plan Scenarios
There may be situations when teams would like to view different angles for an alignment, and how the attributes would be impacted by certain decisions, such as decreasing the number of units assigned per territory.
The ability to plan up to three scenarios and hypothesize around the ‘what ifs’ may lead to faster and more reliable decisions when it comes to choosing the right path forward. If we are to consider Territory Planning in itself as a sandbox, Scenarios would be the sandbox within the sandbox.
Approval Process
It’s important to become familiar with the Territory Planning data model, processes, and all available mechanisms in place to properly carve the territories and unit assignments. Then it will be time to consider the actual production changes and how your organization can feel most comfortable about alignments becoming a reality.
When configuring the Salesforce Maps managed package, you have the option to enable Alignment Approval in the Territory Planning section. This way, especially in a situation where multiple colleagues are actively collaborating on an alignment, you can ensure that only the final reviewed version can be published.
Along with the Spring ’23 Salesforce release, Territory Planning approval options have been updated, now offering the possibility of opting for sequential approvals managed right within Salesforce – this is through the use of approval processes on the Territory Planning Alignment object.
Publish Options
Once a decision is made pertaining to the approval mechanism, the Publish Options section should come next. Tailored access is, once again, a clear priority for Salesforce even when it comes to Territory Planning. As such, you can individually decide which ways are available for users to push their changes to within the Salesforce production environment, as well as outside the planning tool. Additionally, for each of these options, alignment approval can be required or not.
For example, you may conclude that only Enterprise Territory Management and CSV exports will be available for your org’s implementation, and while only approvers will be able to amend ETM active models, all users can export CSVs of their alignment.
With the publish options saved, heading back to the approved alignment and clicking the “Publish” button will prompt the user to choose one of the available options, depending on the predefined settings.
Using Territory Planning to publish to Enterprise Territory Management is certainly the most common scenario, as the pairing streamlines the overall planning process. This then removes the need to either manually create territories directly in Salesforce and then review the hierarchy, or leverage endless data imports using various Excel files.
Prior to actually changing anything in the ETM hierarchy, users will have to go through a series of choices without leaving anything to chance. For example, Focus should be selected as a scope when changes to only a certain part of the hierarchy are made, while the Publish Method can be one of the three available options depending on the situation at hand.
Even though ETM might be the most commonly selected publishing option, it doesn’t mean that you cannot leverage Territory Planning if your organization is using a different solution. Depending on your implementation, you can allow users to publish alignments to Salesforce Fields, meaning fields from leads, opportunities, accounts, or custom objects.
One thing to note about field publishing is that it does not respect the platform sharing mechanisms. This means that, even if the changes are published as the running user, they do not need to have access in Salesforce as long as they have access to the records in Territory Planning.
Collaboration
One of the advantages of working directly in Salesforce’s Territory Planning to create alignments and carve assignments in a detailed manner is the collaboration aspect. The entire team can be involved in all stages of the planning, with visibility into everything that is going on, from the comments to the estimations and scenarios planned for certain alignments.
On top of this, very similar to how you’d send over a Salesforce report, alignments can be shared using just the link as long as “link sharing” is turned on, or individual access can be set independently.
Once the Alignment is shared, different users can discuss directly on the map by leveraging the “Add Comment” button on the left-hand side panel. This way, the conversation is targeted to certain items, and collaborators can be tagged.
Summary
Finally, offering sales operations teams the option to conduct everything relating to planning directly in Salesforce, from current scenarios to potential future states, is sure to be a gamechanger for productivity.
Salesforce Maps Territory Planning is the ultimate assistant when it comes to carving Sales Territories, whether it’s in conjunction with Enterprise Territory Management, Account Teams, or with a different custom implementation that already exists in your Salesforce instance.