Farquharson/Tedesco on Business Development: Sales Territory Management

• Minimize travel time. Plot out your customers and prospects on an online mapping program or app. Look for logical groupings centered on your A accounts—hopefully geographic clusters will emerge. Do your best to plan your selling days around these clusters. Try to avoid multiple-hour trips for just one sales call. Sometimes this will be difficult or even impossible, but that shouldn't stop you from trying!
• Put dead time to good use. Dead time comes with the salesperson territory (no pun intended). Learn to identify these potential dead times ahead of time and schedule tentative drop-by visits to some accounts.

Print salespeople could learn a thing or two from Santa Claus. Efficiency and call volume matter, but so does the quality of your calls. If Santa can deliver nearly 400 million presents in one night, you can narrow the gap between how many calls you need to make and how many you do. Put effective territory management in your corner...your future success depends on it. And Happy Holidays! PI