+1-480-241-8198
+44-7428758945
+61-1300-332-888
+91 9811400594Consider a software company, XYZ, selling to its customers across a wide range of industries. Every sales executive of the company’s sales team specializes in a particular industry. The company’s sales territory organizes territories by industry, with each sales executive designated the territory associated with their area of expertise. When an account meets the set criteria for a territory, it is automatically allocated to the right sales representative.
However, as sales organizations continue to grow – managing who can access which records becomes very difficult. This calls the need to automate territory management by setting up its features in a robust CRM like Salesforce. While Salesforce sharing rules are enough for small sales teams, it might not be sufficient when an organization functions across multiple regions, industries, accounts and more. This is where Salesforce Territory Management comes to the picture.
Why Salesforce Sharing Rules Shine Initially but Fail to Scale Later?
Salesforce sharing rules shine when the need to extend record access arises that too beyond a company’s default sharing settings. Administrators are free to create rules depending on certain criteria, such as field values. This method works well with firms having a simple access model, such as a small sales team, constrained account segmentation, and stable ownership.
The challenge becomes intricate as the business processes become more complex. Organizations may require managing access across different industries, geographies, account size, product knowledge, and more. This can require several owner-based and criteria-oriented sharing rules to adjust different patterns of users and records.
Designed to grant additional access, sharing rules don’t restrict access below the organization’s standard sharing settings. As the number of rules augments, the architecture might become tough to comprehend, fix, and maintain. In other words, what began as a simple solution can turn into an administrative burden.
Salesforce Territory Management – All You Require Knowing
It is a strategic way of structuring sales coverage, account ownership, and client access across outlined territories. Rather than managing access through a set of independent Salesforce sharing rules, organizations can create a territory hierarchy in Salesforce that administrators manage, while sales leaders can align with the actual sales structure of the company. Users can be allocated to the relevant territories depending on the company’s sales model, customer segments, geography, or other business criteria.
Besides promoting territory models, the Sales Territories functionality categorizes territory structures, project rules, account assignments, and territory-based access. This gives organizations a scalable framework for handling sales coverage as their teams grow.
However, a territory hierarchy cannot be used interchangeably with the Salesforce role hierarchy. The role hierarchy mainly reflects a company’s reporting structure and helps conclude access based on executive relationships, while a territory hierarchy shows how the business segregates sales responsibility from customer coverage.
This difference becomes specifically crucial in complex Salesforce environments. Organizations leveraging Enterprise Territory Management may require managing both the role hierarchy, as well as territory hierarchy, with each serving a distinctive purpose within the inclusive access and sales-management model.
Why Designing a Territory Hierarchy in Salesforce Makes Sense?
Rather than charting out territories in the system, a robust Salesforce territory model design should start with the understanding of an organization’s sales strategy.
Businesses should learn to identify how sales teams share responsibilities, handle accounts, and work in collaboration with each other before configuring a hierarchy. The objective is to create a system that reflects actual sales operations while handling future growth seamlessly.
Key questions that should be given due consideration include:
- Is sales coverage mainly structured by geography?
- Are customers categorized by industry or market?
- Are SMB and enterprise accounts managed by different teams?
- Do product specialists work alongside regional sales teams?
- Does an individual account require coverage from multiple territories?
- Which users must have visibility into parent or secondary territories?
- How often do territories change?
- How should recently started accounts be allocated to territories?
The answers help identify the most appropriate territory hierarchy Salesforce must use. Depending on the business, regions may be organized around industry, geography, account size, product knowledge, or a combination of all these aspects.
When Should Businesses Step-up Past Sharing Rules?
There is no record or account that by default means a company needs territory management.
One should look for the following warning signs:
Territory Changes Occur Frequently:
When sales territories shift regularly, relying on sharing rules can become challenging to manage and scale. Salesforce Territory Management offers a more adjustable framework – enabling organizations to handle territory models and adjust changes in sales coverage without restructuring their access structure.
Sales coverage has Several Dimensions:
When account coverage depends on geography, industry, products, revenue, customer segments, and specialist teams, basic sharing rules may strain to reflect organizational complexity.
Multiple teams Require Access to the Same Accounts:
Territory-based selling includes account managers, overlay teams, specialists, managers, and more, while territory models shape these relationships without needing separate sharing rules for every situation.
Access Becomes Difficult to Explain:
This happens when supervisors have to review multiple sharing rules, roles, manual shares, account teams, and exceptions to explain – redesigning may be essential.
Forecasting Needs to Follow Territories:
Territory structures can delve into forecasting based on territories. Salesforce enables Enterprise Territory Management to function with combined predictions – enabling forecast data to appear as per the territory hierarchy. This approach is primarily useful for companies where sales forecasts are tackled by market or geographic territories rather than traditional reporting lines.
Has Territory Management Become a Convenient Replacement?
Salesforce Territory Management should not be considered a universal replacement for sharing rules. A mature security structural design may unite role hierarchy, organization-wide defaults, sharing rules, manual sharing, account teams, territories, assignment rules, permission sets, and field-level security. Each process serves a different purpose, so access needs should decide the right solution.
Final Words
Salesforce sharing rules remain valuable for managing targeted access beyond the baseline security model. However, as sales organizations scale, they might become difficult to manage and scale. Territory Management in Salesforce offers a custom-built structure for aligning territory hierarchy, account assignments, user accountabilities, record access, and forecasting.
The option isn’t sharing rules versus territories but using both where it fits best.
About Author
Jaya is a technical content specialist with 14 + years of experience - especially in the B2B space. Her forte lies in changing complex technologies into compelling narratives that educate, engage and drive business growth. Over the years, she has honed her skills of creating all types of marketing copies including white papers, landing pages, thought leadership articles and website copies that support lead generation, brand positioning, and client engagement. She is also passionate about creating content strategies that outline the future of customer engagement. She is currently associated with Girikon as a Content Manager where she heads the Content function.
Share this post on:
