7 Tips for Mapping Sales Accounts
One of the biggest perks of using a sales territory mapping platform is to display the locations of your sales accounts/clients while at the same time viewing all of your sales territories. The two most important pieces of information that you need in order to import your sales account data is the location (Zip code) and the account name. Below you will find 7 tips for mapping sales accounts.
1. Assign a Sales Account ID and/or Sales Account Name
Assigning a name for every account is the bare minimum (along with a zip code) that you need in order to import sales account data into AlignMix.
Assigning a Unique ID for every sales account has several advantages. It will help locate duplicate accounts (more on this later), and it will also help you in locating accounts after they have been imported into AlignMix. If you import sales account data without a Unique ID, AlignMix will auto-assign one for each row of data. When it does this, you will not be able to easily locate the account on the map by using the search functions. All sales account data that is imported into AlignMix is linked to this ID, which is why it is so important to have a unique ID for the import.
2. Obtain an Address for Every Sales Account
In order to import any data into AlignMix, you will need to have the 5 digit zip code for each row of data. Without the 5 digit zip code, you will have no way of importing your data into any sales territory mapping software. The full address including the building number and street address is not used for the import process, only the zip code is used. However, you can import the full address so that when you export your final sales account assignments the Excel export will show this information.
3. Geo-code Sales Accounts (If Possible)
If you have the ability to geo-code accounts (assigning the latitude and longitude) then you will be able to place the account icon in the exact pinpoint location on your sales territory map or zip code territory mapping. Most companies do not do this, but this process does help identify and fix duplicate accounts. If you only use the zip code as the geography for import, then the software will place the account icon in a random location within the zip code and not the exact pin-point location. This works for most users because they are mapping based on zip codes so when they move one zip code to another sales territory that movement will capture every account found within zip code.
4. Remove Duplicate Sales Accounts
Having duplicate accounts will skew your zip code territory mapping with additional accounts that do not actually exist. Duplicate accounts happen to every company no matter how amazing their CRM system is. An order may have been placed by a different rep, there could have been a typo in the account ID, missing zip code, or something went wrong during a merger of systems. If you have not cleaned up your data in 1-2 years, there is a good chance that you will find duplicate data. To clean up this data it’s best to go through each account and verify the address and account ID. Another route would be to geo-code each account so that you can locate any row of data that shows the same latitude and longitude, then you will know when two rows share the same coordinates that you have a duplicate account.
5. Set up an Account Segmentation
Having segmented accounts will allow the software to display a different icon for each type of sales account. This can be achieved by simply adding a column of data to your account list that is labeled “segment” and then typing in the segment type for each row of data. It can be A, B, C, D or Current Customer, Prospects, or any other type of segmentation that your organization uses.
6. Include Additional Data
If you have any sales data, market data, potential data or any other type of data for your sales account, you can use that for the sales account import. Importing data will allow you to create a sales territory index and then balance and optimize your sales territories.
7. Import the Assigned Sales Territory
If you already have your accounts assigned to a sales territory and/or a sales rep, it’s best to import this assignment during the sales account import process. This will automatically assign the accounts to a sales territory which will permit you to create sales account overrides. You can also use the sales account territory assignments to create geographic sales territories in case you do not have a zip to sales territory file for import. You can do this by using the clean alignment tool. If your sales accounts are not assigned to a sales territory, that is fine. You can still easily import your sales accounts and then assign those accounts to sales territories from within the software.
