What Is Territory Management?

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💡 Territory management is the discipline of maintaining and adjusting live sales territories after they have been designed and launched. It is not the design project, or major realignements, and it is not just lead routing. It is the ongoing operational work of keeping territories healthy, balanced, and aligned with business goals.

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At its core, territory management answers the question:

🗣️ “Once our territories are live, how do we adapt them as people, accounts, and markets change?”

This guide focuses on how to do that work using Salesforce’s native tooling, what the platform provides, where each feature fits, and how to structure your system for clarity and scalability.

Principles of Healthy Territory Management

Healthy territory management follows a few consistent principles. These ensure the system is scalable, auditable, and clear:

1. Operationalize Rules of Engagement. Codify business logic (who owns what, how exceptions work) so it can be automated consistently.
2. Quantify Balance. Define measurable criteria (potential, revenue, workload index) as the North Star for equity.
3. Preserve Forecast and Quota Integrity. Territories must always roll up cleanly into forecasts and reports, with no gaps, overlaps, or orphans. Quotas should map clearly to territories.
4. Protect Customer Continuity. Reassign in ways that preserve active relationships and avoid “orphan windows.”
5. Use a Territory Label. Distinguish account ownership from territories for ultimate clarity.
6. Iterate vs. Overhaul. Know when to make small adjustments vs. when it’s time to redesign.

Two Technical Models: Owner-Centric vs. Territory-Based

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💡 Sales organizations use one of two models in Salesforce to manage territories:

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