What is Zoho CRM Territory Management and How Can It Benefit Me?
Territories work as a means to assign accounts, contacts, deals and users based on geographical parameters. Using Zoho CRM Territory Management is really helpful when you have several accounts over a large area and you want your users to be able to focus solely on those accounts, contact and deals. For example, if you have a Sales Manager who oversees the Mid-Atlantic region, with several Account Managers who oversee one or more of the states within that region. This will also help you in setting separate forecasts based on territory.
How do I Set Up Territories in Zoho CRM?
Navigate to Settings > Users and Control > Territory Management. You have two options when first creating territories: Extend from Role Hierarchy or Start from Scratch. It is important to choose the best option for your company, as once a method is chosen it cannot be changed. When extending from role hierarchy, the CRM will automatically build territories by copying you existing role structure and rolling up sub-territories and territories in the same manner. When creating territories from scratch you will define that structure separate from your user roles. Let’s look at a use case.
As the CEO of my company, I have accounts scattered across the USA. I have a Sales Manager assigned to each defined region, and an Account Manager assigned to each state within a region. The Account Manager oversees several Sales Assistants who will need access to all accounts under their manager.
In this scenario I will choose to build my territories from scratch.
- After clicking on Start from Scratch a Parent Territory with the name of the organization will be created. Everything will fall under this territory.
- Hover over the organization name, then click + to add a new territory. In this case I will title it Mid-Atlantic. Assign your Sales Manager as the Territory Manager, add any users to this territory (such as your Account Managers), and then grant users either Read or Read/Write/Delete permissions. Please note that role and profile settings will override territory permissions, and record owners will always have access to their records regardless of territory permission.
- Define rules to assign accounts. In this scenario that will be billing state = PA or NY or NJ or DE or MD or DC or VA or WV. It’s also important to note that you are limited to 25 arguments per territory.
- Once you have your territory set up you can add sub-territories following the same process, using the + next to Mid-Atlantic. My sub-territories will each be one or two states, with the Account Manager as the Territory Manager and the Sales Assistants as users.
- Finally, run the territory rules to assign your Accounts, Contacts and Deals as appropriate by clicking on Find Accounts and Run in the dialogue window that will open once you save each territory. Depending on the number of records affected this could take several minutes. Moving forward each account will automatically be assigned to the correct territory based on the criteria it meets. Deals and Contacts will roll up to the Accounts. You will also notice that there is now a Territory field in each record, and a Territory filter in each module view page.
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