Find the gaps in your account coverage.

Start with a concrete question: which serviceable sites lack an owner, which owner has more work than they can review, or which region needs a delivery assessment before a campaign? A map coloured by postcode does not answer those questions on its own.

Define the unit of work. A parent customer may have several sites, while one project may involve a contractor, supplier and end customer. Decide which record receives the sales responsibility and how related people and accounts remain connected.

Keep three states separate: suitable and covered, suitable but not currently covered, and outside the serviceable scope. Add an unresolved state where evidence is missing. Calling all four “whitespace” conceals very different decisions.

Begin with a checked target account list. Territory planning adds responsibility and capacity to those named records; it should not quietly change the fit rules to make the map appear balanced.

Define serviceability using the product, delivery requirement, technical support and account conditions relevant to the offer. Straight-line distance may say little about serviceability when routes, access windows or specialist availability matter. Ask the delivery team which conditions need a real assessment.

Record the evidence for each site. A registered office inside the region does not prove that the operating location is covered. A nearby site may still require unsupported equipment or a service commitment the business cannot make.

Decide how uncertain cases are handled. A site with an unconfirmed access requirement might stay in a review queue until operations checks it. Marking it as covered because it falls inside a drawn boundary would turn a geographic assumption into a customer promise.

Salesforce’s territory-planning material treats territories as groups of accounts with ownership and alignment decisions. A shared sheet can hold the same basic questions; a mapping product is not a prerequisite for this worksheet.

Match proposed assignments against customers, open opportunities, active projects and recorded agreements. Keep the existing relationship owner visible. A geographical boundary should not send a new salesperson into a conversation another colleague is already leading.

Define which responsibility belongs centrally and which belongs locally. A group account owner may coordinate the relationship while a territory colleague handles a site’s technical visit. Record both roles and the handover, rather than putting two unexplained names in an owner field.

Distinguish territory coverage from a missing category within a customer. A covered customer can still have an unserved product need; an unassigned site can already buy through a group agreement. The customer whitespace guide addresses those account-level gaps.

When customer segments need different sales or service approaches, use that information when assigning responsibility. A project buyer may require a specialist in addition to a geographical owner. Do not make geography override the expertise the task requires.

Estimate capacity for the relevant task, such as account research, visits or enquiry review. Use the work itself: the time needed for preparation, customer activity, travel where relevant and follow-up. A count of accounts per salesperson can hide large differences in workload.

Take a week with twelve eligible sites awaiting an initial review. If the North owner has four review slots and the South owner has three, seven sites can enter the working batch and five must wait. These are planning inputs to check against the actual workload. Keep a date and owner for the waiting records.

If geography prevents moving a task, show that constraint rather than pretending the spare capacity is interchangeable. If a specialist is needed, their capacity belongs in the plan too. Avoid solving one person’s overload by creating an unowned technical queue elsewhere.

Record who decides priority and what happens when urgent work arrives. A new customer request may displace planned research, but the deferred records still need an owner and next review point. Keep capacity decisions separate from account suitability.

Write the order of the rules: an existing relationship or open opportunity, a specific agreement, the relevant product or specialist requirement, then the geographical rule where appropriate. The right order depends on the business; agree it with the people affected.

Define ties, absences and missing evidence. The lead-routing guide explains why a named fallback is more useful than a notification to a group nobody owns. A territory record should give the recipient the reason for assignment and the context needed to act.

State which field is the source of truth for ownership and how it is updated. If a CRM and delivery system store different owners, agree their meanings rather than forcing one value everywhere. The shared customer-data guide covers record identity and field responsibility across those connections.

State which changes are merely proposed and which are effective. A draft territory design should not start moving active deals or sending customer messages before the assignment decision and handover are approved.

Walk through an existing customer, a new site in a known group, a boundary case, an absent owner and an unresolved service requirement. Ask the outgoing and receiving owners to explain the same next action. Any disagreement belongs in the rule or handover record.

Check active commitments. A quotation may need its current owner until the buyer’s next decision; a local visit may move sooner. Record who informs the relevant people and which tasks transfer. Changing an owner field alone does not complete that work.

After the change, review unassigned, duplicated and waiting records as well as completed activity. A territory can have every account assigned while its owners lack the capacity to use the list. Keep coverage, work received and work acted on distinct.

Preserve a way to correct an assignment without losing history. If a rule sends a group site to the wrong person, repair the affected records and the underlying rule. Do not rely on a private message between colleagues as the permanent fix.

Take a small mixed set of sites and record serviceability, current relationship, accountable owner, capacity and next action. Include an uncertain site and an account near a boundary. Ask operations and the receiving owners to review the proposed decisions before enlarging the map.

Plan can cover a territory or coverage-research assignment for your team to use. A Build campaign can carry the findings into outreach, with agreed responsibility for research, contact and follow-up. Scope any separate routing integration around the tools your team already uses. Start with the region or account group that needs attention and retain useful existing decisions.