A fully booked sales team is inefficient. Aim for 70% calendar utilization to maximize overall revenue. The intentional slack time allows salespeople to conduct crucial follow-ups and pipeline management, which boosts total conversion rates more than back-to-back calls.

After losing her commission base by moving cities, Mary Kay eliminated geographic sales territories. This policy allowed consultants to keep their teams and income streams regardless of relocation—a huge benefit for military spouses. It transformed potential competitors into collaborators and fostered a culture of mutual support.

The allure of expanding into a major market like New York City can be a trap. Fully exploit the potential of your existing, more manageable markets first. Chasing expansion for the sake of prestige before you've maximized local potential is a common business mistake.

Despite its strategic importance, sales territory design is often an unsophisticated process driven by expediency. Sales leaders typically use "a little bit of data and a whole lot of gut" simply to get the task done, rather than performing a rigorous analysis to optimize for fairness and efficiency.

At a small company, one or two big deals can significantly inflate the average productivity per rep. This hides the fact that the majority of the team may be underperforming. As the team grows and these outliers have less impact, the true, often flatlining, productivity of the sales force is exposed.

Scrutinize the common sales mantra of protecting "selling time." It's often used as an excuse to avoid crucial but non-transactional activities, like proactive client visits. This "fake productivity" can lead to massive revenue loss that dwarfs any time saved.

Instead of a massive, once-a-year project, sales territories should be tweaked constantly using software. This agility allows leaders to react quickly to changes like personnel leave, new hires, or a rep landing a large deal that consumes their time, maximizing overall team efficiency.

While route optimization is the advertised feature, its core value is helping salespeople select *which* accounts to visit from hundreds of options. The difficult strategic work isn't finding the shortest path between 10 points, but identifying the right 10 points to visit in the first place.

Many sales professionals subconsciously leverage a calendar full of internal meetings as a justifiable reason to avoid prospecting. This creates the appearance of being busy to leadership, while allowing them to sidestep crucial, but often challenging, pipeline-building activities.