Weak sales territory: why the salesperson is often the wrong diagnosis
A guest article in Vertriebszeitung on 1 October 2026 describes a company with eight sales territories, of which only the two around its headquarters performed. The cause was a market position built up over 15 years, not the salespeople’s performance. An experience-based article without study figures.
What does the 1 October article describe?
In a guest article in Vertriebszeitung on 1 October 2026, Christoph Heinze describes a company with eight sales territories. Two performed excellently, six fell well short of expectations. Management looked for the fault in the salespeople. In fact the two strong territories lay right around headquarters, had been worked for about 15 years, and the owner had personally built relationships there. The result of the wrong diagnosis: more meetings, more control, a higher cold-calling rate. How to structure a sales organisation from scratch is covered in the guide Building a sales team. The article cites no study figures.
Who this affects
Sales directors and managing directors who are opening up new regions and run every territory on the same targets and KPIs. Especially field sales teams expected to build new cities or federal states alongside an established home market.
Why equal targets for unequal territories cost you people
I know this pattern well from payment sales. A territory with existing customers, referrals and a known name is a different game from a city where nobody knows the provider. Measuring both against the same revenue figure does not measure the salesperson, it measures the territory’s history. Heinze’s strongest point is therefore not the reference to market position but the consequence: leadership turns into control, and trust is lost before the market has even been built.
His suggestions are practical: targets staged by maturity, regional visibility, local references, knowledge transfer from the core territories and different KPIs in the build-up phase, such as qualified conversations instead of revenue. That matches what I described on activity and outcome targets. In a young territory activity is the more honest metric, as long as it does not replace the question of what the company itself has to contribute there.
What to do now
- Rate every territory by maturity, meaning years worked, existing customers and brand awareness, before distributing targets.
- Set separate KPIs for build-up territories and discuss them in the pipeline review separately from the core markets.
- Before taking any measure against a salesperson, check whether their territory is actually comparable with the benchmark territory.