How many prospects are in your territory?

Mine contains 17 counties, but I look at where the numbers are. I can't possibly call all territories in a given month, so I do both cold calling, and mass mailings. The majority of my sales are coming within a 5 county area, which is where I spend most of my time. Its when sales are off that I will branch out into the other areas to try and peak some interest. In my opinion, when you don't have your name and face in front of the customer yet, you will have to knock on alot of doors, so someone will let you tell your story.
What I have learned that makes a big difference in how I continue to make quota each month is read the quotes posted here on the p4p. This site has probably 1000 years worth of experience right here at your fingertips. I can't begin to tell you how many times a day I will log on to find an answer to a question. Art keeps such a history of posts that covers virtually any problem or question you come across.
I didn't get to pick my territory, it was handed to me. So do your homework and see what areas give you the most leads, and once you can pinpoint that area, then work outward. My opinion doesn't always mean much, but this works for me. Good luck!

If that number of businesses includes resturants and retail, you have a tough row to hoe my friend. Really, number of businesses is a poorer way of gauging one territory vs another than number of employees. However, the only "accurate" way is to use the BEQI (pr. becky) Index. That stands for Business Equipment Quota Index which is a market quota index for B&W and Color MFP's, B&W and color printers, and Fax's. It makes it possible to compare different territories b county, metro area, or zip code. Each area has BEQI numbers (2006, 2007, & 2008) cooresponding to 15 different types of equipment.

Each number represents an area's share of total U.S. placements of that type of equipment for that particular year. It takes into account that particular areas industrial profile and controls for differences in the amount of puchases per employee across different industries.

I know most of you don't want to know that much about it but I went into detail because it may have to be you, the sales rep, that has to convince the powers that be that this is needed and I wanted to give you enough information to begin to do that.

You must be a member of BTA to get this information but any company that doesn't see the advantage of BTA membership isn't serious about this business.

Frankly, the size of the territory is a little misleading. I know that when I was managing for Minolta Business Solutions, we developed territories based on MIF. At the time I believe BTA standards were 150 MIF and so we set it up that way. Otherwise, how can a rep possibly put food on the table?

I will clarify my question/statement. I have 1600 business that are formatted in salesgenie to exclude restaurants, gas stations, etc....