The Zone Selling System

The Zone Selling System can make selling easy. This page explains the system and teaches you how to set it up.

Why The Zone Selling System?

The role of a sales representative can sometimes be a complex and overwhelming job. The Zone Selling System can help!

Using a system to plan and execute how you approach territory management is good business. 

Put simply, analysis of output resulting from inputs in a system offers the opportunity to do more of what is working and less of what is not. Said differently, fluid execution.

The hallmarks of a good system are adaptability, fluidity, and metrics. 

Designing The System

The Zone Selling System is designed to be adaptable to your own style and take advantage of the resources you have available to you. 

The flexibility of the system offers you the ability to create your zones based on how things are today, and adjust them as you work your zones and your business evolves.

The metrics of the system must reflect your own goals and be balanced with those of the company. Remember, what is measured gets improved.

What is the Zone Selling System?

As the name suggests, the Zone Selling System features four zones. The key is to determine these zones based on a combination of the current business location, anticipated opportunity, and geography.

I suggest you begin with four zones. Doing it this way will allow you to start with a manageable number of zones and matches up well with the four weeks in a month, too. 

The next step is to create a calendar and write these four zones in over the next four months. These calendar weeks will be how you allocate your time from a travel, prospecting, and account management perspective. This is for current and future travel planning, too.

Getting Started WIth The System

People new to the system will think, “I can’t schedule like that, I have calls, emergencies, opportunities and “must-see” trips that come-up. How am I supposed to know about these and fit them into this system?”

You know you can’t know about what calls may come or emergencies arise, right? Most importantly, in the Zone Selling System, it's important you have the discipline to protect your work plan and then stick to it. 

Think about the last “emergency” call you had or “red-hot opportunity;” did you really need to drop everything and run there? Or, was there more discovery work you could do before you sped off in your car. 

Taking that further, were there operational resources you may have used to solve the problem, move toward an objective, and remain faithful to your plan?

A Real-life Example

Below is an image of how I used this system when I was a “Player-Coach” earlier in my career. 

Perhaps like you, my role in the company was complex. As a result, I had to develop a repeatable system. 

That way, I could depend on it to help me keep growing my territory revenue and achieving the goals I’d set for myself.  As I’ve heard said, “Necessity is the mother of skill.”

Embracing The Zone Selling System

The Zone Selling System is a strategic, time tested method to cover a territory – large or small. In the eleven years I covered the above area, I grew the annual revenue by more than 500%. 

I know the system works because I am a living example and that’s why I developed it!

You may notice there are five zones in my example. When I began the Zone Selling System, it had four. 

As my base of business grew, I found myself needing another zone to serve the needs of my clients and achieve my sales objectives. As a result, I adapted and added one.

Expanding the Zones - A Flexible System

This extra zone gave me an opportunity to actively plan my work and work my plan; with a bit more fluidity. When I went to five zones it was mostly because of what was happening in the greater Twin-Cities metropolitan area (Where I live.).

This was where the majority of the population of my territory was, and an efficient area to move between several zones. This may, or may not, be the case for your territory. 

Moreover, the company I worked for had become the preferred provider for a large IHDN (Integrated Health Delivery Network) in Minnesota, and this created the need for another zone and what I came to think of as a “flex” week.

In essence, I moved to a five-week rotation and began using that number for planning purposes instead of four. I still synchronized it with my calendar and planned my travel, prospecting calls, and follow-up around this structure.

Planning Example

The key to the Zone Selling System is planning. Below is an example of how to allocate time over a 16-week period using a four-zone method. Some of the activities listed are specific to a certain business, the point is deciding the success factors for your business and focusing on them.

Please note, the first four weeks of the system will be the most fluid as you will need to be working all zones to begin building appointments and follow-up activities into your future plans:

Week 1 (Zone 1) (Do similar Zone 4 activities during the first cycle to prepare for your first trip)

o Prospecting for Zone 1 

o Market studies for Zone 1

o Case day follow-up calls

o Following-up on case-day cancellations

o Business review of all current Zone 1 accounts

o Opportunity/Pipeline follow-up and advancement

o Begin building future travel arrangements and appointments for the next scheduled travel into this zone 

Week 2 (Zone 2) 

o Prospecting for Zone 2

o Market studies for Zone 2

o Case day follow-up calls

o Following-up on case-day cancellations

o Business review of all current Zone 2 accounts

o Opportunity/Pipeline follow-up and advancement

o Begin building future travel arrangements and appointments for the next 

scheduled travel into this zone 

Week 3 (Zone 3)

o Prospecting for Zone 3

o Market studies for Zone 3

o Case day follow-up calls

o Following-up on case-day cancellations

o Business review of all current Zone 3 accounts

o Opportunity/Pipeline follow-up and advancement

o Begin building future travel arrangements and appointments for the next scheduled travel into this zone 

Week 4- Travel (Zone 1)

o Visit current clients as scheduled in the detailed travel plan you’ve created

o Prospect via cold call in between scheduled visits

o Meet with techs and engineers where possible

o Further market studies by exploring the local area looking for interesting local events and trends which may be used by Sightpath Creative

o Follow-up as necessary

o Meet with Ops Director 

Week 5 (Zone 2)

o Rinse and repeat from Week 2

o Hand-written thank-you notes from clients visited in Week 4 

Week 6 (Zone 3)

o Rinse and repeat from Week 3 

Week 7 (Zone 4)

o Rinse and repeat from Week 4 

Week 8 Travel (Zone 2)

o Visit current clients as scheduled in the detailed travel plan you’ve created

o Prospect via cold call in between scheduled visits

o Meet with techs and engineers where possible

o Further market studies by exploring the local area looking for interesting local events and trends which may be used by Sightpath Creative

o Follow-up as necessary

o Meet with Ops Director 

Week 9 (Zone 1)

o Rinse and repeat Week 1

o Hand-written thank-you notes from clients visited in Week 8 

Week 10 (Zone 2)

o Rinse and repeat Week 2  

* Week 11 (Zone 3)

o Rinse and repeat Week 3 

Week 12 – Travel (Zone 3)

o Visit current clients as scheduled in the detailed travel plan you’ve created

o Prospect via cold call in between scheduled visits

o Meet with techs and engineers where possible

o Further market studies by exploring the local area looking for interesting local events and trends which may be used by Sightpath Creative

o Follow-up as necessary

o Meet with Ops Director 

Week 13 (Zone 1) 

o Rinse and repeat Week 1

o Hand-written thank-you notes from clients visited in Week 12 

Week 14 (Zone 2)

o Rinse and repeat Week 2 

Week 15 (Zone 3)

o Rinse and repeat Week 3 

Week 16 – Travel (Zone 4)

o Visit current clients as scheduled in the detailed travel plan you’ve created

o Prospect via cold call in between scheduled visits

o Meet with techs and engineers where possible

o Further market studies by exploring the local area looking for interesting local events and trends which may be used by Sightpath Creative

o Follow-up as necessary

o Meet with Ops Director

* And so on……

Metrics for the Zone Selling System

For this exercise, there are two sets of metrics you are studying routinely. Those of your own territory and data from clients you’ve put on your “watch list.”

Setting Up Your Zone System

For your own territory, the following metrics are simple, measurable, and improvable: 

1. How is your territory performing on a year-over-year business in terms of revenues and procedures for all platforms?

a. How do your results compare with the goals you’ve set for yourself, too? 

2. What is the status of the various components of your opportunity pipeline?

a. Are you bringing more opportunities in each month?

b. How are you moving the opportunities in your pipeline further along the path to close?

c. Are you eliminating dead opportunities and closing them out as lost?

d. What is your percentage of leads to opportunity conversion?

e. What percentage of opportunities do you bring to a close and how long does this take?

f. Do your current opportunities in the system allow you to bridge the gap between where you are and where you want to be? 

3. What is your activity level in your territory?

a. Are you prospecting on the phone, via LinkedIn, talking to your techs and engineers, and looking for follow-on opportunities to expand platform usage with current clients?

b. Are you doing what you said you would do when you said you would do it? (In my experience, this is the most overlooked skill by most sales representatives; interestingly, it’s the one over which we have full control.) 

4. Have you developed a “watch-list” of current clients and/or opportunities?

a. This can be good or bad. 

i. Good - watching those clients who are doing well, attempting to gain insight into what is working, and then replicating this in other parts of your territory

ii. Bad – procedure volumes are down and you are looking for ways to help them grow, understand what is happening, and aware of any competitive activity

b. Clients who may have recently left – are you following-up with them to find out if we can re-kindle a relationship?

c. Recent operational failure (People, process, or equipment) watch list. 

Making sure these situations are as smoothed-over as possible is important

What you’ve read is as much a “how-to think” as a “how-to act” system.

The keys to the Zone Selling System are: 

* Adaptability

* Flexibility

* Attention to Metrics

In Conclusion

The Zone Selling System can be adapted to any business. If you are a person who likes to be organized, plan your work, and work your plan it's definitely a system you will enjoy trying.

One of my favorite books on sales is Dale Carnegie’s “How to Win Friends and Influence People.” (Affiliate Link) It’s a classic, and I highly recommend you read it!

Developing your own selling system is critical to your success in sales. And no two are the same. That’s why I like to write about, discuss, and experiment with The Zone Selling System. As a result, the content here is just the beginning.

There are blog posts below where you can learn more. 

If you’d like a free pdf that I put together about how to make your customers and prospects feel special, fill out the form below. Or, if you’d like to schedule a time to discuss something you’re working on, email me at Joel@makemarketingeasy.com.

Good luck and good marketing and selling!