NEIL PARKHURST

My revision for the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2016 Sales exam (MB2-713) continues …. meaning this post is the next my series for anyone preparing for MB2-713.

This time I am going to look at sales territories.

It is common to group sales people or sales teams into sales territories, maybe you have a north sales team and a south sales team. Sales Territories in Dynamics CRM are used to represent these divisions of the sales team.

Sales Territory can be used to show which sales area a sales manager is responsible for.

Notice that you can access the sales territories option in system from within the business management area under settings.

Creating a Sales Territory and Linking Users.

Below you can see that I have created a sales territory called “North” and assigned a sales manager to this area. This manager must NOT be assigned to any other sales territory.

On the system user record of potential members for this team I can assign them to the sales territory. In the “Organization Information” section of the form. Note: that each user can only have one territory.

Also I could assign members to the territory in the member’s option directly on the territory. In here notice that the manager of the territory is shown as a member plus any users assigned to that territory.

This means that each sales territory has one manager and multiple members. Linking one manager to multiple sales team members.

Each system user can only be the member of one sales territory.

Each manager can only manage one sales territory. The same person cannot manage both the north and south sales teams at the same time.

Linking Accounts, Leads and Contacts.

Accounts, Leads and Contacts can be associated with sales territories. Below you can see an example of how I have assigned an account to the “North” territory.

Note: If the territory field isn’t shown on the account, contact or lead forms you will need to go into form customizations and add it. (As I did to be able to show you the screen below.) The process for customizing forms is beyond the scope of the MB2-713 exam. Although, I guess, you might need to be aware that this is required.

Assigning a default price list to a sales territory.

Below you can see that on a price list I have added a territory relationship. This is actually achieved by creating a connection between the price list and the sales territory. The idea being that once you have connected the price list to a sales territory, if you create any “transactional” record for accounts, leads or contacts linked to that territory they will be automatically be assigned this price list.

For example: Now I have added my sample account A.Datum to the north and linked the north to the CRM Service (sample) price list, when I create a new opportunity for A.Datum the price list will default to CRM Service (Sample).

If you think about this example it means you can define differing prices for different geographic locations. Maybe a company based in the south needs to charge a premium for its services when working in the north, to absorb the additional travel costs etc.

A final comment, you may have noticed that I have described sales territories in terms of geographical locations, as that is typically how we’d expect them to be used. But nothing (out of the box) in Dynamics CRM 2016 actually ties the territory to an area. So you could use them to group sales people or accounts on a different basis. For example, you could have a sales territory for “Key Accounts” etc.

Hopefully this post has given you an understanding of the out of the box sales territory functionality and helped with you preparation for the Mb2-713 exam.

In my next post I will continue this series by looking at currencies.