As I prepare for my Dynamics 365 certification in sales (MB 210), I’m creating blog posts based on my revision. I hope that collectively these posts may prove useful to anyone also preparing for the MB 210 exam. This time I will cover the concepts around sales territories.

You will see that territories are mentioned in the skills measured statement within the section headed “Perform Configuration”.

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 365 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.

These days we have the classic web interface and the newer Unified Interface. Currently (in Feb 2019) we still access sales territories from the classic interface. One way to access the option is to open the sales app (or any app) and then select the advanced settings option from the “cog” icon.

Notice that you can access the sales territories option in 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 “Southern Territory” and assigned a sales manager to this area. This manager must NOT be assigned to any other sales territory!

Having created my territory you can see that I have added several members. I access the members view from the related tab. You can do this from the territory screen or by editing the territory lookup directly on the system user record. Each sales person can be the member of just one territory at once.

Note: Notice that the manager of the territory is shown as a member plus any users assigned to that territory. (Meaning the manager is always also a member of the team.)

As mentioned you can edit the territory directly on the system user records. Below you can see that on the system user record of member for the team I can assign them to the sales territory. In the “Organization Information” section of the form.

All 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. For example, the same person cannot manage both the north and south sales teams at the same time.

Linking Accounts

Accounts can be associated with sales territories. Below you can see an example of how I have assigned an account to my “Southern 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 probably beyond the scope of the MB 210 exam. Although, I guess, you might need to be aware that this is required.

Note: The territory entity is used in sales and service. If you are using Field Service this same entity is used for the Service Territory. As the MB 210 exam is focused on sales I have only described this in terms of sales! You may see a “Service Territory” field on the account which is a second lookup to this same territory entity. (A single account can be in different sales and service territories.)

Assigning a default price list to a sales territory

Below you can see that on a price list I have added a territory relationship. (I will cover price lists in another post!)

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” records for accounts linked to that territory they will be automatically assigned this price list.

Meaning …. when I create a new opportunity for accounts in the connected territory the price list will default.

This means you can define differing prices for different territories. Imagine a company based in the south of England. They could (theoretically) have a slightly different pricing structure for accounts in the north. (Maybe as a result of increased time / cost of travelling a greater distance to service the customer.)

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 365 actually ties the “sales” territory to a geographical 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. In fact, one customer I worked with recently used sales territories to segment corporate and public sector accounts.

Note: Sales territories do not default based on location, but we do have a concept of defining postcodes for a territory. This is applicable only when using the Field Service module to default the service territory.

Hopefully this post has given you an understanding of the out of the box sales territory functionality and helped with you preparation for the MB 210 exam.