I worked as a Divisional Territory Sales Manager. It’s a newly created position that was designed as a supportive role to temporarily backfill vacant sales territories that pop up throughout the country as a result of a Salesperson either leaving the company, or having been fired. You work the territory for about 2-4 months until they eventually hire a new salesperson for that territory. Then they pull you out, and put you into a new territory that recently became vacant.
And BTW, what does it say about a company that found it necessary to create a position that serves to temporarily backfill vacant sales territories because they have such constant turnover?
At first there was no metrics or sales quota to gauge our success, the only thing they wanted from us was to make 35 to 40 outbound calls per day. Until suddenly after 8 months there was. Making their quota was next to impossible because of all the layers of sales people there were calling on the same projects, same companies, and in some cases the same contacts within companies. You had Inside Sales, Digital Sales, Territory Sales, and last but not least Divisional Territory Sales people all competing to get orders from the same accounts. Not surprisingly this created a cut throat environment with sales people often fighting each other over orders.
What I found most chilling though was whenever you went into Salesforce and when using your mouse, if you hovered over the names of people who previously left a note, roughly 1 out of 4 of these people were classified as “Terminated”. They might as well have put a little tombstone icon opposite their name.
