Building a territory list for field sales reps
Updated July 22, 2026 · 6 min read
A field rep's real constraint isn't the number of accounts — it's how far apart they are. A territory of 400 accounts in three adjacent zip codes is a good week's work. The same 400 spread across a state is a rep who spends most of their salary driving.
Google Maps data is well suited to this because every row carries a full address and coordinates, which is exactly what territory design and route planning need.
Build the universe first, then cut it
Territory design goes wrong when you assign geography before you know what's in it. Scrape the target categories across the entire region first — zip code by zip code, so nothing is truncated by a search cap — and only then draw lines.
The count per zip is the input you need. A single zip with 300 qualifying accounts may be a territory on its own; twelve rural zips with 20 each may be another.
Designing the territories
- 1
Pick a balancing metric and be explicit about it
Account count is the simplest. Weighted count (larger accounts counting more, using review count as a rough size proxy) is better and harder to argue with. Whichever you choose, write it down — territory disputes are always really disputes about the metric.
- 2
Group by zip, never by radius
Radii cut through neighbourhoods and produce overlaps that two reps will both claim. Zip codes are unambiguous, they map to how everyone already talks about the area, and the scrape is already organised by them.
- 3
Sanity-check against drive time, not distance
Twelve miles across a river with two bridges is not twelve miles. Plot the coordinates column on a map and look at where the roads are before finalising.
- 4
Leave slack for growth
A territory sized to be exactly full on day one is a territory that has to be redrawn in a year, which is disruptive and unpopular. Aim for something a rep can cover with room left over.
- 5
Hand the rep a routable file
Export XLSX with name, full address, coordinates, phone and opening hours. That imports directly into most route planners and CRMs, and the hours column stops reps arriving when a place is shut.
Keeping territories honest over time
Businesses open and close, so territory balance drifts. Re-scrape the whole region on a schedule — annually for stable trades, more often for hospitality and retail — and compare counts per zip. Dedupe and match on place ID so the comparison is meaningful rather than a mess of near-duplicate names.
The diff also does something reps like: new listings in their zips are pre-qualified new accounts, delivered without them having to hunt.
When this isn't the right data
If your accounts don't have a physical presence customers visit — pure e-commerce, remote-first services, industrial firms with no consumer listing — Maps coverage will be patchy and you should use a firmographic source instead. Hubertino scrapes Google Maps only; it's the right tool for storefront and service-address businesses, and the wrong one for everything else.
Common questions
Does the export include latitude and longitude?
Yes — coordinates are among the 38 columns, along with the address split into components, which is what most mapping and routing tools want.
How do I split a metro fairly between four reps?
Count qualifying accounts per zip from the scrape, then group contiguous zips into four buckets of roughly equal weighted count. It's a bin-packing problem, and having the real per-zip counts is most of the work.