So, why are sales territory so different from company to company? This slide helps to explain that phenomenon. In creating a territory scheme, a sales manager has to consider many factors that influence workloads and size of territories. First, it is the nature of the sales job. Some products are very complicated with long sales cycles and the need for plenty of customer support. The next is the stage of market development. In large mature markets, sales territories are typically smaller than a new markets where a larger market is necessary to yield a profitable level of customers. The next is the intensity of the customer base. if customers are few, diverse, and spread apart, a large sales territory probably makes sense. In other situations, there might be many customers located close to one another where a smaller sales territory is ideal. Competitions certainly impacts the size of a sales territory. In situations where there are lots of competition, it may be necessary to have smaller, more compact sales territories so that customers can be called on more frequently. Finally, in some situations, markets may have pockets of certain cultural groups and it may make sense to tailor territories to reflect those cultural pockets.