Another topic that we've covered in this particular module has been sales territories and how that's a really important part of the sales and in particular sales management. How does Cintas approach the business of sales territories? Myself out of my location in corporate wide, we have a CRM or a program that we utilize. We utilize Microsoft Dynamics. So, all of our customer base is input into Microsoft Dynamics. From that, we determine the tenure of the reps that are on the sales team. We also take how many prospects are in an area? What are the size of the prospect? So, are they large businesses, are they smaller? From a geographical standpoint, how many prospects are in a certain geography? We take that and that allows us to adapt and be able to forecast an accurate headcount because everything we do from a sales budget and everything is off of our headcount because of pay quarterly bonuses to car packages, base pay, commissions, bonuses. Fortunately for us, there's an average going across we go back years and we know what the average sales rep is going to make. So, we're able to basically determine the sales territory based off of that headcount and what our selling expenses will be. All right. So, I'm curious how frequently do you review your territory assignments? I do mine annually. Annually. So, if we know that there's a lot of business, for instance, in the oil and gas boom, we had a lot of companies coming in. At that point, I needed to bring another sales rep on to be able to handle the influx of prospects. A couple of years ago, when that market dried up overnight, then we had to re-evaluate and move some partners around because we didn't have the need for as many sales reps. So, this business of sales territories it's pretty fluid, ever-changing world. Yes. I mean, it is something that. It is. You know from a business standpoint, there are times that we do have to tighten the belt, where fortunately we didn't have to lose a sales rep, we just had to make some changes within territories. There are other times that we need to bring, we're growing locations, so we've continued. For example, when I started, there were two sales reps 15 years ago. Now, there are seven out of my location. Oh, wow. So. That's a lot of change. Would you say that the geographic footprint of your territory, has that changed at all? It has not. My location covers from basically Flatwoods, West Virginia to Barnesville, Ohio. So, we've maintained the same geographical print. It changed with a tenure. There were some turnover with promotions and we didn't have this tenured reps. So, we had to be able to bring more reps in to cover more territory. I see. At that point, now that I have tenured reps, we're able to shift people because of promotions, but we maintain the same amount. All right. I would say to our students that when we talk about analysis of sales territories in the business of what Brian is discussing and all, I would say that probably his experience where geography doesn't change a whole lot, but what happens inside that geography changes a ton is a pretty common type of thing that goes on. Absolutely. I think that geography where exceptions tends to stay fixed. The only time geography can really change is when you've got a startup type company. Sure. They may have like one or two sales people and they cover the whole United States and as the company grows, they begin to carve up the country and that type of thing, that embedded. Those are unique. Now, with ours and to a degree, we do that as well because we have our main sales reps hitting the ground. In recent years, we also come out with what we call matrix partners, a specialists in certain sales fields. So, we now have somebody dedicated to specifically healthcare. Somebody specifically dedicated to education. Somebody specifically dedicated to oil and gas. So, that is both. Our footprint as a location hasn't changed, but from a corporate standpoint, we see the need for specialists in different fields. So, now we're bringing those in to where there may be eight reps across the country covering specifics. So, it's the best of both worlds. Oh, my. Okay.
