Any enterprise requires a strategic approach. Any business must generate revenue and expand to survive. Planning is necessary for the successful completion of this task. Whether you are a commission-based salesperson or a company that relies on sales professionals to generate revenue, you must find ways to optimize this process.
This article will cover every aspect of how to plan a sales route. Numerous sources, including this article from Chron, offer advice on how to structure a successful sales route. This article's objective is to provide a concise yet comprehensive analysis of how better planning can improve logistics. The aim is to increase output and effectiveness. Let's begin, then.
What is sales route planning?
Sales route planning involves identifying the shortest and most direct route from point A to point B, which enables traveling salespeople to concentrate on and capitalize on the most lucrative opportunities. These strategies consider market dynamics, competitor actions, customer status, and engagement level.
The planning of routes for mobile sales teams is known as "sales route planning." It is primarily utilized by sales managers to reduce the time and money their sales teams spend traveling. Finding the most effective path for salespeople to take each week can help a company increase both its productivity and its profitability. This can be accomplished by analyzing the company's sales data.
Excel spreadsheets were a standard tool for route planning before the widespread availability of GPS and other contemporary technologies. Because manually planning sales routes took so much time, it took a lot of work for sales managers to select the routes that would yield the best results. With the help of route planning software, the most efficient routes for the sales team to take can be quickly determined.
How to Plan a Sales Route
A necessary evil for commission-based sales teams is route planning. Planning your route and driving reduce your potential earnings. Streamline the trip planning process to save money and maximize the experience.
1. Utilize a CRM to organize your contacts and build your sales routes around them.
Utilize a spreadsheet to record the names of the individuals you have spoken with and the locations where you met them. Ensure that a column is present to indicate the sales cycle stage for each contact. Create new columns in your contact list to track when you last spoke with each contact, what you discussed, and what you hope to accomplish during your next call.
2. Determine where each of your clients is located.
Choose a mapping and routing application that can accommodate the number of customers you serve. Google Maps or a free or low-cost commercial tool such as Dashfly may suffice if you have at most 25 accounts. The advanced software can route and map an infinite number of contacts.
3. See which bills you can put off until later by reviewing your spreadsheet.
Plan your time based on the needs of these essential customers. Look at the map and see which ones you can get to in a day. To kill time, you can place a lower-priority call within the same area code. Maintain a healthy balance in your sales cycle by giving equal importance to acquiring new business and maintaining customer satisfaction among your existing clientele.
4. Create a folder for each contact's correspondence, promotional materials, and other information.
5. Enter the addresses of each of your clients into your route-planning app, Google Maps, or GPS device on a given day to receive driving directions to each location.
The mapping program determines the most efficient route automatically. If you want to determine the most efficient route using a free tool such as Google Maps, you'll need to rearrange your stops until you find one that makes sense. The order in which multiple addresses are submitted will determine the rankings. The turn-by-turn directions will adjust as the destination pointer is moved.
