Like any company with a field sales force, you're wondering how to optimize your sales rounds. And with good reason: between planning and routes, your area managers sometimes find it hard to manage their time well, and this generates a considerable loss of earnings in terms of profitability for your company.
Fortunately, there are solutions for optimizing your sales rounds!
And when you sell to mass retailers, the stakes are high. How can you support operations without blowing your costs? How do you expand your store network? How can you increase the volume of orders and reorders?
Find out in this article.
A sales tour is a series of trips planned and carried out by sales representatives to promote and sell products or services in different geographical locations.
It covers a defined area and extends over a period that can be as short as a day, a week or a month.
Historically, the sales tour could be organized on paper or using a simple diary, but the need for performance is now driving companies to use dedicated software solutions, whether CRM or tour management applications.
For example, tour planning is now displayed in list view or, ideally, in the form of an interactive map showing your appointments and visits according to a global itinerary.
Tour effectiveness is often dictated by customer segmentation, aligning with your brand's ambitions and objectives.
An optimized sales tour can offer many benefits to your company and sales team. Here are some of the most important benefits:
To organize an optimized sales tour, you need to focus on four crucial points to maximize the efficiency of your customers' journeys.
Objective: to establish strategic priorities for the company.
To segment your market, rely on your structural data. This will enable you to categorize your points of sale.
Here are some examples of structural data:
Once you've segmented your market, visits will also depend on sales data, which is constantly changing.
Sales route optimization goes beyond the simple geographical distribution of your potential customers. On the contrary, it is based on the analysis of your sales data and your development strategy.
For example, scoring - a method of qualifying customers and prospects according to the sales potential they represent for the company - enables us to better evaluate and classify stores to target. Scoring is often based on the following criteria:
This data will help you to understand the performance of your sales outlets in relation to your business objectives.
Your market is segmented, and we understand that you don't want to waste time again. That's why we recommend creating filtered views based on your criteria.
For example, if you want your sales reps to visit "gold" active stores with a ND of less than 40%, follow these steps:
Objective: optimal allocation of resources.
Objective: maintain control over strategic planning.
Objective: maximize interview efficiency.
You've helped your sales reps to plan their sales rounds faster and more efficiently. But planning doesn't stop here: a good appointment is an appointment prepared in advance.
Now that we've seen why and how to prepare your sales rounds, let's take a look at the tools for preparing sales rounds.
All the variables we've considered - geography, industry, account type, customers/prospects etc. - lead to the need for an appropriate solution to establish optimized strategies. - all point to the need for an appropriate solution to establish optimized strategies. Indeed, while it's possible to organize your trips using Google Maps or other free applications, optimizing your rounds is based on the analysis of commercial and cartographic data.
So let's take a look at CRM solutions designed to optimize the profitability of your sales rounds.
Now let's get down to brass tacks, and take a look at the advantages of customer relationship management software designed for tour organization!
A CRM (Customer Relationship Management) dedicated to optimizing sales rounds offers several specific advantages:
For brands integrated into the retail sector, in particular, only a solution designed around mobility and in-store presence will be suitable.
But what criteria should you use to choose your commercial touring solution? Let's get down to specifications!
The adoption of a CRM by field sales forces is conditional on its design around mobile and roaming. So, by choosing a solution that has been developed to make salespeople's daily lives easier, you can be sure of excelling in the art of optimized tour planning.
Here are the main criteria to consider when choosing a CRM that manages sales rounds.
Opt for a solution designed and conceived for web AND mobile use. A multi-platform CRM makes you more efficient. Some tasks are easier on a big screen, others on the move. With a CRM available on web and mobile, you choose the best platform for the task in hand.
What's more, this solution offers real-time synchronization: a change made on mobile is immediately reflected on the web version, and vice versa. This guarantees up-to-date information for all users at all times.
The WEB version lets you manage your account administration, access a complete platform from the office, and build reports in just a few clicks!
The mobile app, meanwhile, will make it easier to work in the field, with or without a connection: updating reports, voice note-taking, photo-taking, shelf-space surveys... It should, of course, be available in OS and Android versions, on smartphone and tablet.
If you want your sales force to be profitable, equip them with a solution that's optimized for the way they use it!
With geolocation and road traffic atthe heart of trip profitability, you'll be looking for a software solution designed around route optimization, and not adapted or cobbled together to work with third-party mapping applications.
Having a map view is even more of an advantage if it's accompanied by intuitive tools, such as the lasso, which makes it easier for you to select your stores.
It's clear, then, that only technology can process all this data to find the optimum solution and maximize the profitability of your sales routes. In fact, solutions such as Google Maps or Excel are not designed to achieve this level of performance and optimization, and won't be able to help you make your sales rounds more profitable.
So you see: by combining geographic and sales data, new-generation CRMs enable you to draw up efficient prospecting plans. This relieves the salesperson of preparatory work for which his or her habits and other preconceived ideas are more of a handicap than a strength.
It's still interesting to be able to visualize your points of sale on a list. So don't close any doors. Choose a solution that offers list views or map views.
A mobile CRM enables you to optimize the management of data from field reporting, and therefore from your sales meetings. Having access to intelligent, conditional shelf readings is a real plus for brands present in supermarkets.
Make sure you can visualize your sales pipelines and other vital dashboards for tracking sales targets.
The prioritization and frequency of trips is based on criteria defined by your sales or general management. In this way, the scoring of your prospects and customers ensures the organization of schedules focused on optimizing sales.
For example, a sales route management application should enable you to view your points of sale by tags, i.e. to display priority stores according to your scoring.
Being able to track the activity of your sales reps in the field can be a decisive feature. For those wishing to follow their sales reps in real time, a verified check-in of appointments can be a real addition. As always, technology is at the service of people.
Your new software should encourage teamwork by allowing several users to modify planning data simultaneously. In particular, sales people need to be able to access their prospect files when they're on the move, without having to manage data synchronization or face unexpected refreshes.
Finally, your new CRM won't replace all your existing applications... so you'll want to make sure upstream that it interfaces with the main solutions already implemented in your organization.
Tour planning plays a key role in boosting your sales results. There are many different ways to organize your sales rounds, but the evolution of technologies, and in particular specialized CRMs, are helping to boost your sales profitability. This is particularly true for brands operating in the retail sector, whose specific needs call for solutions geared to mobility and sales territory.
In this guide, we've covered the main points that will help you make the right decisions to integrate the best CRM for optimizing your sales rounds.
But if you still have questions, simply schedule an online demo!
