How to organize an effective sales tour Methods & tools
A sales tour represents all the customer and prospect visits made by a sales representative over a given period of time and in a given geographical area.
It therefore needs to be well organized to ensure the best use of time and human resources.
Here's what' s involved in a sales tour, along with a few methods and tools to make your life easier!
What's the point of a sales tour?
The sales tour often serves sales objectives. In reality, however, the issues involved are more complex than that:
- prospecting in the field,
- delivery of goods,
- product demonstration,
- customer knowledge,
- after-sales service,
- customer loyalty.
How to organize a sales tour?
A sales tour is a sales tour plan. They go hand in hand.
You can't improvise the organization of a delivery or customer visit tour, or risk wasting an enormous amount of time.
Definition of a sales tour plan
A sales tour plan is the document, in the form of a map or calendar, used to plan all the sales visits to be carried out over a day, a week or a month.
The aim is to schedule as many meetings as possible, while limiting travel costs and journey times, depending on the geographical location of customers and sales reps, and the latter's mode of transport.
Route planning
Before mapping out the sales rounds, the sales manager assesses :
- the visit potential, i.e. the working time that his sales force can devote to customer visits, taking into account :
- public holidays, training days, etc,
- the size of the area,
- the ideal time to devote to each visit, depending on the objective,
- travel time between appointments, with a safety margin,
- customer availability;
- customer/prospect potential: who to visit first to get the best return on investment?
- expected profit: tour costs versus expected sales.
Based on these estimates, he opts for the type of itinerary he considers most profitable:
The daisy-chain route
The area to be covered is divided into petals, the number depending on its size. The heart of the flower represents the salesperson's office or home.
The salesperson starts his or her tour with the farthest customer (maximum 1 h 30 away) and gradually returns to his or her starting point at the end of the day.
☝️ Some people recommend dividing the flower into 16 petals, corresponding to 16 sectors and therefore 16 rounds per month, leaving 4 working days for unforeseen or urgent visits.
The cloverleaf tour
This is the same principle as the daisy circuit, except that the area is smaller and there are only 4 sectors, corresponding to the 4 leaves of the cloverleaf.
As with the first method, the customer base is well distributed, with a roughly equivalent number of visits each day.
The salesperson can organize one tour per day, keeping the 5th day for sedentary work or to accommodate last-minute appointment requests.
The zigzag tour
For large areas crossed by a central axis, such as a freeway, where customers are widely dispersed.
Method: the salesperson takes the main route and starts his or her day directly with the most distant customer. He gradually returns to his starting point, meeting customers on either side of the main road as he makes his way back.
The snail or spiral tour
For longer tours and larger areas, the salesperson travels in a spiral, stopping at each customer and finishing with the one furthest away.
Tools for optimizing sales tours
Forget about looking for a free sales tour plan or creating a sales tour plan in Excel.
A good sequence of customer visits is not set in stone; it has to be calculated and recalculated according to the vagaries of the field.
And there's nothing more efficient than software with artificial intelligence to do this for you, or to find a new customer nearby in the event of another's cancellation or absence.
You'll save precious time and gain in efficiency. Find out more about route optimization solutions. ⤵️
☝️ But let's not forget that route management software isn't the only tool a mobile salesperson needs :
- creating customized, personalized sales documents on the move,
- note-taking, centralizing and sharing customer exchanges with the office, in real time.
For example, you can use Kizeo Forms, a mobile sales management application .
It can also be used to send customer data, such as addresses to be visited, to sales reps' smartphones or tablets.
Sellsy, for example, is a comprehensive, modular French CRM suite that supports you in managing your sales activities. Thanks to its intuitive mobile application, sales reps can share their activities in real time, even on the move, enabling you to track their performance wherever they are. A true all-in-one tool, you also benefit from effective collaboration features during sales rounds: a shared agenda updated in real time, an opportunity tracking module, an intelligent lead scoring system, a pipeline view and sales dashboards, and much more!
Finally, did you know that there are mobile CRMs with geolocation functionalities? This is the case with Divalto weavy, which organizes all your activities in the field, including :
- optimizing and prioritizing trips using indicators,
- tracking of activities and travel orders on a map,
- mobile order-taking with access to inventory, etc.
All available as an application and connected to your ERP software.
And you,what do you use to facilitate the work of your sales reps on tour?
🤓 Last tip: regularly calculate the profitability of your tours to adjust the planning of the next ones!
Updated article, originally published in January 2021.
Article translated from French