Optimizing a sales round means maximizing the efficiency of your travels, saving time and fuel.
The ultimate goal is to meet the right prospects or customers at the right time, while effectively managing cancelled appointments. This is the next step in optimization, afterorganizing your sales round.
To optimize sales rounds, we usually take into account :
- Prioritizing the stages of the sales round, which involves finding the right customers and prospects to visit (the most promising and/or the most urgent),
- Route optimization, i.e. finding the best route between each stage,
- The salesperson’s level of experience, as a beginner will not be entrusted with the same round as a more experienced salesperson,
- The salesperson’s obligations and constraints, i.e. appointments already scheduled in the diary, meetings, working hours, etc.
- The customer’s obligations and constraints, in other words his working hours and availability,
- Technical requirements of the route, such as passing close to a charging station for your electric vehicle, or passing through a gas station,
- … And much more, depending on your line of business!
Why optimize a sales round?
For traveling sales representatives, sales round optimization offers many advantages:
Save even more time
Optimizing your sales round is the ultimate step in maximizing travel planning, and therefore reducing unnecessary time wasted on the road. No more detours: you know exactly when to hit the road, where to go, and which route to take!
Save on fuel
Optimizing your route means saving on fuel! Optimizing a round can save you a lot of money, especially in the face of soaring fuel prices, as FranceInfo pointed out in this very telling example:
Don’t forget to intersperse scheduled appointments
What could be more horrifying than scheduling and optimizing a sales round… Only to find that an appointment has been forgotten in the diary? Optimizing a sales round also means systematically taking into account the salesperson’s various commitments and tasks.
Visibility over the coming day, week or month
Do you have a quota of customers to visit over the course of the day, week or month? By planning everything in advance and optimizing your routes, you’ll be sure to reach your target within the given period, and much more quickly!
Step 1: Optimize the stages of your sales round
Asking yourself in whatorder you should visit your customers or prospects is a very important first step, even before trying to optimize your itinerary with a GPS. Let’s take a look at how to optimize your rounds.
Analyze your customer database
Before you hit the road, it’s essential to know how to order your visits. Faced with the immensity of your customer file (sometimes a huge Excel file…), it can be difficult to know what to prioritize.
Here are some questions to ask yourself to optimize your sales round:
- Which customers have not been visited or followed up recently? By paying special attention to those who have been overlooked, you ensure that you don’t miss out on any vital information, and above all, you maintain the relationship with your customer. In particular, Moovago lets you filter your contacts to see only those who have not been followed up recently (by displaying companies that have not had an update since a given date):
- Which customers represent the greatest business challenges? Focus on those with the potential to generate the most sales. A good start would be to prioritize companies that correspond to your main target, but have not yet purchased from you/your brand or used your services.
- Which customers are losing sales revenue? An analysis of previous years’ results can reveal business opportunities among your customers. Capitalize on the work you’ve already done, and don’t let a customer go to the competition! To give you a quick overview of these figures, Moovago offers a podium of companies with a downward purchasing trend. It’s the ideal way to quickly find out which big customers you may have overlooked!
Keep your customer file up to date
Of course, to be able to carry out this analysis, your customer follow-up file must be up to date, both in terms of sales follow-up and sales revenue declarations.
Every time you have an exchange with your customer, take a few minutes to debrief and update your customer segmentation. Similarly, every time a sale is signed, make a note of it in your sales revenue tracking software.
A few minutes each day: that’s all it takes to save you an enormous amount of time when preparing your optimized sales round (although it can also save you time on the overall monitoring of your business).
Moovago’s sales follow-up section is just a few clicks away. In just one screen, you can create a report, note down tasks to be carried out later, and even schedule new reminders.
Step 2: Define your sales prospecting zone
Now you know which customers to include on your sales round.
Now let’s focus on sales prospecting. In fact, your round may also be aimed at to approach potential new customers.. If this is one of your objectives, optimizing your round will inevitably involve thinking about your sales prospecting zone.
If you’ve spotted an opportunity close to one of the appointments on your round, you might want to add a little prospecting time to your round, to make the most of your trip.
Defining your prospecting zone
The first step is to define the geographical area in which you will be prospecting. Here are a few guidelines to help you define your ideal sales prospecting zone:
- An area where your current customers are located,
- An area in which your prospecting target(s) are also located,
- An area large enough to offer you the potential you need (depending on your objectives and resources),
- An area small enough to be properly managed,
- An area where competition is not an obstacle to your business.
Once you’ve defined your area, it’s time to optimize it. Identify areas with high sales potential and adapt your round accordingly.
Combine prospecting and customer care on rounds
Every traveling sales rep has been there: a sales round cancelled at the last minute.
In this case, you need to be able to bounce back quickly, by finding customers to follow up or prospects to approach around you. While visiting a customer unannounced can be complicated, it’s perfectly possible to do some physical prospecting in the area you’re in.
Round optimization software can be a great help in managing opportunities within this zone.
In the case of Moovago, you’ll be able to quickly find prospects around you, and see your prospects on a map.
Step 3: Use the right sales round management software
These days, it’s inconceivable not to think of technology to simplify the management of sales rounds.
The right sales round optimization software can save you precious time:
- in round planning,
- just like the sales round itself!
Using GPS software
It’s hard not to mention the importance of GPS functionality in optimizing a sales round!
A GPS can of course help you find the shortest route from one point to another. Its technology keeps you up and running wherever you are (well, in most cases!).
Note, however, that if you’re using a GPS only, you’ll need to prepare a little in advance. Whether it’s a GPS unit or a route planner application on your smartphone such as Waze or Google Maps, you’ll certainly need to enter all the addresses one by one to prepare your route… Rather impractical for traveling salespeople!
Resource: our top 5 GPS software products
Using a round planner
With a specialized round optimization tool, such as a round planner, you can save even more time.
How does it work?
Its primary objective is to help the user to save the maximum amount of timewhile at the same time enabling them to see as many customers and prospects as possible:
- By optimizing the round’s itinerary (like a GPS),
- It also takes into account traffic data, such as roadworks, detour, traffic jams, etc.
- Including all points / stages to visit,
- Etc.
Thanks to an algorithm, the choice of stages and the itinerary will be automatically optimized, saving both planning time and time on the road, when it comes to carrying out the sales round.
However, these software programs and applications are not always not always adapted to the needs of a traveling salesperson. In particular, they are designed for delivery drivers or logistics platforms, who obviously don’t have the same needs.
For example, you won’t have any tools dedicated to customer tracking or sales revenue management, which, as we’ve seen, are very important for organizing your round and prioritizing your actions.
Use a comprehensive tool for rounds, loyalty and prospecting
Ideal for a traveling salesperson? A sales round optimization tool combined with a CRMor customer relationship management software. It takes into account all the functionalities offered by GPS software or a round planner, while offering other tools essential to the smooth running of the sales activity.
Such software will save you precious time. Here are a few examples of what Moovago CRM can do for you with its sales round optimization feature:
- By allowing you to see your customers or prospects on a map, as well as the round itinerary,
- By integrating your entire customer file, so you don't have to manually enter all your customers' or prospects' addresses,
- By enabling you to sort your prospects and customers by priority (find prospects in a given area, customers with urgent follow-up, urgent tasks, etc.),
- By including all your appointments for the day in your round, and allowing you to export the round to your diary,
- By checking the feasibility of the journey between all your appointments,
- By defining the salesperson's working hours and arrival/departure points (home or office) by default,
- By allowing you to define how much time you'll spend at each appointment, and then plan the round accordingly,
- By indicating journey times and breaks between stages,
- Showing you customers and prospects in the area in case of cancelled appointments,
- ... and so much more!
By adopting the right sales round optimization strategy and the right tool, any traveling salesperson will feel the beneficial effects in his or her daily life. Spend less time on the road, and more time with customers and prospects: it’s now possible! 😉