Drawing up a sales round plan is an essential part of a successful sales strategy for traveling salespeople.
It’s a complex process, but with the right planning (and application), sales teams and independent field sales representatives can make the most of every day in the field.
Sales round plan definition
A sales round plan consists in finding the most optimized itinerary for your sales meetings. This saves time and fuel.
On the other hand, by organizing their visits intelligently, traveling salespeople can free up time to see more customers or prospects in a given sector.
Purpose and benefits of a sales round
Whatever the market or sector, travelling sales representatives generally encounter the same problems:
- The difference between reality and the information entered in the customer portfolio, leading to poor exchanges in the field.
- A change in the methods and technologies used by prospects and customers, leading to a misunderstanding of needs and a loss of opportunities.
- Gaps in the timetable, unforeseen events on the road and tools that are too inflexible to allow a full day’s work.
Advance route planning, which can be flexible according to traffic, customers to be visited and weather conditions, for example, will enable traveling sales representatives to be effective even during periods of change.
Create a sales round plan
You need to rely on technology. For example, consider an Excel file, maps for manual route planning, or round optimization software.
However, having a good prospecting plan planning tool for yourself and your team can save time and optimize customer follow-up.
Use a contact management system
Managing your contacts is the basis of a successful sales round. You can either use an Excel file or an application like Moovago to list your contacts, their addresses and contact details. Categorize your contacts according to their position in your sales cycle, the sales revenue they have already generated, changes over previous periods and the tasks assigned to them.
Map your customers
To be effective, you need to know where your customers are. You need to use a mapping tool to put them on a map so you have a clear view of where your contacts are. You can use Google Maps points of interest, or an application like Moovago to keep track of your customers’ locations.
Sort your contacts
Within your portfolio of contacts, you need to identify factors to determine which contacts to prioritize. For example, those who bring you the highest sales revenue, or those you haven’t seen in a long time. You’ll need to plan your round around these priority contacts.
Using your customer mapping tool, identify the contacts you can visit in the same area, and fill in the time between appointments by visiting other lower-priority contacts or prospecting. Try to carry out continuous prospecting while paying attention to your existing customers.
Keep your customer portfolio up to date
Once you’ve completed your round, make sure you keep the information in your Excel file or customer portfolio application up to date. It’s essential to have all your information up to date, so you can analyze the situation and plan future rounds. You can also note when people you’ve seen have told you to come back or call them back.
If a customer happens to be unavailable, he or she can use this time to visit another customer or do some prospecting. Every interaction and important piece of information should be noted and retained to facilitate sales follow-up.
How to optimize a sales round?
A sales round plan should focus on the most important opportunities.
With this in mind, it is sometimes necessary tooptimize a sales round to give priority to the most profitable prospects or the most urgent visits.
Optimizing a sales round plan means going the extra mile to prioritize stages, avoid mistakes and ultimately save maximum road time and fuel.
Specialized commercial round software is often used to achieve this optimization.
Choosing the right sales round software?
The best software for you is likely to be different from that of another organization. This software will need to meet the needs of your business to create the perfect sales round plan. To do this, determine and list the main problems you and your sales team face every day:
- Are you missing out on opportunities because your salespeople have booked appointments with the wrong customers?
- Do you sometimes have to readjust your sales rounds completely because customers have cancelled?
- Are you missing out on your objectives because you don’t have all the information on your sector?
Based on the criteria of you and your team, you must choose the main features of the round software:
- Route planning,
- Suggestion of the most interesting appointments,
- Interactive map,
- Customer portfolio management,
- Customer follow-ups.
Determining which features are important will help you make the right choice, saving you time and generating more sales revenue.
Which is the best sales round software?
We recommend using the Moovago application. It’s an application designed for salespeople on the move, enabling you to manage your customer portfolio visually, using a map.
You’ll be able to create and optimize routes directly in the cloud-based application. What’s more, the French application brings together all the tools used by sales reps: reports, reminders, reminders, tasks, appointments and sales revenue.
Thanks to reminders, you’ll know which companies to visit, and you can also choose your route according to sales revenue opportunities.