On Monday morning the map shows hundreds of customers. The week will only allow you to visit some of them. Organising a sales route means choosing which ones, booking the right slots and checking that the travel really fits into the day.
Calculate the capacity available
Start from your field calendar, after holidays, meetings, training and administrative tasks. Estimate the number of visits you can make from the durations you have observed, including travel, parking, waiting and the visit report. A national average would be less useful than two weeks of your own territory.
With 400 customers, that capacity represents a little more than two visits per account on average. It does not say that every customer has to be seen twice. Some need a regular presence; others prefer a call or an order they place themselves.
Combine potential, need and cost of a visit
Past revenue helps you spot the important accounts, but it undervalues a promising prospect. Add the potential of the category, the range already stocked, the customer’s plans and the reason for the next contact. A distant pharmacy may justify the trip; it has to be assessed together with what it costs in time.
- →Large active account: secure the relationship, handle the commitments and work on the relevant lines.
- →Qualified prospect: prepare a concrete decision, with a date to reassess the effort.
- →Account with no recent purchase: confirm the situation before scheduling a visit; the buying may go through another channel.
- →Simple reorder: favour the customer’s preferred channel when being there in person adds little.
Check that the frequencies fit into the year
Fictional example: 50 priority accounts visited eight times represent 400 visits; 100 accounts followed three times, 300 visits; 100 others visited once, 100 visits. The total reaches 800. With the reserve calculated above, that leaves about 107 slots for openings and one-off needs.
This calculation has to be redone for each territory. If the total exceeds the capacity, reduce some frequencies, change channel or review the coverage. Adding a route optimiser does not make an unworkable plan workable.
Build the week around the appointments
Place the confirmed appointments and the visits with a deadline first. Then group the other nearby outlets, respecting how much follow-up they need. Geography also influences the selection: two useful visits in the same area may be preferable to a long detour for something that can be settled by phone.
Write a short objective for each visit: decide on a listing, check a shelf placement, handle a dispute or train the team. Confirm that your contact is available. A pharmacy being open does not mean the owner is free for a sales appointment.
- Fix the appointments
Block the slots confirmed with your contacts.
- Fill in by area
Add the useful nearby visits, according to availability.
- Check the clock
Add up travel, parking, the visit, notes and breaks.
- Keep a reserve
Allow for the unexpected and one optional stop already prepared.
A short distance does not guarantee that a contact will be available.
Make the day fit on the clock
In a fictional seven-hour day, six 30-minute visits take three hours. Add two hours of travel, 30 minutes of parking, 30 minutes of visit reports and one hour of breaks and margin: the seven hours are already full. A longer visit has to displace another slot.
Keep one or two qualified alternatives nearby in case of a cancellation. They are options, not extra appointments to promise. Also reserve the time to note the commitments before they blur into those of the next visit.
React to disruptions without moving everything
If an appointment falls through, tell the people concerned and compare the alternatives. A customer emergency may call for the sales admin team rather than a trip. A visit that runs long can be productive; note the reason before concluding that it was badly prepared.
For an independent agent, coordinating the network has to remain compatible with the mandate and their autonomy. A planning method does not replace the distinction between employee status and commercial agent status.
Track three understandable indicators
- →Coverage: the share of accounts in the segment that received the planned visit during the period.
- →Overdue: accounts whose visit frequency or follow-up deadline has been exceeded.
- →Outcome: an order, a decision, useful information or an action resolved, according to the stated objective.
Look at the reasons a planned visit did not happen: absence, underestimated travel, changed priority or actual duration. Adjust the capacity and the frequencies from those facts. The raw number of visits measures neither their usefulness nor the quality of the relationship.
Choose the tool after setting the rules
A well-kept spreadsheet can be enough to start with. A shared tool becomes useful when updates, visit reports and orders have to move between several people. The guide to sales route planning software offers tests for comparing what each one can do.
Prepare the route from your own account base
Territories, customer history and visit follow-up: let’s look at how your data can help build days that hold together in Salesia.
If the workload lastingly exceeds the capacity available, review the way territories are split between reps before changing the order of the appointments.
AI can help prioritise the visits from the open commitments. That guide details the data to provide and the travel checks needed before approving the schedule.
Frequently asked questions
- How do you calculate visit capacity?
- Multiply the visits you can make per day by the field days and the weeks available, using the durations you have observed. In the example in this guide, 6 × 4 × 42 gives 1,008 visits before any reserve for the unexpected; that is not a universal ceiling.
- How do you set visit frequencies?
- Assign a frequency according to need, potential and the cost of a visit, then multiply it by the number of accounts in the segment. The sum has to fit within the capacity available. If it does not, change some frequencies, some channels or the coverage.
- Which indicators should you track?
- Coverage of the accounts planned, how far behind the deadlines you are, and the outcome of each visit against its objective. Analyse the reasons for the gaps before judging a rep on a raw number of calls.
By Anatole Briant
By Anatole Briant
By Pierre Lerebours
CEO of Salesia
Anatole Briant is CEO of Salesia. He is your contact for demonstrations, pricing and partnerships.