A route answers the question “in what order should I call?”. A sales plan also has to answer “who should I visit, what for and how often?”. Some tools cover only one of those jobs, others bring them together. Here is how to check what your team actually needs.
Navigation, optimisation and planning are not the same thing
Navigation guides you to a destination. Optimisation looks for an order of calls that fits a set of constraints: opening times, duration, starting point and return. Sales planning chooses which visits to schedule, from the customer portfolio and the objectives. These functions can coexist, but the presence of a map does not prove they are all there.
If your appointments are already confirmed, what you mainly need is a workable journey. If important accounts have gone unvisited for months, you also need a list of priorities. Start by describing the decision you want to improve.
- Plan
Choose who to visit, why and how often.
- Order the stops
Account for travel, durations and appointment windows.
- Guide
Follow the road route to the next stop.
A navigation tool does not necessarily know the priorities in your customer portfolio.
Planner, organiser, optimiser: three names for one need
Suppliers use different words for closely related functions. A sales route planner chooses the visits and spreads them across the days. A sales route organiser usually means the same tool, seen from the manager building the week’s plan. An optimiser works out the order of the stops and the journey once the visits have been chosen. The word matters less than the question the tool answers: who to see, in what order, and how the plan is corrected when the day changes.
The sales route plan is the document that comes first: the customer portfolio, the target frequencies and the capacity the days genuinely have. Our guide to planning sales routes explains how to build it. Sales route planning software does not replace that plan; it applies it and keeps it up to date.
What the free tools can do
Google Maps lets you add up to nine stops, including the final destination, according to its directions help page. The order is still yours to organise, and the tool knows nothing about your commercial visit frequency. Waze allows one intermediate stop per journey, according to its official help page. So the two are not equivalent options for preparing a list of visits.
A spreadsheet can hold the potential, the last visit, the due date and the availability. It is enough if it is updated reliably and shared easily. The limits appear with diverging versions, information that stays on people’s phones, and visit reports being re-keyed.
What to give the planner
- →The territory: assigned accounts, exclusions and any out-of-area appointments that are allowed.
- →The need: the objective for the contact, the next due date and the target frequency.
- →The constraints: when the decision-maker is available, the expected duration, breaks, and the start and end points.
- →The signals: a dispute, a launch, a confirmed out-of-stock or a commitment to honour.
Visit frequencies are commercial decisions. Software can suggest them or apply them, but you need to understand the rule. An account that orders little does not necessarily have little potential; a customer with no recent purchase may still be supplied through a channel you cannot see.
A test set before you choose
Prepare twelve addresses from your own territory, with two fixed appointments, one long visit and one customer closed on the day chosen. Give the departure time, the place you return to and the break time. Compare the proposals on how workable they are and which priorities they cover, not just on total mileage.
Check how it is used during and after a visit
Try to find the last conversation before you walk in, then record an action after the visit. If the order is taken in another tool, check how it reaches the same customer record. An existing integration may be fine; what matters is that the information stays consistent.
Then turn off the network. Open a record, edit a visit report and prepare an order if that feature is included. After reconnecting, check the statuses and any conflicts. The supplier has to say what is stored on the device and what still needs a connection.
Fit the constraints to the channel
In pharmacies, opening hours do not tell you when the owner or the team is available. In hospitality (HoReCa), service times rule out large parts of the day. In a retail chain, the agreement may be negotiated centrally while the visit is there to check local execution. The plan has to reflect those differences.
Add parking and walking access for city centres. On a rural territory, compare days grouped by catchment area with isolated journeys. A mathematically short proposal can still be impractical if it ignores those details.
Measuring a gain worth having
A shorter journey can cut costs and fatigue, even without an extra visit. To track the commercial result, also measure the priority accounts covered, the appointments missed and the commitments dealt with. Compare weeks with a similar workload and record any territory changes.
Our guide to planning sales routes sets out the capacity calculation. It lets you check that a requested frequency fits the days actually available before you hand the plan over to software.
What to have written into the proposal
Ask for the limits on stops and users, the offline features, the integrations included, the cost of the maps and how you export your data. Set out the support provided for configuration and updates. Judge the product on that available scope, with a pilot run by the people who will be driving the routes.
The order taken during the visit and the visit report belong to SFA software, and the customer record to the pharmaceutical CRM. A single tool can bring all three together; if it does, check that each function is genuinely available, not merely announced.
Plan a day in the field with your own constraints
Bring a few accounts, their priorities and your fixed appointments. We will look at how visits are prepared and followed up in Salesia.
Frequently asked questions
- What is the difference between a route and a sales route plan?
- The route organises the journey between points. The sales route plan also chooses the visits, their objectives and their frequencies, taking the customer portfolio and people’s availability into account.
- Route planner, organiser or optimiser: what is the difference?
- The planner and the organiser choose the visits and spread them across the days according to the customer portfolio and the frequencies; the optimiser works out the order of the stops and the journey once the visits have been chosen. Many tools bring the two together; check which function answers your actual need.
- Are Google Maps and Waze enough?
- They can help you navigate once the visits have been chosen. Google Maps help allows up to nine stops including the final destination; Waze allows one intermediate stop per journey. They do not replace tracking visit frequencies and sales visit reports.
- How do you test route planning software?
- Supply addresses from your own territory, fixed appointments, a duration per visit, breaks and the place you return to. Then simulate a cancellation and a loss of network. Compare how workable the plans are and which priorities they cover.
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.