trakki
Route planning for medical device sales
By Manuel Ober · · 3 min read
Medical device sales plans at two speeds
Hospital procurement gives you appointments three weeks in advance. A practice takes you when you happen to be there. Having both in the same week is the real planning task in medical device sales: fixed appointments that everything else arranges itself around, and open calls that fill the gaps.
If you only plan the fixed appointments, you drive 300 kilometres for two conversations. If you only plan open calls, you miss procurement. The skill is in the combination.
Fixed appointments first, then fill in around them
This is how a week comes together in trakki:
- The fixed appointments are set. Tuesday 10am at a hospital in one city, Thursday 2pm at a lab in another. Those are given.
- The map shows who is due nearby. Around the hospital there are three practices that have had no call for six weeks, and a dental lab showing yellow. They go into Tuesday, before and after the hospital.
- trakki works out the drive times between all of the day's calls, with opening hours and your break, and says whether it fits. If it does not, an open call slides to the next day in that area.
- One buffer per day. Hospital conversations run longer than planned. An open call that is allowed to fall away keeps the day together.
More on the method in the guide Route planning in field sales.
Long approaches mean overnight stays
Medical device territories are large: half a region, often two. If you are at one end of it on Tuesday and at the other on Wednesday, you do not drive home in between. In trakki you mark the overnight stay in the weekly plan, and the two days arrange themselves around the hotel: Tuesday ends with the customer closest to it, Wednesday starts with the first customer nearby. When the night pays off is in the guide Stay overnight or drive home.
The call history is the memory
With capital equipment, what happened last time is what counts: which device was shown, who was interested, when the budget is free. trakki keeps every visit and every phone call per customer, with date and note. Before the next appointment, one look at the customer record is enough, instead of three mail folders.
What you hand out is your decision: an Excel file with the quarter's calls, in the scope your employer needs.
What stays with you
Hospital lists with contacts and budget cycles are confidential. trakki stores everything on your device, without an account and without the provider's cloud. Phone and computer keep in step through your own storage, or at home over your Wi-Fi. More on this under Your customers stay your customers.
Where trakki stops
trakki is not a CRM with quotation tracking and not an equipment register. It plans the week, shows who is due, and keeps the call history. Quotations and contracts stay in your company's system; trakki takes the customer list from there and gives the calls back as Excel.
Trying it costs nothing, to the home page.
Frequently asked questions
Can I enter fixed appointments with a time?
Yes. A call can have a fixed time; trakki arranges the day's open calls around it. If you move the fixed appointment, the rest is recalculated.
How do I handle customers with several contacts?
The call note records who you spoke to. For hospitals with several departments it is worth creating one customer per department, so each has its own cycle and its own history.
Does trakki work outside Austria?
Yes. The map and the drive times work anywhere in Europe. Only the address lookup is more precise in Austria, because it uses the official address register there; elsewhere it runs through a general map service.