trakki
Field sales tips: what really helps on the road
By Manuel Ober · · 7 min read
The week belongs to Sunday evening
If you work out every morning where to drive, you lose three times: once while thinking about it, once on the detour, and once in the evening, when the important customer again did not get a slot.
Twenty minutes on Sunday evening replace five quarter-hours during the week. The question is always the same: who is due, where are the due ones, and what fits together in one day? The method is in the guide Route planning in field sales.
Six calls, not eight
The most common planning mistake is optimism. On paper eight calls fit, in reality it is six. The rest disappears into waiting rooms, looking for parking, one conversation that runs long, and the drive the sat nav worked out for an empty road.
Plan with six and the week holds. Plan with eight and you push work ahead of you from Tuesday on, then replan everything on Thursday.
Pockets, not stars
A star-shaped territory, where you drive out from home in the morning, see one customer, drive back and set off again, is mileage without revenue. A pocket is five customers within twenty minutes of each other.
The map shows pockets, the list never does. So it is worth putting the customer list on a map once, even when you think you know the territory. How that works is in the guide Getting your customer list from Excel onto a map.
The difficult customer belongs in the morning
The conversation you are avoiding does not get better at 4:30 pm. In the morning you are sharper, so is the customer, and if it goes wrong you still have half a day to digest it.
The other way round, the pleasant short calls belong in the late afternoon. They need little head and they save the day when something fell through earlier.
Opening hours are planning, not luck
Pharmacies close over lunch. Doctors' practices are shut two afternoons a week. Workshops take nobody after 4 pm. If that is not in the plan, you drive there and drive away again.
One line in the customer record saves several full days over a year: closed Wednesday afternoon, Friday only until 12.
Cancellations only cost you if you are unprepared
Somebody always cancels. The question is not whether, but what you do with the hole.
Two answers help. First: keep a short list of customers in the territory who do not need an appointment and work on spec. Second: when two hours come free, recalculate the rest of the day instead of sitting the gap out. In that case a good plan pulls the afternoon forward and adds one call at the end.
Cold calling: three a week, not thirty a month
Cold calling rarely fails on the opening line and almost always on rhythm. Save it up for a block day and you push the block day.
Three new addresses a week, built into routes you drive anyway, come to around 140 first contacts over a year. No block day manages that.
Two things make the difference in the conversation: you know why you are standing in front of this particular business, and you ask for the next step, not for the order. “May I come back in four weeks and show you what this looks like for a business your size?” is a question people can say yes to.
New customers get a grade only after three calls
A new customer always looks like more at the start than he turns out to be. Put him straight into a two-week cycle and a year later there is no time left for the A customers.
Short cycle for three calls, then grade him honestly. How the grading works overall is in the guide Sales territory planning.
You write the report in the car, not at night
Five minutes after the call, in the car, before you drive off. That is when you still know who was in the room and what he said.
At 9 pm you no longer know, for call four, whether the question about delivery times came from the buyer or from the boss. And a report you do not write is, eight weeks later, a call with no memory. What belongs in it is in the guide Call reports in field sales.
A phone call is half a call, not a whole one
The phone is the best tool for C customers on the edge of the territory and the worst one for A customers. Anyone who thinks an important customer can be looked after by phone notices the mistake when the competitor has been there in person.
As a rule of thumb: a phone call replaces a visit when it is about following up. It replaces none when it is about a decision.
Staying overnight is cheaper than it looks
Two and a half hours out and two and a half back are five hours of driving for a day with four calls. Two days with one night away give ten calls for the same driving time.
The arithmetic of when that pays off is in the guide Stay overnight or drive home.
What you give your manager is a deliberate choice
Numbers you report come back: as a target, as a comparison, as a question in the quarterly review. That is no reason to hide anything, but it is a reason to separate cleanly what the company needs from what is your own working material.
Call numbers and results belong in the company system. Your note that the buyer retires in June is your note.
Sales tips and tricks that achieve nothing
Not every piece of advice doing the rounds in sales seminars holds up in the territory. Four you can skip.
“See as many customers as possible.” Volume beats selection only in the statistics. Twelve short calls on C customers look good and move nothing. Four calls on A customers who are due move something.
“Just drop in when you are nearby.” Sounds efficient, rarely is. A call without a reason uses up the next reason. The time after that, the reason is missing.
“Build a personal relationship, the rest follows by itself.” Half true. Being liked opens the door, but the order hangs on a problem you solve. Look after the relationship only and you are valued, not ordered from.
“Do the reports at the weekend.” The most expensive trick of them all. What you write from memory on Saturday is fiction with a date on it.
How trakki does it
trakki takes over the points you would otherwise keep in your head: due dates work themselves out, the map shows the pockets, opening hours sit with the customer, and when somebody cancels, the rest of the day recalculates. The customer list stays on your device. Trying it costs nothing, to the home page.
Frequently asked questions
How many calls a day can you manage in field sales?
Six on a normal day with drive times across a territory, eight in a dense city, three to four when the approach is over an hour. Plan permanently with more and you plan yourself into arrears.
How do I start in a new territory?
First the list onto a map, then all the A customers in person once in the first four weeks, then check your predecessor's grading. After six months the territory looks different from day one, and that is as it should be.
Is cold calling in field sales still worth it?
Yes, when it runs alongside. Three addresses a week in routes you drive anyway cost hardly any time. A dedicated prospecting day costs a whole day and is the first thing cut when things get tight.