trakki
Sales territory planning: how to grade your customers
By Manuel Ober · · 5 min read
Do the sums first, then plan
Before you plan the first week, work out how many visits your territory demands and how many your year allows. 300 customers, each seen every four weeks, come to 3,900 visits a year. At six visits a day and 200 working days, 1,200 fit into the plan. The territory is a good three times too big before the first week is even planned.
If you skip this, you promise visit cycles you cannot keep. You find out at the end of the quarter.
Step 1: Grade the customers into three classes
Three classes are enough. More classes make the grading finer, not better.
- A customers carry the revenue, or will do. Usually ten to fifteen per cent of the list.
- B customers are reliable and order regularly, but no single one carries much. This is the biggest block.
- C customers are small, buy rarely or are still unclear. New customers get a short cycle at first and a class after three visits.
If you have taken over a territory, you probably have your predecessor's grading. It is a starting point, not the truth. After six months it will look different.
Step 2: Set a visit cycle per class
The visit cycle is the gap between two visits. A common scale: A every 30 days, B every 60, C every 120. With 45 A, 150 B and 105 C customers that gives:
| Class | Customers | Visit cycle | Visits a year |
|---|---|---|---|
| A | 45 | every 30 days | 540 |
| B | 150 | every 60 days | 900 |
| C | 105 | every 120 days | 315 |
| Total | 300 | 1,755 |
1,755 visits against 1,200 possible is too many. Now you stretch from the bottom:
- C to every 180 days: 210 visits instead of 315. That makes 1,650, still too many.
- B to every 75 days: 730 instead of 900. That makes 1,480, still too many.
- B to every 90 days: 600. That makes 1,350.
- With C, a phone call replaces every second visit: a good 100 visits fewer, so around 1,245.
The last 45 visits you find in dense city days with eight visits instead of six.
The rule behind it: stretch C first, then B. If you save on the A customers, you are saving on revenue.
Keep the cycle right in your customer list. The Excel template for route planning has a column for it and works out the due date from it.
Step 3: Add the location
Only now does the map come in. With class and visit cycle on the map, you see what no list shows: where many customers sit close together, and where single customers far out cost many kilometres and bring little. Then there are the C customers so far out that even one visit every 180 days costs half a day.
For customers like that, set the cycle by location, not by class. If a customer sits next to an A customer, you visit them on the same trip. If they sit alone at the edge, they get phone calls and one visit a year. The guide Field sales tips gives a rule of thumb for this: a call for following up, a visit for a decision. How to get the list onto a map is in the guide Get your Excel customer list onto a map.
From territory to weeks
With class, cycle and location settled, the week is no longer difficult. Who is due is clear. Where the due customers are is shown by the map. The days follow from the areas where many due customers sit close together.
The method is in the guide Route planning in field sales. For large territories with a night away, there is the guide Overnight or drive home?.
Adjust after six months
Your territory plan will be partly wrong after six months, and that is normal. Two customers have grown and now belong in A. Three A customers have a new contact person and order less. The trip north turned out not to be worth it.
Go through the classes once every six months. Then you have a territory that fits you, not one your predecessor left behind.
How trakki does it
In trakki you set the visit cycle once for all customers, or separately per customer. The classes are called segments there, from A+ to D. Three of them are enough, as above. If your Excel file carries the segments, trakki asks once during the import how often you want to visit each one. After that you can change the cycle per customer. trakki works out the due date itself and shows it as a traffic light: overdue, due soon, still fine.
On the map you colour your customers by due date or by categories you set up yourself. At the tap of a button trakki lays out the week by due date. You can look at trakki in your browser with sample customers, more on the home page.
Frequently asked questions
How many customers are too many for one field sales rep?
The sums decide, not the number. 300 customers on a sensible cycle are manageable. 150 customers, each seen every two weeks, are not. If you promise more visits a year than working days times six, you have a problem, with 100 customers as with 400.
Should I visit new customers more often than existing ones?
At the start, yes, on a short cycle until it is clear what they will become. After three visits they get a class like everyone else. If you leave new customers on a two-week cycle for good, you will have no time left for your A customers after a year.
What do I do about customers who would be closer in a neighbouring territory?
Talk to your colleague. Territory borders drawn by postcode know nothing about rivers or motorways. If your colleague can reach a customer in twenty minutes and you need seventy, a swap helps you both. The map makes the argument visible.