How do you organise an effective sales tour? Methods & tools

A sales tour is a series of visits to customers and prospects made by a sales representative over a given period of time and in a given geographical area.

It therefore needs to be well organised to ensure the best use of time and human resources.

Here's a look at what's involved in a sales tour, along with a few methods and tools to make your life easier!

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What is the purpose of a sales tour?

Sales calls often serve sales objectives. But the issues involved are actually more complex than that:

• prospecting in the field
• delivering goods,
• product demonstrations,
• getting to know the customer
• after-sales service,
• building customer loyalty.

How do you organise a sales tour?

A sales tour means a sales tour plan. They go hand in hand.

Organising a delivery round or a customer visit is not something you can improvise, or you run the risk of wasting a lot of time.

Definition of a sales route plan

A sales tour plan is the document, in the form of a map or calendar, used to plan all the sales visits to be made over the course of a day, week or month.

The aim is to schedule as many meetings as possible while limiting travel costs and journey times, depending on the geographical location of customers and sales representatives, and their mode of transport.

Preparing rounds

Before mapping out the sales rounds, the sales manager assesses :

• the potential number of visits, i.e. the working time that the sales force can devote to customer visits, taking into account :
• public holidays, leave, training, etc,
• the size of the sector,
• the ideal time to devote to each visit, depending on the objective,
• the travel time between each appointment, with a safety margin,
• customer availability;
  
  
• customer/prospect potential: who should be visited first to get the best return on investment?
  
  
• expected benefits: tour costs compared with expected sales.

Based on these estimates, he opts for the type of itinerary he considers most profitable:

The daisy-chain route

The area to be covered is divided into petals, the number depending on its size. The heart of the flower represents the salesperson's office or home.

The sales rep starts his or her tour with the customer who is furthest away (maximum 1.5 hours away) and gradually returns to his or her starting point at the end of the day.

☝️ Some people recommend dividing the flower into 16 petals, corresponding to 16 sectors and therefore 16 rounds over the month, which leaves 4 working days for unexpected or urgent visits.

The cloverleaf tour

This is the same principle as the daisy circuit, except that the area is smaller and there are only 4 sectors, corresponding to the 4 leaves of the clover.

As with the first method, the customer base is well distributed, with a roughly equivalent number of visits each day.

The salesperson can organise one tour per day and keep the 5th day for sedentary work or to deal with last-minute appointment requests.

The zigzag tour

For a large area crossed by a central axis, such as a motorway, where customers are widely dispersed.

Method: the sales representative takes the main route and starts his day directly with the customer furthest away. They gradually return to their starting point, meeting customers on either side of the main road as they make their way back.

The snail or spiral tour

A method adapted to longer tours and larger areas, the salesperson travels in a spiral, stopping at each customer and finishing with the one furthest away.

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Tools for optimising sales rounds

Forget looking for a free sales tour plan or creating a sales tour plan in Excel.

A good sequence of customer visits is not set in stone; it has to be calculated and recalculated according to the ups and downs in the field.

And nothing is more effective than software with artificial intelligence to do this for you, or to find a new customer nearby if another one cancels or is absent.

You'll save precious time and be more efficient. Find out more about route optimisation solutions. ⤵️

☝️ But let's not forget that route management software is not the only tool a mobile salesperson needs :

• creating customised, personalised sales documents on the move,
• note-taking, centralising and sharing customer data with the office in real time.

For example, you can use Kizeo Forms, a mobile sales management application .

It can also be used to send customer data, such as the addresses they need to visit, to sales reps' smartphones or tablets.

Sellsy, for example, is a comprehensive, modular French CRM suite that helps you manage your sales activities. Using its intuitive mobile application, sales staff can share their activities in real time, even when they're on the move, so you can monitor their performance wherever they are. A true all-in-one tool, you also benefit from effective collaboration features during sales rounds: a shared diary updated in real time, an opportunity tracking module, an intelligent lead scoring system, a pipeline view and sales dashboards, and much more!

Finally, did you know that there are mobile CRMs with geolocation functionalities? This is the case with Divalto weavy, which organises all your activities in the field, including :

• optimising and prioritising journeys using indicators,
• tracking activities and the order of journeys on a map,
• mobile order-taking with access to stocks, etc.

All available as an application and connected to your ERP software.

And what do youuse to make your sales reps' work easier on the road?

🤓Final tip: regularly calculate the profitability of your tours so that you can adjust the planning of the next ones!

Updated article, originally published in January 2021.