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 make the best use of the company's 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!
What is a sales tour plan?
Drawing up a sales route plan is a way of optimising each journey. It enables you to
- maximise the number of visits to customers in a sector or region,
- reduce unnecessary mileage
- and reach your sales target faster, without going round in circles.
The whole strategy is adapted upstream: geographical area, sales priorities, specific time slots for this market, etc. With an effective roadshow plan, every appointment should turn into a new opportunity or a potential new customer. Well thought-out route mapping boosts business and reduces the time spent travelling. If poorly managed, however, it can become a logistical sinkhole. 🗺️
What is the purpose of a sales tour?
Sales rounds 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.
The different types of commercial tour
The daisy tour
The area to be covered is divided into petals, the number depending on its size. The heart of the flower represents the sales rep's office or home.
The sales rep starts the tour with the customer who is furthest away (maximum 1.5 hours away) and gradually returns to the 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 salesperson takes the main route and starts the 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.
How do you organise a sales tour?
A sales tour means a sales tour plan. They go hand in hand.
You can't improvise the organisation of a delivery round or a customer visit, or you risk wasting a lot of time.
Defining the 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 the customers and the sales representatives, and their mode of transport.
Preparing rounds
Before mapping out the 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.
On the basis of these estimates, he opts for the type of route that he considers to be the most profitable.
Optimising the tour itinerary
To maximise the efficiency of your route planning, you need to determine the optimum route. A geoplanning tool or a professional GPS (such as Google Maps or specific tour software) can be used to organise a sales tour while limiting journey times. With a planning tool, you can make a large number of visits each day, reducing travel time and costs. ✅
A few tips for optimising sales rounds:
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Group all appointments by geographical area: go and meet as many customers as possible in the same area to avoid unnecessary return trips.
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Prioritise the most strategic customer portfolio: as you know, visiting certain customers can strengthen an existing relationship or directly prepare a new sale with a convinced prospect. To maximise the customer relationship and the commercial impact of your tour, always choose to meet these people at the start of the day.
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Plan a flexible itinerary: unfortunately, rabbits are not rare! With an interactive map and real-time updates, tour plans can be adapted from the first stop to the last. The aim? To compensate for any setbacks encountered in the field.
Good planning means less stress and more interaction to close deals!
Organising logistics
Organising a successful sales tour requires the company to pay attention to every detail:
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mode of transport
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accommodation (if required),
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sales aids or sample products essential for prospecting.
🚘 For a travelling salesperson, the choice of vehicle is essential, especially if they are transporting bulky equipment. Nobody wants to spend long hours on the road stuck between boxes. If you book a hotel, choose it strategically on the map, not too far from the first visits, and book it in advance to avoid unnecessary stress in the evening. Finally, make sure that all your sales documents (brochures, contracts, website) are ready at least 48 hours before the day of departure.
Brief the sales team
Are several sales people going on tour? A special briefing for the team is essential! Coordinate actions to optimise their effectiveness:
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Remind them of the main objective of the field trip: prospecting? Building customer loyalty? Signing new contracts?
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Take stock of the key information for each customer contact: when you know who you're going to talk to, you can plan your approach more effectively.
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Allocate roles and different areas to each person: with this method, you don't step on each other's toes, and you can manage a much larger area.
With a good briefing, each sales rep knows what he or she has to do and how.
Ensuring the tour runs smoothly
In the field, you have to juggle rigour and flexibility. Drawing up a schedule is all well and good, but a sales rep also needs to be able to adjust appointments to take account of unforeseen circumstances. After each meeting, ask them to note down any useful information about the discussions and new actions to be taken. This information will be essential for good customer follow-up and for sales reporting!
Above all, don't underestimate an interaction that wasn't immediately successful during the tour. The discussions may have opened the door to a future contract - who knows? Strengthening the links with your customers and prospects is another aspect of a successful sales tour.
Post-tour follow-up
Once the last visit has been made, the sales tour is not yet over! You still have to analyse the results and follow up your customers and prospects. 📊 Review the situation with the sales reps concerned:
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Assess the number of appointments made, conversion rates and orders actually obtained.
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Update the CRM with the information collected face-to-face.
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Follow up prospects and customers according to the type of action agreed.
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Identify areas for improvement for future rounds.
This follow-up stage is the key to turning a sales tour into a genuine growth lever for your company. Without follow-up, all your efforts risk falling by the wayside.
Tools for optimising sales rounds
Forget about looking for a free sales roadshow plan or creating a sales roadshow 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. As an all-in-one tool, you can also take advantage of 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 functions? 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.
Don't leave the planning of your sales tours to chance
Improvising a sales tour is risky! Everyone can quickly go off in all directions and end up churning the wind. If it's well organised, it means more concrete meetings, less useless travel time and a better conversion rate. With the right tools and good preparation upstream, every journey is optimised and your sales impact is maximised.
Leave no room for guesswork, and rely on a solid strategy backed up by high-performance tools... for salespeople who return home with signed contracts, not just kilometres on the clock.
And what do youuse to make your sales reps' work easier on the road?
🤓 Last piece of advice for the road: regularly calculate the profitability of your rounds so that you can adjust the planning of the next ones!