Route Planner: Why it is important for optimizing field sales?

There are certain professions that to date follow the traditional way of making sales. What do we mean by this, you ask? Well, we are talking about industries like pharmaceutical and medical devices where the sales rep are required to go into the field to pitch the prospects. While on one hand, these industries think that the chances of conversion are higher when the sales rep meets the Healthcare professionals (HCPs) in person, the HCPs on the other hand, prefer communication over emails or calls before the meeting. 

This creates a gap between how field reps want to approach the process and the expectations of HCPs. Route planner can help solve the problem and here’s how it can do so:

1. Route planner’s calendar feature to help save expenses

As per the results of certain studies, a medical rep visits 7 customers per day, which may include repeat visits at least three to four times on the same route. Chances are that the HCP prospect may not meet the rep thus causing the loss of money and time. The solution to this is making appointments with all HCP prospects beforehand; route planners let you do just this. Route planner comes equipped with a booking feature wherein the rep can reschedule the meeting in case the HCP cancels or reschedules the appointment and can fill the slot with another client.

2. Lets you have a structured approach

With a route planner, you can create a map, decide the distance that needs to be travelled and identify customers and opportunities on the route. In other words, the sales team can plan activities well in advance with the route planner and make budgets accordingly.

3. Sales rep won’t miss out on important details

HCP prospects may have queries and in case the rep couldn’t recall the answer to any such query, he can simply refer to the route planner, which comes with note-taking functionality. Since the rep is out in the field visiting multiple customers, he cannot keep making calls to the manager for little details. If the sales rep has a route planner wherein he has jotted down important information or added attachments to the record, he can use it for easy reference.

4. The sales manager would be able to track the sales rep

Since the manager heads the sales department and is responsible for the activity of the team, he would want to know what and how his team is performing. Since the route planner allows the reps to share their location and activity records with their manager, the manager can have complete visibility into each rep’s performance.

5. Improved productivity with CRM integration

The functioning of a route planner increases by many folds when integrated with a CRM solution. The best thing that the integration does is centralise the records and documents thus allowing the team to access the information from anywhere and at any time. Not just this, but it also synchronizes the data, and reduces manual work thus ensuring error-free data collection. 

At Dotsquares, we have a team of experts who can implement the Zoho route planner within your Zoho CRM and in case you already have a route planner, we can help integrate that with CRM. Having said this, the Zoho route planner has not been launched yet but since it is in the prototype stage, it is expected to be released by next year.