Ask any sales person what part of their daily activities take the most time, and 100% of them will give the same answer: travelling. This is particularly true for large markets like India. Scale the problem to India’s large surface area, and the challenge reaches new dimensions – quite literally.
Solving for optimization in sales beat planning is highly critical for brands. Merely using Google Maps is not enough, since many routes can be complicated, and territories need to be divided amongst multiple sales persons. Moreover, in today’s complex sales landscape, it’s not just about the route, but about the end-to-end planning. For example, a territory optimization plan needs to account for the following criteria:
- The most efficient division of territories amongst the sales team
- The most efficient way to segment customers
- The most efficient utilization of sales representatives’ time
- The most efficient sequence of outlet visits
- The most efficient amount of time spent on each outlet…and so on.
Territory planning by definition is customizable and capable of being personalized. For any good optimization system, the above should be allocated based on different customizable weights assigned by a brand.
Consider just some of the typical challenges encountered by Sales Managers:
- Field Force Sizing: Determining the ideal number of sales reps required to service the entire outlet universe based on workload
- Low productivity, high cost: Inefficient territories leading to sales representatives being overworked or underutilized, increasing travel time and reducing customer visits, which affects overall performance and cost to the company
- Overlapping territories: Dividing each region into territories for sales reps while ensuring balanced workload distribution, and sanitizing the outlet universe by detecting outliers
- Maximizing ROI per visit: Creating routes based on strategic KPIs that ensure accurate serviceability to the outlet universe, while improving ROI at the visit level
- Customization: Customizing based on various factors and parameters, and creating personalized plans for each sales representative
FieldAssist Territory Optimization, part of the FieldAssist Intelligent Suite of FAi, implements advanced “location intelligence” and “route intelligence”, backed by cutting-edge enterprise-ready AI, to determine the most efficient allocation of personnel and their time.
Sales Territory Optimization
- Territory segmentation: Maximizing coverage and ensuring that the most territory is covered with the least possible effort and in the least possible time. Thus, the algorithm ensures that no territory is under-served or over-served.
- Outlet prioritization: Allocation of resources based on predetermined priorities and sales KPIs, tailored to each territory, consumer segment, and sales representative. This avoids missed sales opportunities and allocates resources efficiently.
Sales Representative Optimization
- Better outlet servicing: Inefficient resource allocation, which is often the result of intuition or guesswork, can significantly hamper the ability of a brand to service its outlets. FAi ensures highly efficient outlet servicing via optimized resource allocation.
- Missed revenue opportunities: A lot of potential revenue can be missed by inefficient outlet coverage and improper beat planning. FAi enables brands to identify potential sales opportunities for each outlet and allocate resources and time accordingly.
- Disparities in work distribution: Work is often not allocated efficiently and in a balanced manner amongst sales reps, resulting in work overload for some and less work for others. FAi distributes workload adequately amongst the sales staff. This allocation is customizable and dynamic – tailoring options are available to account for different parameters and their respective weights.
Sales Route Optimization
- Reduced travel time: Minimizing travel time so that sales staff can spend more time doing what matters most: sales. Optimizing the time spent at each outlet by prioritizing outlets that need more attention, and spending less time on stores that don’t.
- Maximizing visits: Covering as many outlets as possible in the least possible time [1]
- Efficient resource allocation: Assigning the right territories to the right sales representatives and maximizing productivity – of each sales representative and subsequently the entire team
The FieldAssist Effect
FAi has led to better cost allocation and a vastly productive workforce for brands across the globe. Dozens of FAi users have unlocked a higher level of growth and productivity within a short span:
- 25% reduction in travel time
- >15% increase in route-planning adherence
- 30% reduction in travel and operational expenses
- 13% reduction in unserviced outlet universe
- 18% increase in outlet coverage
- 21% Improvement in Visit Compliance
- 13% Increase in RoI per Sales Rep
- 21% Improvement in Visit Compliance
- 11% Increase in new outlet onboarding
With enterprise-ready AI and cutting-edge ML technology, FAi has enabled CPG firms across industries to serve their territories – and thus their customers – better, become more adaptive to market demands, and ultimately increase revenue.
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