Why You Need Check-ins for Sales Routing

If you have sales routing software, you are already saving gas, time and money.  Now that these are taken care of, it’s time to talk about checking in with clients.  Badger Maps’ check-in feature keeps track of a number of important components all in the same place as your sales routing optimization.

Here are four fantastic reasons why you should use check-ins:

1. You can set the type of check-in you made

You can choose what kind of visit you made to the account.  The optimum visit to a customer is in person of course, but other types of visits have their benefits.  For example, if you called a customer the day before you visit them in person, you can create a check-in for a phone call with notes for tomorrow’s in person visit.  This can also be beneficial if a customer suddenly cancels.  You can still send an email, and then create a check-in to make sure that you had some type of contact with them that day.  An example of the drop down that comes with the check-in is shown below.

2. You can make notes to prepare for the future

You can add notes to your check-ins regarding the nature of the meeting or anything else needed.  This way you can be prepared for your next appointment with that customer.  Instead of making a reminder on a sticky note that is lost a week later, your check-ins are in the same place as the rest of your visits. This will help you to stay organized in and outside of the app.  This organization also helps when you need a summary of what you have been up to (see point 4).

Don't let your board look like this

3. You can visualize by days since last check-in

You can also colorize or filter by days since last check-in.  If you don’t want to see accounts that you just visited last week on your map, then you can filter them out using the filter feature.  This can give you a more clean map with more organized data.  This data can be used to make routes more quickly either by clicking on the individual account or by using the lasso tool.

Here are a couple examples of colors sorted by month visited

4. You can make a check-in report

You can export check-ins.  This gives a summary of each check-in with the date and any notes that you made after the visit.  You can also use this if you want to see all of your check-ins in one place in the format of an Excel spreadsheet.  Then you have the option to print it and go into the next meeting prepared (or to show to a sales manager or boss). You can see how to export check-ins here.

Check-ins are a great way to keep yourself organized in one convenient place.  They also make it easier for you to be able to summarize your work for a day, week or even a month. So now that you are an expert at check-ins, you can use them to help optimize your sales routing software.

Badger Maps, the Highest Ranked App in the B2B Sales Mapping Apps Category

Image credit to MatrixPlace, a sales consulting firm that wrote an Analyst Report on Sales Mapping Software