If you work in sales, you need to understand ROI (Return On Investment) in order to calculate and analyze the performance of your sales, your employees, or your tools and apps’ performance. 

Don’t worry—if you aren’t familiar with calculating ROI, we’ve got you covered. 

 In this article, you’ll learn what ROI is, why you need it, and your potential ROI using Badger Maps. Additionally, at the end of this article, you’ll find a free ROI calculator to save you time and effort when evaluating the benefits and losses of your investments.

What is ROI

Return on Investment (ROI) is a measurement of the benefit or loss investors receive as a result of their investment. Knowing how to calculate your ROI helps you figure out whether your investments are going to be profitable or a waste of money.

The formula is often used to calculate and compare things like:

• Productivity of employees
• Profitability of investment projects
• Profitability of firms
• Benefits of two productivity tools (e.g. two field sales apps)

ROI in Sales

Working in sales, you can use ROI to measure and compare the effectiveness of your sales reps, your training/sales enablement strategy, and the sales tools you’re using. 

For example, if you’re unsure about which CRM you should use, you can try testing two or more for a period of time, and then use the ROI formula to compare the results.

As a sales rep, you can also use ROI to close a deal by showing your prospects how your product or service will increase their return. Here at Badger Maps, we show you exactly how much you can save by using our software, and we even offer an ROI calculator to test and see the results yourself. 

ROI Formula

Calculating your ROI is easy! First, you need to find the profit from your investment. Then, divide the profit gained from the investment by the cost of the investment and multiply it by 100:

Simple, right?

Using this formula, you can easily distinguish low-performing investments from high-performing ones, as well as decide whether your investment is worth it or not. 

You can also use it to see how the investment has performed to date. Keep in mind that the result is expressed as a percentage because it is easier to understand.

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Benefits & Limitations of the ROI Formula

Benefits of ROI

• Flexible and Easy to Calculate

ROI is commonly used because of its flexibility. To use the formula, you only need two numbers: profit and cost. However, if you use our ROI calculator, this becomes even easier. 

• Easy to Interpret

The results you get from using the ROI formula are expressed as percentages. This makes it super easy to analyze and compare your investments. 

• Universally Understood

ROI is conventionally used as a measure of success for an investment. It is almost always guaranteed that when you use it, people will know what it means.

Limitations of ROI

• Time Value of Money

While ROI is very commonly used for comparing investments, you have to be careful while calculating it. 

ROI ignores the time value of money (the fact that one dollar today is no longer one dollar tomorrow). Only use the ROI formula to compare investments under similar circumstances, holding all other factors constant.

If you’re comparing the investment period of one year with that of three years, it’s more accurate to use other indicators (such as CAGR) instead of ROI.

• Susceptible to Manipulation

When calculating ROI, you can take different approaches to measure profit and cost. Because of this, the result is susceptible to manipulation and is only valid if the profit and cost are directly related to the investment. 

To calculate the real ROI, you should take into account all possible costs and profits related to the investment. 

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ROI Example 

Calculating Your ROI with Badger Maps

Let’s say that last month you started using Badger Maps to conduct a test and see if it’s a profitable investment.

Now, you’d like to use the ROI formula to calculate the return you got from using this tool. 

 In this example, we’ll say that Badger Maps cost you $58 and brought an $8,800 increase in sales. (This number will vary based on your miles driven, gas expense, etc. For a more accurate calculation, use the free ROI calculator at the end of this article).

To calculate the ROI, you’d use the ROI formula:

ROI after using Badger Maps: [($8,800-$58)/$58]*100 = 15,072 %

Based on this calculation, you’d get a 15,072 % return from using Badger Maps.

For many ROI calculations, the result will be a lower percentage. But when it comes to route planners, the return on investment is high because of the low pricing and high potential for monetary gain (in other words, by using a route planner you can save a lot of money, especially on gas!).

However, Badger Maps does more than just optimize routes with 100+ stops. With capabilities such as customer data visualization, check-ins, and lead generation on-the-go, Badger Maps helps field salespeople save time on their daily planning, keep better relationships with customers, discover new business opportunities, and close more deals. On average, salespeople using Badger Maps spend 20% less time driving and sell 22% more. 

Sign up for a free trial today and take your outside sales performance to the next level:

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Your Potential ROI with Badger

If you’re a field sales rep or you manage a field sales team, you would benefit from an all-in-one tool that’ll save you money and time spent between planning and driving.

Let’s say that you decided to try out Badger Maps’s free trial and test it for a month. How can you calculate the monetary return on your investment? In other words, how can you know exactly how much money you’re saving by using Badger Maps?

Based on data from the average sales team, using Badger Maps for one month results in:

• 20% less drive time
• $71 in gas savings
• 32 hours saved planning and scheduling
• 13 hours saved driving
• 22% increase in sales

For more details about how you can maximize your ROI using Badger Maps, check out this guide. 

Then, use our Free ROI Calculator (find it in the section below) and input your own numbers to see how much money you stand to gain in a month.

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Free ROI Calculator

Now that you know everything about ROI, you can calculate all your investments using the ROI formula.

We know how valuable time is to you, so we created a Sales ROI Calculator to let you evaluate your investments without any hassle.

This Sales ROI Calculator is built to measure the potential return on investment of using Badger Maps based on the data you input, recorded, or projected.

It calculates the annual and lifetime benefit of an investment, taking into account both the extra revenue gained and any hard savings. Also, the spreadsheet is color-coded, with green cells containing variable data and blue cells showing the calculation results. When you start your ROI calculation, input the relevant data into the green cells and the calculated results will be automatically shown on the blue cells. 

This calculator takes into account all of the perks that come from using Badger Maps, including revenue increase, additional free time, and savings from fuel.

Try Our Quick ROI Calculator to See How Badger Maps Pays for Itself

The bottom line is this: ROI is both important and flexible enough to be utilized in a variety of fields, especially sales. 

Of course, there are a few limitations as well, so it’s important to consider the type of data you’re measuring before calculating it. Yet, when necessary, ROI can make visualizing your investment returns easier than ever!

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