How to Boost Sales Team Performance with Route Mapping Tools

Finding ways to improve sales team performance is essential for any business whose success depends on face-to-face customer interactions.

Optimizing your field sales strategies can lead to the following:

• Better lead conversion rates and revenue
• Higher levels of customer satisfaction
• Stronger market presence 
• Shorter sales cycle times

Route mapping tools can help sales teams maximize their time and resources. It allows them to visit as many potential and existing customers as possible while delivering exceptional customer service. 

Overall, route mapping tools provide the following benefits:

• Optimizes sales routes for increased efficiency and reduced travel time
• Improves sales team productivity through better planning and scheduling
• Enhances customer coverage by identifying high-potential areas
• Provides real-time insights for data-driven decision-making

Let me dig into this more deeply so you can understand the benefits route mapping tools can make to your sales team performance.

Route mapping tools are specialized software designed to help businesses plan and optimize routes. They are widely used in sales, logistics, transportation, field services, and other industries where efficient route planning is essential.

They allow you to input multiple destinations and generate the most efficient sales route based on various factors like distance, traffic, and road conditions. The software also factors other elements such as weather, traffic conditions, and any customer’s visiting preferences. You can easily find the fastest route between 2 points using an app like the Google Maps route planner, but if you work in an industry that requires you to visit multiple customer locations in a single day, you will need a route mapping tool that’s a bit more complex.

Check out our guide with the best sales route mapping tools here!

Did you know that 91% of businesses with 10 or more employees use customer relationship management (CRM) software? 

Sales CRM software helps store and update all of your customer information. The only problem is that many CRMs hold this information in static form, and one problem sales teams often have when planning routes is visualizing this information on their map.

Mapping software like Badger Maps enhances your sales CRM with the ability to visualize customer data on an interactive map. 

With a quick look at the map, you can visualize your top accounts, mass update information, see who’s generating revenue, and much more. Plus, filters are fully customizable, letting you visualize accounts based on priority, type, next step, or any other field you find useful.

Why is this important? 

Visualizing potential customer locations on a map helps identify relevant clusters to focus on. 

For example, you can identify clusters based on zip code or business type and assign each cluster to sales reps based on their location. As a result, the system optimizes the sales process by logically assigning territories to reps, ensuring they’re not overloaded while ensuring every area is adequately covered.

Route mapping tools allow you to assign each customer a lead priority level based on previous interactions.

If the first conversation with a customer goes well, a sales team member might assign a higher priority to them instead of a customer who has a few sales objections that need handling.

Similarly, a customer may be highly interested in the company’s product or service, but the time may not be right. So, the lead is a priority, but it isn’t necessarily a priority today.

Other customers are not interested in doing business at all — it happens!

Based on these and many other pre-defined factors (set by the company), you can color-code high-priority and low-priority customers on your map with route mapping tools.

With Badger Maps, you can circle these customers with the Lasso tool and create an optimized route entirely based on high-priority leads, setting your team up for sales success.

Badger Maps is the best route mapping tool as it allows sales teams to save 8 hours a week, drive 20% less, and sell 22% more.

Discover the value of Badger Maps by trying it out yourself. Start a free trial or schedule a demo now!

If you are looking after a zip code with 30 customer locations, remembering the nuances of each customer is challenging.

You can add personal notes to each customer using your route mapping software. 

For example:

• Personal and professional milestones like birthdays and achievements at work
• The customer’s communication style
• Family details like children and pets
• Specific needs and pain points
• Personal interests like hobbies

You can use information such as this to formulate nuanced and personalized communication that builds trust because they don’t feel like sales conversations. They ease the customer into the conversation and make them feel they’re receiving your personal and undivided attention, which helps push sales through. 

As the famous idiom goes - people do business with people.

Check out this Outside Sales Talk podcast episode with Jon Levy who teaches you the art of connection and trust!

Any sales rep’s worst nightmare is being late for a sales meeting. Although the prevailing traffic conditions might not be your fault, they still leave a bad impression on prospective customers.

Mapping tools can minimize the risk by displaying live traffic data. As a result, you can:

• Visit the maximum number of customers in a given period
• Skirt around road closures and accidents in advance
• Avoid congested areas

Additionally, being stuck in traffic unnecessarily wastes fuel, so there’s a cost saving to consider.

You’ll receive a warning if you are due to be late for a visit based on current conditions, giving you advanced notice to toggle the order of visits to fit them all in on time. For example, you can prioritize scheduled visits ahead of cold visits on this basis.

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Imagine you have a list of customers who have requested contact within the next week.

You can input the respective follow-up dates and prioritize your daily route to ensure you remember to visit each customer on their preferred date. 

People, in general, are emotional buyers. If they’ve asked to speak to you at a particular time, it usually means that’s when they’re in the mindset to consider your offering - you can’t miss that meeting and walk away from dollars on a table!

Like lead priority, you can visualize customers based on follow-ups with route planning software. You can create numerous route plans depending on the follow-up. For example, you can create follow-ups based on days of the week or weeks of the month to ensure you never miss a meeting.

Finding new leads can be tiresome, but with mapping software that has built-in lead generation capabilities, unearthing quality leads becomes a lot easier.

For example, a sales rep specializing in selling medical equipment can use the software to search for keywords like “doctor” or “pediatrician” within their territory. This capability allows you to uncover new prospects that fit your target market, expanding your customer base without additional research time.

This capability is particularly beneficial when planning daily and weekly routes.

Knowing where to locate potential customers can help you seamlessly integrate new leads into your existing schedules.

For instance, if you have a free slot between two appointments, you can fill this gap by visiting a new lead nearby. This maximizes your time and travel resources, ensuring every moment spent on the road contributes to potential sales opportunities.

This strategic planning can increase new customer engagements over the course of a week, helping you build a robust pipeline and achieve your targets more efficiently. 

Leveraging NPS software can also provide valuable insights into customer satisfaction and loyalty, further optimizing sales efforts and enhancing overall customer experience.

Want to know how sales leaders such as John Barrows, Samantha Mckenna, and Steve Benson are so successful? Check out their top sales growth strategies here!

Route mapping tools can allow sales managers to see team member activities, the status of current accounts, team members’ territories, access activity reports, and check-ins. This visibility helps managers make informed and effective business decisions.

For example, if a manager notices that a particular territory is underperforming, they can investigate the activity reports and check-ins to understand why. They might find that the rep assigned to that area is struggling with their particular customer segment.

With this information, the manager can provide targeted sales approach coaching through mock call exercises or reassign the sales territory to another rep better suited to handle the challenges and maximize sales efforts in that region.

Wrapping Up

In this blog, I have covered how route mapping software offers multiple benefits to boost a sales team's performance.

Through customer location visualization and toggling various route optimization options (like lead priority,) you ensure your team is only making visits designed to help them hit their sales target in the most optimized order.

Author bio: Catalina Grigoriev is an incurable optimist with a bubbly personality. Currently delving into the depths of SEO and content marketing at Planable.

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