What to Look For in a Route Planner for Outside Sales

1) Routing Features

2) Accessible Across Platforms

3) CRM Integration

4) Filters and Categories

5) Lead Generation

6) Optimized Route Based on Current Traffic

7) Great Customer Support

If you’re in outside sales, then you know that success in your job demands both organization and efficiency. Outside salespeople do everything inside salespeople do, but they often lack time in the office, and computer access to accomplish certain tasks efficiently like planning, scheduling and entering data from sales meetings. This presents challenges, and it’s tough to know exactly what you need as a solution. A quality route planner addresses not only these issues but can help your sales numbers in many other ways. Every route planner should make your day easier, but the wrong choice is usually more trouble than it's worth. You need to pick the solution that meets the requirements of your day. If you make the wrong decision, you’ll end up wasting the most valuable resource you have, time!

Field sales across all industries has never been more competitive. Recently, we’ve seen industry leaders deploying all means necessary to give their teams any competitive advantage they can. Empowering individual sales reps with full mobility and autonomy is a trend that’s paying dividends for sales managers in industries such as medical sales, SaaS, and more.  

Routing applications can help your team too! When you integrate all your field sales needs into one app, you can improve your focus on what’s important - selling!

What Makes a Great Route Planner

1) Routing Features:

If you’re only using Google Maps, Waze, or Apple Maps to map your sales routes, then you’re losing money! Basic GPS apps like those are great for getting from point A to B, but what about points C, D, E, and so on? 

If you plan on increasing your sales, you’re going to have a hard time achieving and keeping a competitive advantage with regular GPS apps, especially when your competitors are already using route optimization. 

Time is the most valuable resource for field salespeople, and it’s vital that you use it wisely. With your sales routes optimized, you’ll have more face-to-face time with clients and less windshield time in your car. 

2) Accessible Across Devices

Your route planner must be able available across all your devices with ease. Accessing your route planner across your computer, tablet, and phone allows you to always pick up where you left off, no matter where you are. Planning a route ahead of time on your computer, and then instantly having it on your phone saves you both time and money. 

Mobile route planners also allow you to make any necessary changes on your previously planned routes, in case a prospect cancels. This way you can always add a new meeting to your route on-the-go to avoid wasted down time. 

3) CRM Integration

If you use a CRM at your company, a great route planner can help mobilize your data. Route planners that connect with your CRM remove the stress out of data management, and free up more time for you to sell. 

As a salesperson, you want as many opportunities to pitch your product as possible, and this won’t happen if you’re busy doing data entry. 

4) Filters and Categories:

As you close more deals and increase your client base, prioritization will become increasingly important. Therefore, your route planner must be able to match your increase in customers. 

If you lack proper prioritization, then you will end up losing great clients to good ones, and good clients to worthless leads. 

The solution to this problem is finding a routing app that allows you to prioritize your clients in the best way possible. Being able to visualize your clients in color on the map by important values, like revenue generated and sales stage, gives you greater control over your sales strategy. You’ll be able to easily see which customers are most important and prioritize them quickly and efficiently. 

5) Lead Generation:

In order to grow your business, your sales team must have the ability to effectively generate leads. You might think routing solutions are only useful for salespeople with a lot of existing customers, but this couldn’t be further from the truth. While lead generation features aren’t always included in route planners, it’s definitely a feature worth seeking out. 

Lead generation jump starts your sales funnel and keeps it going by creating a list of potential new customers. It is an essential part of growing your business and increasing sales.

6) Optimized Route Based on Current Traffic:

With all the technology available today, there’s no need to sit in traffic, if there’s a way around it. Chose a route planner that takes into account current traffic so you’re never late to another meeting.

7) Great Customer Support:

Calling customer support shouldn’t be a difficult task. Having to go through a maze of automated messages before reaching an actual human is discouraging and takes up additional time - especially for someone looking for a routing and productivity app. Find a solution that has great support so you get your answers and fixes quickly and easily!

Badger Maps is a route planner that supports all of these features, and more! Many B2B & B2C sales teams and individuals have found success with Badger in a wide variety of industries ranging from dental sales, renewable energy, med device, and many more. Sales teams sell 20-25% more with

Badger Maps.

Check out Badger Maps’ Free Trial here!