Sales and Distribution Management

Managing Territorial Coverage

Presented by : Girish Harsha

Managing Territorial Coverage

Consists of three activities

Planning of efficient route for salespeople Scheduling the salespeoples time Using time management tools

Routing, Scheduling and Time Management

Routing
Guidelines

Advantages

Tours should be circular

Reduction in travel time and cost

Tours should not cross

The same route should not be used to go to and from a customer Customers in neighboring areas should be visited in sequence

Excluding backtracking Criss-Crossing by salespeople in their territory

Improvement in territory coverage

As salespeople reduce their travel time and increase selling time

ROUTING PATTERNS

More efficient routes will tend to exhibit one of these patterns Hopscotch Cloverleaf
C1

Base

C5
Straight Line

C4

C3

C2

Application and importance of routing

It depends on two factors

Nature of the product The type of the job of salespeople FMCG Frequently required to retailers

Examples

Route plan is necessary

Example

Contd.

= extra large accounts

= small accounts

Scheduling
How Salespeople Spend their Time

Planning

Allocation of time
Number of accounts in the territory Number of sales calls made on customers Time required for each sales call Frequency of customer sales calls Travel time around the territory Non-selling time Return on time invested

Salespeoples tasks Administrative tasks Service calls Face-to-face selling Waiting/traveling Telephone selling

Time spent (in %) 15 13 32 21 19

Customer calls

Total 100

Time Management Tools

High-tech equipment

Inside salespeople

Computers

Sales assistants

PCs and Laptop E-mail

Technical support people

Telemarkets

Video cassette recorders Videodiscs Automatic dialers Fax-machines, Teleconferencing Digital Dairy, Mobiles

Any Questions