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The Complete Guide to Sales Route Planning

Everything you need to know to make the most of every day in the field.

Time to read: 8 minutes

Sales route planning is critical to a sound sales strategy. If you do it right, you’ll reap the rewards of connecting your sales reps to high-value opportunities at the right time.

This can be a complex process. But with planning and the right technology, sales teams can get the most out of every day in the field. Here’s everything you need to know to get started.

What is sales route planning?

At its simplest, sales route planning is the process of finding the most efficient way to get from Point A to Point B, The most efficient routes also help sales reps in the field identify, understand, and navigate their most impactful opportunities. These routes consider multiple factors. including market dynamics, competitor actions, and customer status and engagement.

Why should I plan my routes?

Across industries, sales reps face many of the same challenges. Common challenges include:

Data lag, which leads to limited field insights and hinders timely, data-driven decision-making

Disconnected tools and changing market dynamics, which result in poor territory understanding and overlooked opportunities

Schedule gaps, unplanned downtime, large geographies, unpredictable driving conditions, and outdated tools, which make it challenging to plan routes that maximize territories

Planning sales routes helps address these challenges. Flexible schedules help reps take advantage of unplanned downtime and deal with unexpected changes, such as last-minute appointment requests, inclement weather, or traffic delays. For companies that rely on a boots-on-the-ground workforce, agile, efficient, and productive route planning is especially critical during times of change and uncertainty.

66% of a sales team member's time is spent on non-sales activities 45% or nearly half of mobile workers have wasted significant time because of inaccurate or outdated job information

State of Sales, Third Edition, Salesforce

Disconnected tools and data mean reps have to manually comb through sales data and spreadsheets to map their own routes. This can lead to lost time and missed opportunities. Sales route planning that brings together sales and customer data to automatically plan the most efficient routes addresses these challenges. This way, reps spend less time on low value, repetitive tasks and more time with customers — ultimately increasing revenue and improving productivity.

Spotlight on: Michelin

As an organization, tire manufacturer Michelin operates in a saturated market with ever-increasing competition. For sales reps in the field, this often meant canceled meetings, unplanned downtime, and lots of frustration. It didn’t help that they had to rely on back-office support for route planning and adjustments. As a result, Michelin was seeing double-digit turnover in its sales staff and new reps who were unfamiliar with their territories.

With intelligent sales route planning from Salesforce Maps, Michelin streamlined route planning and empowered reps to update and optimize their own routes from the field. With mapping technology integrated with business insights, they could visualize competitor and marketing opportunity data to understand and maximize their territories, leading to a 20% reduction in unplanned downtime, additional customer visits every day, and an increase in new pipeline growth.

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How do I create and optimize my route?

It starts with technology. Whether you’re using maps and spreadsheets to plan routes manually or optimizing schedules with connected customer data, the right planning tools can help your sales team become more productive.

One approach relies on mapping software to chart the most efficient route from one location to the next. These tools are a fast and easy way to estimate travel times and adjust routes based on traffic or construction delays. They’re also more manual and limited to readily available data points. Sales reps must manually look at sales data and spreadsheets before using the software to chart a course.

Intelligent route planning software goes a step further. It integrates sales data dynamically and automatically plans routes. Then it uses these insights to create a route that considers sales goals and customer data, along with complex schedules, multiple stops, and strict timeframes. The software also helps reps spot new opportunities and avoid problems before they happen by ensuring they always have ready access to relevant customer, market, and territory data.

For example, say a rep is out in the field meeting with a customer. The rep’s team uses intelligent routing software that integrates with the rep’s CRM, so the rep can see that even though this customer is interested in a certain product, they are also due for an upgrade on another product they already use. This data helps the rep decide how to pursue the additional opportunity.

No matter what tools you’re using, every sales team should keep three things in mind when mapping routes.

#1: Business priorities.

Even the most efficient routes won’t improve your bottom line if they aren’t aligned with your business goals. Look at your best opportunities and design your routes around them first.

#2: Flexibility.

It’s important to be nimble in your routes. This helps you adapt to changes in the landscape such as traffic or schedule changes, as well as market changes such as new customer expectations or opportunities.

#3: Access to sales data.

Having immediate access to customer data helps sales reps make informed decisions out in the field. Integrate your route planning with CRM and business data to help reps act on the fly.

How does intelligent route planning software work?

Traditional route planning software calculates the distance between two fixed points and estimates a driving time. Intelligent route planning software takes many more variables into account. These include multiple destination points, weather and traffic data, appointment windows, rep downtime, sales goals, and customer data from your CRM.

Here are three key ways intelligent sales routing software optimizes your schedules.

#1: Connects your data to increase productivity and lower costs.

Commercial route planning software automatically manages complex route planning to find the most efficient routes between multiple locations, immediately making your mobile workforce more productive and efficient. The software can route and schedule multiple vehicles and client visits, accommodating variables like rush hour traffic or unexpected delays. This makes it ideal for sales teams that want to improve their time management and fuel consumption.

Intelligent routing software also provides a holistic view of field sales performance to drive decision-making and keep reps accountable. Managers can track how visits are contributing to the pipeline and overall business goals, automate mileage logging, and gain visibility over field rep activities, all while spending less time generating reports.

#2: Designs routes from the ground up based on capacity, priority, and/or geography.

Mapping software that integrates with your CRM is a powerful tool for making important business decisions. It allows you to visualize your customers on a map and understand where you need to allocate resources, so you can ensure the right reps are in the right place at the right time. For example, say two reps are assigned to similar routes based on capacity and driving time. However, each of these reps specializes in a different type of client industry. Intelligent sales routing software can help you create optimized routes that put the reps with the right knowledge in meetings with the right clients — leading to better client service and increased revenue.

#3: Helps reps make agile decisions on the go.

Cloud-based routing software gives your teams access to essential information on the go. Based on customer data, weather patterns, or traffic updates, reps can make decisions in the moment to help them get more out of a day’s work. It’s a convenient way to calculate (or recalculate) routes while you’re in the field, at the office, or on the road. This gives you the flexibility to fill schedule gaps or cancellations with nearby prospects at the touch of a button on any mobile device or tablet.

For example, if a customer scheduled for a morning appointment needs to reschedule, intelligent routing software can adjust to accommodate last-minute changes in the moment. Similarly, if a rep realizes spending a little more time with a particular customer is likely to result in a big opportunity, the rep can quickly adjust the rest of the day’s schedule to accommodate the extra time.

What are the benefits of route planning software?

Intelligent route planning software makes it easy to address these field teams’ challenges by enabling them to identify, understand, and navigate their most impactful opportunities.

Intelligent route planning software helps reps and managers build smart visit plans to manage complex route planning. It accounts for multiple stops, fixed windows of time for meetings and appointments, heavy traffic times, and even weather delays. At the same time, it plans optimal routes to omit schedule gaps, reduce unplanned downtime, and guide reps in quickly adapting to unpredictable driving conditions, so they can maximize territories.

Agile route planning software visualizes data efficiently and provides essential information on-the-go, so sales reps can make informed, data-driven decisions in the moment. Auto logging and route optimization make data lag a moot issue and can improve driver accountability and boost morale.

Efficient route planning software unlocks territory potential to increase productivity and sales revenue, while helping to reduce transportation costs. With a full understanding of territories and market dynamics, reps can focus on uncovering opportunities in high-value areas and aligning their activities with ongoing marketing campaigns — at scale.

Data shows where the best opportunities are. Instead of guessing which sales visits to prioritize and when to recruit new sales people, sales leaders can use this data to help teams operate more strategically.

Route planning software helps reps optimize their time so they can visit more customers. When multiplied over the course of a month or year, this can lead to a significant increase in visits, improved customer experiences, and subsequent sales conversions. It allows reps to spend less time planning, entering data, and dealing with downtime so they spend more time selling — which directly benefits your bottom line.

Combined with territory mapping, this software also helps balance rep schedules for equitable workloads and opportunity. This helps you retain top talent, serve customers effectively, and make the most of your team’s time in the field.

How do I decide on the best route planning software or app for me?

The best route planning software for any organization should be based on your business needs and objectives. Start by listing the primary challenges your team faces on a regular basis. Does your team struggle with long delays and lots of unplanned downtime? Do you miss out on opportunities because the right reps weren’t meeting with the right customers? Are you missing sales goals because you don’t have full insight into your territories, market dynamics, or customer data?

Based on your team’s specific priorities, consider the key functions you need in a routing software. All businesses will need basic functions — mapping and routing — but how will the solution capture sales data? Will it help reps in the field make data-driven decisions on the go? Can it help you plan optimal routes based on business priorities or customer data?

Determining your criteria will help you decide if you’re making the right purchase. Capture your current benchmarks, set goals for what you would like to accomplish over the next six months to a year, and choose the metrics you will track to gauge your progress. Does the solution have the capabilities you need to achieve your goals?

Get started with route planning.

The right sales route planning software ensures sales teams in the field are operating at maximum efficiency doing what they do best — engaging with customers.

Interested in what Salesforce Maps can bring to your route planning?

Watch the demo