What is Routing?

For salespeople who work on commission, sales route planning is a cost of doing
business. Every minute you spend thinking about your route or driving it is a minute
you're not engaged in an income-generating activity. Save time and money by
systematizing your planning process to make your route more efficient and more
productive.
Routing is a travel plan used by a salesperson for making Customers call in a
territory, it is managerial activity.
A properly destined routing system has three primary advantage:
1. Reduce travel time and cost
2. Improve territory coverage
3. Improved communication (since managers know where salespeople are)

How to Plan a Sales Route?

1. Employ a contact management system to serve as the foundation of your sales
route planning. Use a spreadsheet to list your contacts, their addresses and contact
information. Include a column to categorize the contacts according to where they are
in your sales cycle. Add additional columns to list the frequency with which you
need to call on each contact, the date of the last call and to jot down notes about the
outcome of that call and your goals for the next one.

2. Map your customers' locations. Choose an appropriate mapping and routing tool
for the number of accounts you service. Google Maps or an inexpensive commercial
tool such as Dash fly might be adequate for 25 accounts or fewer. More advanced
software can map and route unlimited contacts.

3. Refer to your spreadsheet to determine which accounts have the highest priority.
Plan your days around these high-priority accounts. Consult your map to identify
which you can visit on the same day. Fill in extra time with lower priority calls in
the same geographic area. Maintain a logical mix where your sales cycle is
concerned -- keep the new business in the pipeline while providing consistently
attentive service to current clients.

4. Create a file folder for each contact to hold notes, sales literature and other
materials.
5. Enter the addresses of each account you're going to visit on a particular day in
your route mapping software or the driving directions section of Google Maps or
your GPS device. Mapping software plans the most logical route automatically. Free
services such as Google Maps require that you swap the positions of your
destinations until the map shows a route with a logical order. Positions are
determined by the order in which you enter the destination addresses. The step-by-
step driving directions change each time you change destination positions.

6. Update your spreadsheet and add notes at the end of each day. Organize the
material in each folder, if necessary, so it's ready for the next time you visit that
account.