Ensuring that a team of sales representatives are able to service a company’s client base effectively is no easy matter. Knowing how many sales representatives are required to service the market can be difficult to determine without very careful planning.
There are a host of considerations that will impact on how and where a sales representative will operate.
There are many factors that need to be considered when planning sales call cycles. These include the location of customers, trade channel in which the customers operate and the levels of importance of the various customers. Opportunities also need to exist for sales representatives to acquire new customers.
VSC Smart Supply Chains have offer an App for Sales Call Cycle optimization.
Andreas Maritz, Strategic Growth Executive at VSC says, “The Sales Call Cycle Optimization’s objective is to determine the resources required to adequately service a company’s customer base. This involves determining the number of sales representatives as well as the frequency of visits to each customer.”
The App can schedule call cycles from daily to up to once every 24 weeks and is designed to be as flexible as possible.
“When developing the sales call strategy we can either create a cost saving/optimization strategy or assist our customer with developing a market penetration strategy,” adds Andreas.
The cost saving strategy focuses on getting reps to the customer in the most optimal manner. VCS look at the geographic location of the customers and then determine the day of the week and week of the cycle for the calls as well as the sequence in which each customer must be visited on a given day and the best way to travel from call to call.
The market penetration strategy can be incorporated into the cost saving strategy where the cost saving strategy allows a certain percentage of time to be allocated to finding new customers or increasing orders from existing customers who have the potential to place bigger orders.
Not only do VSC provide the optimum call cycle but they are also able to provide the sales representatives with the best tools to execute their task and they can, in partnership with Frontline Research Group, identify potential new customers in a geographic area and include them in the sales call cycle.
Andreas says, “We also align the sales call cycle to the distribution strategy. We analyze the lead time to service and look at the importance of specific call days and the impact of calling on customers on a specific day. We then align the distribution cycle to sales cycle or vice or we create a hybrid solution.”
Sales Call Cycle Optimization has the ability to factor in the different sales channels to ensure that the right rep is used for each call.
Modeling different sales call scenarios
“Ultimately, we can model a bunch of what if situations to see which Sales Call Cycle works best for a company based on their strategy and objectives,” says Andreas.
These model plans can be run locally, regionally or for national operations.
The VSC Sales Call Cycle App may also be integrated into other VSC products as well as third party or in house ERP/MRP systems.
If you would like more information or a demonstration please contact Andreas Maritz, Strategic Growth Executive, on 072 049 5824 or andreas.maritz@vscsolutions.co.za