Good planning can be the difference maker between a successful sales trip and one that feels like it was a waste of time. You want to experience a trip that leaves you motivated and energized versus one that leaves you frustrated and still searching for more new leads.
Let’s say, for example, that a medical device sales rep is planning a trip outside of their “home-base” city of LA. They will be driving to San Francisco for a sales appointment with a big potential new customer at a hospital in the city and then a medical device sales conference the next day. Of course, a lot of the trip planning is going to revolve around ensuring that they are ready for the appointment itself, armed with everything that they need to ace the meeting.
But, spending a little time properly planning for the trip itself is just as important as it is to spend time ensuring that they have the customer data and customized sales content that they need. The good thing is, there are a variety of handy tools available to help plan a successful sales trip quickly and easily.
Here are 5 tools that this medical device rep (and you!) could be using to help ensure that the trip is easy to plan, successful, and maximizes their time:
When it comes to business trips, expense tracking is a necessary task but it can quickly eat up a lot of valuable time. Expensify can streamline this process and make tracking work-related expenses much more efficient.
With this tool, whether it’s gas, the hotel they’ll be staying at, meals, etc., our San Francisco-bound sales rep can easily fully automate the expense tracking and reporting process, even while they’re on the road. In Expensify, users can quickly take pictures of receipts that are then added as a new expense, track and manage expense information, track mileage, easily generate an expense form or invoice for email, and more! A credit or debit card can also be linked to the Expensify app and specified charges will be automatically included in the expense report.
Of course, one of the things that makes a sales trip successful is generating new business. But, in the case of our medical device rep, this means more than just closing the deal with the prospect at the San Francisco hospital. Truly maximizing the value of this trip means making the most of the time spent in the area. This is done by securing additional prospects/appointments through efficient lead generation.
The Lead Finder feature in Map My Customers makes it easy to prospect on the go. Users can quickly see other potential prospects on a map that are located near a particular location. By tapping on the lead pin on the map, business details can be viewed and then the desired leads can be imported in just a click. Those leads can then be easily turned into an optimized sales route (see more on this below).
So, for our medical rep visiting San Francisco, they can use Map My Customers’ Lead Finder to generate new leads not only around the hospital they’ll be visiting but even near their hotel or the conference location. Thus, maximizing the possible opportunities for new revenue while they are in town.
When preparing for an important sales appointment, the last thing that needs to be a big stressor is trying to find parking. This is where SpotHero comes in. Not only can our medical device sales rep reserve a parking spot at or near the hospital and conference center ahead of time, but the parking can be totally managed within the app.
Within the SpotHero app, users can search for spaces using a variety of search terms, book a spot, securely pay for parking, and show the attendant the parking pass in the app or email. No more physical parking tickets to keep track of or worrying about having cash on hand to pay when leaving. This tool helps take the hassle out of dealing with parking, so the main focus can be on closing deals.
*It is free to use SpotHero but a small service fee is added to each transaction on a per-reservation basis.
Especially when on a sales trip, you don’t have a lot of time to waste. With our medical device rep, they’ve used the Lead Finder feature in Map My Customers to find a couple of new prospects that are located in and around downtown San Francisco. To make the best use of time after they get out of their appointment at the hospital, they need to figure out the most efficient route to visit these places before they get back to their hotel for the day.
The good thing is, Map My Customers can take care of this also. With the sales route optimization capability, users can automatically create optimized sales routes to include the specific leads/customers they want/need to hit. Not only does this save time by reducing windshield time but also saves money–saving 30% on fuel expenses, on average.
But, Map My Customers offers much more than just lead generation and route planning. Purpose-built for B2B outside sales teams, this mobile-first platform provides an all-in-one field sales solution. The variety of features built into Map My Customers helps supercharge sales productivity and effectiveness. These features include easy-to-use sales data/territory mapping, as well as powerful workflow tools (like the Smart Planner feature), robust reporting, and extensive sales team management capabilities.
Figuring out what clothing, etc to pack for a trip can be a challenge, especially when it’s a different climate than you are used to. But, the last thing our medical device sales rep needs to be doing before they head to San Francisco is spending a ton of time trying to pack and dreading that they’ll forget something. The free travel packing list app from PackPoint makes this task much easier and less time-consuming.
The simple, user-friendly mobile interface makes it easy to create a custom packing list. The list can be automatically organized based on a variety of factors, including the length of the trip, the weather forecast for the destination, the type of events you’ll be attending/activities you’ll be doing, and more! The list can be easily customized further by deleting provided suggestions that you won’t need or adding your own items. Once the list is created, users can get packing quickly and stay organized by checking items off as they go.
You Can Make Sales Trip Planning Easy with Powerful Tools
Whether you are a medical device outside sales rep like our example above, a wholesale field sales rep, or anything in between, the tools we’ve covered above will help make your sales trip a smooth and successful one.
As you can see, utilizing the powerful tools available will help streamline trip planning and ensure that you or your reps are prepared and able to optimize your time.
Try out a couple of the tools today so that you’ve got them in the “toolbox” for the next trip!
