Key takeaways
- Start with insights, then efficiency: reps need to know where to go and what to say before they can use their time well.
- Keep reps in one geographic area at a time instead of crisscrossing the territory, which also creates room for cold calls.
- Give new reps a starting point, such as the accounts with the oldest installed equipment, so they are productive sooner.
- Make third-party data easy for reps to act on. Most reps will not work it out of a spreadsheet.
- Field activity is a leading indicator. It shows where coaching is needed before results come in.
Two very different field teams
Akumin is a radiology services company with fixed imaging sites in 22 states, mobile MRI and CT units serving more than 900 hospitals, and an oncology division. Greg says the company has about 150 outside sellers across six sales divisions: a referral sales team calling on physician groups, and a team selling capital to health systems. For the referral team, about 10 account visits a day, five days a week, is the baseline.
Brent led the EMS division at Philips Emergency Care, selling cardiac monitors, ultrasound, and AEDs to hospitals and EMS agencies. The team started with about eight reps and roughly tripled. His expectation was that reps were in front of customers at least four days a week, seeing two to three customers a day.
Efficiency starts with insight
JT notes that outside reps often spend less than 20% of their week face to face with customers. Greg frames his role this way: a rep can get to about 80% of plan alone, and the manager's job is the next 20%. That starts with insight into each account and the territory, then productivity, such as staying in one area instead of driving back and forth.
Brent focused on new reps. With turnover and a growing team, new hires did not know where to start, so his team used account and installed-base data to point them to the right accounts first. When he flew into a territory, he looked for nearby customers that had not been seen in a while.
Data, admin, and coaching
Both leaders stress that the tool has to be valuable to the rep. Brent found that asking reps to enter field data in Salesforce meant going back to a computer, while a mobile tool with a few dropdowns took minutes. Greg had been running programs out of spreadsheets with poor compliance before moving them into Map My Customers.
Greg buys third-party market data to see practice volumes and share, and uses it to tell reps where to go and what to talk about. Both describe using field activity in one-on-ones: if a rep is seeing the right customers and still not closing, the coaching focus shifts to the closing process.
Hiring and onboarding
One of Greg's managers shows candidates the Map My Customers app during interviews to set expectations, and some candidates decide the role is not for them. JT shares that Jasper Engines takes a similar approach with a ride-along during its hiring process.
Their closing advice: make it easy for reps to see which accounts matter, build a data foundation now as more of the job becomes automated, and measure the leading indicators upstream of results, such as field activity.
FAQs
How many accounts should a field sales rep visit per day?
It depends on the sale. In this webinar, Akumin's referral sales team uses about 10 account visits a day as a baseline, while Philips Emergency Care aimed for two to three customer meetings a day at least four days a week.
How do sales leaders help new field reps ramp faster?
Give them a clear starting point. Brent Madigan used account and installed-base data so new reps knew which accounts to visit first instead of starting from scratch.
Why is field activity a leading indicator?
Results arrive late, especially in referral sales. Field activity shows whether reps are seeing the right accounts at the right frequency, so managers can coach before the quarter ends.
