Last week I reminisced about the chat I had recently with “John”, my erudite Head of Sales from ABC Industries selling product through a channel structure into the Agri-sector.  We meandered our way onto the classic sales team productivity topic of visit design.   Against the backdrop of rising costs to mobilise a professional B2B territory based sales team, many organisations have seen the wisdom of investing more on the sales kit, the tools of the trade, to provide the Sales Execs in order to enhance the return on the mobilisation costs.

From technology based tools ….. tablets, smart phones, CRM systems ….. as well as programs, services and other value adds for the Sales Exec to implement with the customer when face to face.  This latter piece is the essence of visit design, as it relates to the B2B sales process.  Visit design is all about specifying visit types for the Sales Exec to execute as the basis of customer visits.

• Visits that form an on-going program.  Not a series of isolated episodes.
• Visits that can be formulated into a calendarised program with the customer to form the basis of a 12 month visitation plan.  As opposed to an ad-hoc arrangement of visits based on perceived need at the time…..often reactionary (fire fighting).
• Visits that add value to the customer above and beyond sales and service of the product/service being sold in.  Rather than the oft witnessed scenario where the Sales Exec runs out of reasons to make a visit to the customer.

So, what are the features of good visit design that enables the formulation of a calendarised visit program that ensures the customer wants the Sales exec to visit at the proposed frequency intervals?  Tune in next week for part 3 of this topic – Visit Design…………. A crucial EFFECTIVENESS input to Sales team optimisation Part 3.