In talking to our clients, we often run across where they wish to track sales in a manner that can reward route salespeople for selling more. Yet, this can be a time-consuming task. Further, how does one achieve an accurate report?
Here are the first two of four strategies that will increase your route sales:
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Track Real Commissions
How are you tracking actual route sales? Like most people, route sales reps are interested in meeting their quota and maximizing commissions. Also, route salespeople like to spend less time on the road. To do this, we have seen reps oversell products to inflate sales numbers. Although overselling makes the sales rep look like the MVP of your sales team, you can often follow the paper trail to uncover actual sales in the long run.
When you are tracking commissions for your reps, you must subtract credits/returns from sales. You will often find that sales reps who inflate their sales numbers will have an unusual amount of credits in the long run. To calculate actual sales, commissions must be paid far enough in the future so that you give your reps enough time to revisit each customer at least twice. This approach will enable you to compare invoiced goods against credited/returned goods to develop REAL sales numbers.
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Prevent Route Sales Theft
Do you find shrinkage to be a significant issue? Things to look out for is a consistent amount of inventory that magically goes missing out of the back of the truck. You will notice that this happens to the same sales reps over and over. With Solid Route Accounting™ and your ERP system, you can easily track the truck's incoming and outgoing inventory.