It is critical to discard the age-old methods of van sales management that were dependent on paper and could raise a concern only after it was too late to fix. Build a connected workforce for your van sales business, bringing down the limitations that separated your admin workforce from the field representatives, and customers.
Connect your field representatives with admin staff and customers with an integrated distribution management software, which reflects all the delivery activities, enabling a fail proof management of deliveries.
This will allow your admin to gain real-time insights into every delivery operation related activity happening at the field, establishing better forecasting and greater efficiency. Your admin is better situated to collaborate with van field reps and better positioned to take quick action in case of a road emergency or van breakdown to keep the business going uninterrupted.
Mobile Office Sync is a fundamental feature of mobile van sales software where data is shared between mobile and back office teams eliminating the need for rekeying transactions; but this is only the tip of the iceberg. Avoiding the need to rekey, mobile-office sync ensures that both back office and mobile staff see and use the same information; examples include customer details, credit rules, products and pricing. Sales invoices will always be priced correctly and costly arithmetic and rounding up (or down) avoided ensuring every customer is correctly invoiced and time and cost saved by auto-emailing these to customers where needed - all helping to speed up the order to cash cycle.
RouteMagic provides an end-to-end solution for Van Sales and Direct-to-Store (DSD) operators that has been built to meet real-life issues faced by businesses today. No longer will you need to rekey every sale into your office systems; sales and payments processed by your reps will update the office systems instantly, saving hours of admin resources, and giving you real-time information on how today’s sales are progressing.
Managing customer payments places heavy burdens on many businesses - it needs accurate invoicing and strong credit control processes to make sure each Rep knows which customers need to pay and how much. RouteMagic manages the payment and credit control process seamlessly for both Office and Mobile staff. Reps will be prompted when payments are needed and allows the rep to process a number of payment types from cash to credit card. Cash security is fully controlled with all payments accurately recorded in both mobile and office applications and a full cash ledger ensures no monies are lost.
Van sales operations succeed by the level of service they offer their customers, it starts with regular customer visits. RouteMagic holds schedules for each customer and generates the daily call plans and complete calls of each rep, meaning you don’t need to micro-manage. At the customers premises the rep will have the full sales history and any personalised promotions linked to that customer. This knowledge helps the rep maximise every sales call. With better knowledge and automated invoicing the Reps are able to spend their time selling to each and every customer, introducing new ranges, prompting the customer with products and closing distribution gaps.
Your office staff can easily see and manage your field team in real-time. With RouteMagic’s field staff mobile app you’ll have a live view of their progress and performance with instantaneous updates of every sale, payment and delivery. Live-tracking and geo-fencing ensures your team is within the assigned territory when they should be and allows you to monitor and notify any delay or changes to plan.
Knowing the status of the field van sales teams adds real value to your customer services team who can respond to customers queries without needing access to reps or drivers. The result is the team is more productive and customers impressed with the level of service and responsiveness you offer.
This is the first in the series of articles on optimising van sales performance, that aims to show you how you can improve van sales management with RouteMagic’s technical prowess, for you van sales and distribution business growth.
Once your mobile and back office workforce is synchronised, you need to focus on recommendations that the van sales drivers will make to your customers. Several businesses are associated with RouteMagic, taking steps towards improving their operations with van sales latest trends for efficiency and impact. They have achieved growth and higher ROI, leaving their peers behind who are still using traditional methods of doing business. Speak to us to explore how you can impact your business.
