Beats and routes

The idea

A beat is a fixed group of shops that a salesman visits on a fixed day of the week. A beat plan puts every shop in the territory on some beat, so every shop is visited on a day it can count on. Coverage is measured by the shops actually visited and the shops that actually ordered — not by how busy the salesman looked.

Words first

• Beat — the list of shops visited on one day. Kumar's Monday beat is Gandhi Road and the market.
• Route — the order in which those shops are walked or driven, so nobody goes back and forth.
• Beat plan (also called the journey plan) — which beat on which day, for every salesman, for the whole month.
• Call — a visit to a shop.
• Productive call — a visit that ends in an order.
• Lines per call — how many different products (SKUs) were ordered in one productive call.

Kumar's beat plan

That is 260 shops, each visited once a week on its own day. The delivery van follows the same beats a day later. If a shop moves from Monday's beat to Thursday's, the delivery plan must change with it.

Reading one day

Monday, Gandhi Road and market:

Each number tells you something different. Four shops were not visited at all — ask why, by name. Eleven shops were visited but did not order — were they full of stock, unhappy about a return, or buying from someone else? A lines-per-call of 4.2 when the range has 30 products means most shops buy only the few fast movers; there is room to sell more in the same visit.

Over a month, the most useful list is shops not billed in the last 30 days. These are shops on the beat plan that you are slowly losing.

Making a beat plan

1. List every shop in the territory with its area and its average order.
2. Group shops that are close together into beats a salesman can finish in a day — in this example about 40 to 45 shops in town, fewer in villages.
3. Keep beats of similar size and value, so no day is too light or too heavy.
4. If the biggest shops need stock twice a week, give them a second visit on another beat day.
5. Fix the walking order, and give each shop its beat day. Tell the shop, so it keeps its order ready.

Common mistake

Replacing visits with phone orders. The big shops phone in their order, the salesman stops walking the beat, and he visits only the shops that call. Small shops stop getting visits, buy from the wholesaler, and drop off the billed list one by one. The order value stays steady for a few months while coverage quietly falls — until a new competitor arrives and takes the shops nobody was visiting.

Where you'll use this

In Part 4, each shop is tagged with its beat in the customer master (chapter 4.3), the salesman's phone shows the day's beat in route order, and the daily report shows shops visited, productive calls and lines per call by beat (chapter 4.8).

Check yourself

1. 40 shops visited, 30 ordered. What is the strike rate?
2. 30 productive calls ordered 96 lines in all. What is lines per call?
3. Why is "shops not billed in 30 days" a useful list?

Answers

1. 30 ÷ 40 = 75%.
2. 96 ÷ 30 = 3.2.
3. It shows shops on your beats that have stopped buying — customers you are losing before the sales figure shows it.