Using Field Sales Software for Beginners

Field sales is more challenging than many, if not most, sales roles. It requires great organization and time management, two difficult to acquire traits.

Beginning sales reps often struggle with juggling planning routes, managing contacts, taking notes, and scheduling appointments. It’s enough to discourage even the most committed new reps. Fortunately, modern tools have eased managing these tasks via software, apps, and other tools.

If you’re new to field sales, here’s a guide to using apps and software to help you manage your day effectively. From route and notes apps to calendar and contact management apps, we’ll explore the best options for outside sales reps.

Route Apps

Planning ahead is the key to effective time management. Your daily routes enable virtually everything you’ll do. Your goal is to maximize the number of customer visits while minimizing travel time. This is where route apps come into play.

Route apps help you map the fastest routes between the locations of prospects and customers. These apps provide optimized routes that save you time and fuel so that you can pack more visits into your day. Some route apps will adjust your day automatically when real-time traffic patterns update.

Popular Route Apps:

• Google Maps: Probably the most popular route map and one you’re likely very familiar with, Google Maps is a good starting place. While it’s not designed specifically for sales reps, Google Maps is a free and widely used app for navigating between locations. It provides real-time traffic data, estimated travel times, and turn-by-turn directions. It is a beginner option that is better than some other apps, but there are certainly better tools.
• Waze: Another popular navigation app, Waze provides traffic updates and automatically creates alternative routes to avoid congestion when it’s detected by its network. It’s an excellent tool for field sales reps, but it does not easily create multi-stop routes for them, so knowing it’s limitations will help you use it.

Poor time management stems from inefficient routes. Route apps will take the guesswork out of planning, but we’ll get to the better options toward the end of this guide.

Notes Apps

Strong note-taking is a hallmark of great outside sales reps. But even many top performers still use the old fashioned pen and paper method. Notebooks are great for studying, but not so much for the dynamics of a day-to-day life in field sales. Detailed noted keep you organized, but not necessarily efficient if you have to flip through hundreds of pages.

Notes apps allow you to jot down information after each visit quickly. Write down preferences, pain points, follow-up actions, and personal details. Field reps use this information to build better relationships with customers and prospects. These apps can even make it easy to organize notes by customer or territory too.

Popular Notes Apps:

• Evernote: A versatile app, Evernote can create, store, and organize your notes from the field so you can more easily access the information you need to create deals. You can also attach images, audio, and scanned business cards in this app’s notes, giving it a unique ability to help you stay organized.
• OneNote: Microsoft’s OneNote offers a similar note-taking experience. It provides field sales reps with the added benefit of a seamless integration with the Microsoft Office suite. Create better relationships and close more details with the info you’ll have stored in this app.
• Google Keep: Google Keep is a straightforward, free option for quickly capturing notes. It allows easy tagging and searching, helping you keep track of important information.

It’s easy to overlook note-taking, but it’s an important aspect of field sales success. Detailed notes help you maintain strong customer relationships and effective follow-up. These notes apps are a few of the better options that make it easy to document interactions while on the go, but they fall short of the need for time management.

Calendar Apps

Field sales reps have schedules filled by customer meetings, follow-up calls, and travel between visits that take you all over town. These appointments keep you organized and on top of your game. Calendar apps are invaluable for managing this chaos.

Calendar apps will keep you on top of scheduled meetings, set reminders, and plan daily activities around your schedule. They will give you the ability to never miss an appointment, assuming you follow your schedule, and can also provide a visual overview of your week. They make it easier to balance your time between customer visits so you can pack more in.

Popular Calendar Apps:

• Google Calendar: A widely used and versatile calendar app that syncs across devices. Google Calendar is one of the easier tools for scheduling events and setting reminders.
• Outlook Calendar: Another Microsoft Office app, Outlook Calendar is ideal for field sales reps whose companies are already using Microsoft’s suite. It syncs seamlessly with email and contacts, streamlining the scheduling process.
• Fantastical: An intuitive calendar app designed for iOS users, Fantastical offers easy scheduling, natural language input, and integration with other apps like Zoom for scheduling virtual meetings.

As a new field sales rep, managing your time effectively is one of the most essential skills to develop. Calendar apps make sure you don’t create double bookings, give you follow-up reminders, and balance your schedule. Without one, field sales reps will not stay organized or efficient enough to hit their numbers.

Contact Management Apps

Managing customer information makes everything else in field sales work. From tracking field customer interactions to storing account details, contact management apps keep everything you need to be a successful outside sales rep in one place.

Contact management apps store customer information such as names, phone numbers, email addresses, and notes. These apps can track communication history and interactions. You’ll maintain a comprehensive view of each customer relationship in your book that’s always accessible no matter where you are in the field. Advanced contact management apps can also segment contacts based on criteria like location, industry, or sales potential, prior meeting dates, or other factors that help you make deals.

Popular Contact Management Apps:

• HubSpot: A free CRM, at its first tier, HubSpot is a robust contact management tool with a popular mobile app. Field sales reps can log communications, create contacts, and organize their entire book of business with this platform.
• Salesforce: One of the most extensive and widely used CRMs available, Salesforce offers one of the most powerful contact management platforms with many capabilities and deep customization options. It’s an excellent tool for scaling businesses needing a detailed view of customer interactions.
• Zoho CRM: An affordable and feature-rich CRM, Zoho’s contact management, sales tracking, and integrations with third-party tools make it a great platform for field sales reps. It’s an excellent option for beginners looking for an all-in-one solution if they’re willing to invest the time and money into building out the platform for their needs.

As a beginner in field sales, building strong customer relationships is the most vital component of success, bar none. Outside sales reps got by for years without digital tools, but modern apps take efficiency to an entirely new level. Contact management apps help you keep track of every interaction and customer visit. Essential platforms allowing you to better tailor your approach based for each customer, every field sales rep will benefit from using these tools.

How RepMove Combines These Features

Beginners in field sales could use an app for routing, an app for tasks and follow ups, an app for notes, and an app for contact management. But there’s a far better way.

RepMove is purpose-built field sales software, combining all the features reps need into a single platform.

Its advanced routing and map tools provide the most efficient routes between all customer visits. It visualizes their locations on the map so field reps can adjust their routes when things change.

It also integrates all notes and organizes them at the account and customer level so it automatically documents interactions immediately after each visit.

RepMove’s built-in calendar integrates with routes and appointments, helping you visualize your day and stay on schedule. It sends reminders for upcoming meetings and follow-ups, so reps never miss an important task.

RepMove is also a complete contact management system and mobile CRM. It is designed specifically for field sales reps and works perfectly out-of-the-box for their needs. It stores detailed customer information, logs every customer visit in real-time, and even integrates with more than 5,000 other tools.

By combining route optimization, note-taking, calendar management, and contact tracking into one app, RepMove simplifies the daily life for field sales reps. For beginners, it’s a game-changer that streamlines the learning process and helps create focus on what matters: building customer relationships and closing deals.

Conclusion

Navigating field sales can be daunting for beginners, but the right tools make it easier to stay organized, efficient, and successful. While individual apps for routing, note-taking, scheduling, and contact management are helpful, an all-in-one solution like RepMove provides a premade experience that covers all the bases. With RepMove, outside reps can start their journey on the right foot, armed with the tools they need to optimize their workflows and boost performance.