Ever wrap up a busy day in the field and wonder what you actually did throughout the day? That’s where a customer visit report comes in. It provides the structure you need to both track your activities and identify ways to improve. Download a free customer visit report here.
What is a Customer Visit Report?
Also known as a sales field visit report, this template organizes and structures a rep’s activities over a set period of time. It provides an easy way to track customer visits, or sales calls as they’re often referred to. It’s a simple spreadsheet that creates a track record of visits by customer. When used over time, it provides critical datapoints a rep uses to identify opportunities to increase customer visits and close more sales.
Why use a Sales Field Visit Report?
Pen and paper has its place. That place is not in the middle of a sales day in the field. Notes tend to be disorganized and difficult to navigate, let alone virtually impossible to use them to track areas you could improve upon.
Here are the main benefits sales reps see from this report
- Visit tracking: You’ll see how often you visit specific customers, track sales by customer, and quantify the value of each account and how much time you should commit to each one.
- Reporting: Updating the CRM or sending a call or customer visit report at the end of the week is the bane of many a sales rep. Instead of scrambling at the end of the week, you’ll simply send your sales field visit report to leadership (adjusting as necessary) or potentially load it into your CRM if you can match the rows and columns with the appropriate fields in the system.
- Relationship building: Using notes builds rapport with customers and prospects as you can recall specifics of your past visits. If you’re using a notebook, it’s very difficult to be efficient in this process.
- Mileage reimbursement: Input your customer locations, look up the miles between stops in Google Maps, then update the record. You’ll get the total mileage and can easily input it into your expense/reimbursement system.
- Route planning: Using a customer visit report template the night before to plan out your day in the field lets you fill your calendar effectively and create time for more customer stops. You’ll be able to identify stops that might be closer to each other so you can limit your time behind the wheel and add more visits to your days. If you have pre-planned meetings at specific times, use the customer visit report to find gaps in your schedule and fill them with drop in customer visits or prospecting calls so you’re never left without an opportunity to grow sales.
Automate with RepMove
Using a spreadsheet instead of notebooks or your memory represents a major step up. Still, there's a better approach to growing your sales. RepMove can significantly improve your ability to visit more customers and convert prospects into sales. It's a purpose built tool for outside sales. Part field sales app, part CRM, RepMove combines the aspects of these different tools into a single platform that's easy to use and cost effective.
Here's a step-by-step guide to getting started
- Download the iOS or Android app or start a 7-day free trial on the web
- Quickly import your customers
- Create a sales route. Tap optimize and you’ll get the fastest route between each location
- Find gaps in your schedule. Fill it effectively by, for example, using filters to find prospects on the map near your visit locations
- Start your route. At each location, you’ll add notes or follow ups tasks. Notes automatically get added to your customer records so you can easily reference them in the future. Tasks get added to your calendar so you never miss a follow-up
- Scan business cards and create new prospects or contacts almost instantly in your CRM
- Follow up at the end of the day. Send emails from RepMove to keep customer engagement high
- Export a customer visit report. Pick your timeframe and automatically get a spreadsheet with the key details from every visit you made. You can also export your mileage
