

Retail Managers Creating Routes for Sales Representatives

A retail sales manager for a large beverage manufacturer manages 12 retail sales representatives working in the Baltimore-Washington area of the eastern United States. One of his representatives, a new employee, is not familiar with her territory, which includes several grocery stores and drugstores in the District of Columbia. The retail sales manager is familiar with this area, so he takes on the task of organizing the new representative's accounts into a series of routes. Each route covers one section of the District. The accounts in each route needs to be visited every two weeks. Therefore, he decides to create 10 routes—one for each workday in a two-week period. Each route includes six or seven stores in one neighborhood, such as Georgetown, and can be completed in one day.

When he finishes creating the routes, he uses them to schedule a month's worth of store visits for the new sales representative. The retail manager schedules the first route to begin on the first and third Mondays of the month, the second route to begin on the first and third Tuesdays of the month, and so forth, so that each route is scheduled to be completed twice during the month. The starting time and duration of each store visit are determined by information he entered when he set up the routes.

When the retail sales representative becomes familiar with the area, the retail manager gives the representative the task of maintaining her own routes. The retail sales representative can now add new accounts to a route, change the order in which routes are visited, or adjust the starting times and durations of the visits.

Siebel Consumer Goods Guide