VisitsTracker

VisitsTracker › Sales visits

Call reports nobody has to write

A rep who has to log every call will log them all at six o'clock from memory, and the number in the CRM stops meaning anything. Time inside the customer's boundary becomes the visit on its own, so the coverage report is a record of the day rather than a record of the typing.

No card needed. Set up in an afternoon.

Tuesday 11 AugustR. Menon
Kirby & Sons09:12 - 09:5846 m
Northgate Wholesale10:40 - 10:5212 m
Abbey Retail Park11:35 - 12:401 h 05 m
Not on the planunlisted account1 stop
Logged by the repnothing

Five lines the rep did not type. The twelve-minute call is flagged because it is short, not because anybody decided it was a bad one.

The call log

The report writes itself, so it stays true

Every field sales team eventually discovers the same thing: the call log is filled in at the end of the week, from memory, by somebody who would rather be selling. What comes out is roughly right and completely unusable.

  • A stop inside the customer's boundary is the call, with the time in and the time out.
  • A rep who never opens the app all day still has a complete, accurate day on the record.
  • Stops at accounts that are not on the list are kept as unlisted rather than discarded.
This week · R. Menon18 calls
Monday5 calls · 6 h 20 m on customer sitescomplete
Tuesday4 calls · 1 unlisted stopcomplete
Wednesday5 calls · 2 short2 flagged
Thursday4 callscomplete
Typed by the repnothing

Nobody wrote any of this down. That is what makes it worth reading in a review.

Coverage

Who was seen, and who has not been seen at all

The interesting half of a coverage report is never the calls that happened. It is the accounts with nothing against them, which is the list almost nobody runs because it has to be assembled by hand.

  • Load the account list or beat plan once; coverage is measured against it from then on.
  • Accounts with no call in the period you set are the top of the page, not a filter you have to find.
  • Territory splits by rep, so an unworked patch is visible before the quarter ends.
Coverage · August146 accounts
Visited this month108
Visited, under 15 minutes17
Not visited in 60 days21
Not on any rep's listnobody owns them7

The last two rows are the report. The first one is the part that gets presented, and the part nobody learns anything from.

What it is worth

A twelve-minute stop is not a meeting, and the record says so

Counting calls rewards the rep who makes the most stops. Counting time on the customer's site rewards the one who actually had the conversation, and it costs nobody an extra form to collect.

  • Duration on every call, so a drive-by and an hour-long review are not the same line.
  • Short calls are flagged, not judged: sometimes twelve minutes is the whole job.
  • Distance between calls is measured from the same readings, so mileage and the call log agree.
18calls this week
46 mmedian on site
2under 15 min
214km, measured

Also in the box

Coverage measured from the day, not from the CRM

A short stop is shown as a short stop

Twelve minutes at a wholesaler is on the record as twelve minutes. It is flagged as short rather than judged, because sometimes twelve minutes is the whole job and sometimes it is a signature in a car park.

Notes and photos on the call, not in a chat

A price list photographed on a shelf, an order written down, a competitor's display: attached to that visit, findable a year later by the account rather than by scrolling.

It works with no signal

Trading estates, basements and rural routes are where signal dies and where the calls happen. Everything queues on the phone and syncs when there is a bar again, keeping the time it actually happened.

Reps see their own record

The same day, in their app, in their own words. If a coverage number is going to be used in a review, the person it describes should be able to read it first.

Where a CRM still wins

This is not a CRM and does not try to be. It does not hold your pipeline, your deal stages, your quotes or your email history, and if what you need is forecasting then a CRM is the thing to buy. What it does is answer the question a CRM cannot: not what the rep says happened, but where the day actually went. Most teams run it alongside whatever they already use, and export the visits into it.

Straight answers

Questions people ask

Do reps have to check in at each customer?

No. That is the point of it. A stop inside the customer's boundary becomes a call by itself, with the time in and the time out. If a rep never opens the app all day, the coverage report is still right.

Will my reps accept being tracked?

More often than you would expect, on two conditions: collection runs only inside the working hours you set, and reps can see their own record. Both are settings rather than promises. Tracking somebody's evening is how a field team turns on a system, and it is off by default.

What stops somebody faking a location?

Mock location apps are detected at the point of capture, on the handset. The reading is kept and shown, flagged, and never counted toward a visit or a distance. Deleting it would hide the problem; marking it is what makes the rest of the record worth reading.

Can I load our beat plan or account list?

Yes. Import accounts from CSV or KML with their addresses, and the boundaries are drawn for you. Coverage is then measured against that list rather than against a route somebody remembers.

Does this replace our CRM?

No. It records where the day went and hands that to whatever you already run. Most teams keep the CRM for the pipeline and use this for the part the CRM has always taken on trust.

Try it on one rep for a week.

Put it on one phone, run a normal week, and see what comes out the other end.