In the era of virtual selling many people assume field or mobile sales can’t deliver high margins. Yet, data clearly shows personal meetings build stronger relationships and customer loyalty compared to completely remote interactions.
Mobile platforms such as Resco give reps instant offline access to CRM data, route optimisation and digital forms so they can make stronger customer connections and close bigger deals faster. This guide explains what field sales really is, why it still outperforms inside sales, and introduces specific strategies and tools to help you boost profits.
What are field or mobile sales?
Field sales, sometimes called outside sales, is the practice of meeting customers face to face at their workplace, job site or industry events instead of selling from behind a desk. Each representative has their own territory and quota and spends most of the day on the road, identifying customer needs, demonstrating solutions and closing deals. This personalized approach allows sales reps to offer highly tailored solutions based on individual needs, resulting in a more consultative sales process. Unlike inside sales which rely mostly on phone and email interactions, field sales creates value through direct personal conversations.
Mobile sales follows the same in-person approach but relies on smartphones and tablets to give reps instant access to CRM records, lead updates, quotes and digital signatures even without an internet connection. It allows them to spend less time on admin tasks and more on customer conversations. In essence, field sales is the broader concept of selling in person, while mobile sales is a subset that utilizes mobile technology to increase efficiency and effectiveness.
Field service complements both roles. Technicians visiting customers to install or maintain products create additional face-to-face interactions, often uncovering valuable upsell opportunities. Companies that integrate data and workflows across field sales, mobile sales, and field service consistently deliver a better experience and outperform those relying only on virtual sales channels.
What is the importance of mobile or field sales?
The importance of mobile or field sales cannot be neglected due to the hybrid and modern marketing sales strategies. Field sales are the most reliable way to connect with people, know them, and get their feedback. Customer feedback always helps companies to recognize their loopholes and improve them for their customers.
Similarly, field sales representative cover vast territories to sell products and provide consultation to the people to establish trust with the company. Field sales strategies and tactics have evolved in the recent decade, enabling customers to send messages directly to the company head to understand society’s needs in a comprehensive way.
Roles and responsibilities of a field sales representative
Finding new consumers is a field sales representative’s fundamental responsibility. They must be familiar with the company’s products, services, and competitors to understand their target market. Once they have identified potential clients, they must learn more about them to customize their sales pitch.
However, field sales representatives have broad roles and responsibilities to enrich the company sales:
- Arranging in-person meetings with new and existing customers in their territories.
- Illustrate the benefits of the company’s products and services to the customers and clients by providing them with products, pamphlets, and free tutorial videos.
- Demonstrate usage of the products to the customers by doing demos in front of them, so they have a better idea of the products.
- Assist the customers in filling the contract or document.
- Give updates to existing customers about the revised contract and new products and services.
- Organize customers’ information and other sales leads data with the help of Customer Relationship Management software (CRM) rather than relying on excel sheets for field sales tasks.
- Attend seminars and trade exhibitions to engage a broad audience, and present your company products there to lure consumers.
- Comprehends customers’ specific requirements and focuses on the company’s competitors, new releases, and market tendencies.
- Have a meeting with the inside sales group and marketing team to understand the volume of previous and current sales strategies.
Field sales vs. inside sales vs. outside sales
Field and outside sales can be used alternately, but sometimes they refer to different meanings. Similarly, inside sales have the same motive but have different functioning criteria. The following definitions will give you a clear idea about each term:
Field sales
A type of sales run by field sales representatives outside the office but report and attend meetings in an office environment with their manager and other members.
Outside sales
A type of sales run by the salesperson from one’s home or virtual home environment, and responsibilities include increasing sales by sending emails, calls, and messages.
Inside sales
A type of sales that the salesperson runs from the office, including boosting sales by cold calls, sending emails and enhancing sales marketing strategies.
All sales representatives have different duties and operating principles; some industries grant other objectives and goals to each type of sales representative.
Strategies
Now, we will explain how you can make more revenue than usual with field sales for your company. Following are the strategies that you can use in your field sales to boost the outcomes.
1. Determine your goals
To achieve field sales for your company, you need to determine your goals, such as selling more products, making more consistent clients, and enhancing monthly sales. After noting your goals, you need to convert your goal into a precise and concise order.
For instance: your goal is to enhance monthly sales. Make it more precise – “enhancing the monthly sale up to 25%” is more explicit. The next step is to provide more information, like “enhancing the monthly sale up to 25% by meeting 50 existing clients and 50 new clients in a particular region”.
The next step is to establish a method by which you will access your goal. For example, meeting 100 clients could be demanding as you spend most of the time on the road. For that purpose, you need to check the road map, pin your customers’ locations and draw a shortcut for approaching your clients. That’s how you will cover your goal without exhausting yourself on the road.
Lastly, when making your goals, ensure they are directly linked to your company goals. For instance, if you decided your goal is to “increase sign-ups up to 20%”, is this goal relevant to your company goals? That’s why you must ensure that your goals align with your company goals.
2. Map out your customers before you hit the wrong door
It is annoying when you hit the ground and meet the wrong person, “who does not have any intention of buying your product.” So, how are you going to find out the potential client? For example, you can do analyses of your website content.
For instance, the reader keeps studying the content on your website regularly (about a particular product), and you are receiving clickbait from the newsletter from that reader. That is your first sign. Send a purposeful email and schedule an in-person meeting with the reader.
That’s how you convert a reader to a prospect, and to convert a prospect into a consistent client, you need to study the complete “prospect’s summary.” The prospect summary includes residential data, the reader’s time at your blog, the number of blogs/contents studied, what content one is frequently reading, and one’s latest readings.
All these things will help you understand the prospect’s needs, which will increase the chance of selling.
3. Target the right KPI (Key Performance Indicators)
Whether a field sales representative or manager, you must assemble the right KPI for better outcomes. Choosing the proper KPI will clear your objectives and maintain the equilibrium in your field sales. The following are a few patterns of KPI that you can use to evaluate the field sales team’s progress:
- Field sales reps’ productivity – Check your reps’ daily activity and how often they have used their accounts when they are on the road.
- Field sales reps’ closing rates – Keep track of how proficient reps are closing product deals and how frequently.
- New accounts opened by each rep – Indicates how many new opportunities are opened by each member of your field sales team.
- Contact frequency to existing customers by rep – for coherent sales, the rep must contact the customers to inform new products and modifications.
- Profitable territories – track which area of people are more interested in your products and bring more profit to your team.
- In-person meeting track – indicates how many reps per day reserve in-person meetings.
These indicators helped you track the rep’s activity in an organized manner. You can detect the low activity level of each agent in a per-day report and can give them your feedback for immediate improvement.
The early you detect the problem in your field sales team, the earlier you resolve it for better outcomes. If your field sales representatives bring more productivity, your team will generate more profit for the company.
4. Collaboration with marketing team
The sales department has the best sources to know their prospects’ needs and requirements by studying the details. However, sales leads are mainly generated by the marketing team, and these leads are essential for the sales department to land a potential client.
In simple words, if your sales team collaborates with the marketing team, you can boost your field sales strategies, tactics, and goals. Always exchange data, organize a meeting with each, and discuss the strategy in detail.
5. Advice-giving strategy
Field sales reps’ duties are not a piece of cake. Studies have shown that people don’t like in-door salespersons and close their doors instantly. In this strategy, reps need to listen to the prospects’ problems instead of starting from selling.
Listen to the prospect carefully, and propose stress-free solutions to them. Try to sell the advice instead of the product, and after exchanging many dialogues, the rep can introduce the problem-solver product that aligns with the prospect’s needs.
All these field sales strategies will boost your team outcomes and help you to convert a total stranger into a potential customer.
How to boost your field sales with tools?
The innovations of technology have advanced our living and working styles and somehow make daily tasks easy for us. Similarly, many apps, tools, and gadgets are available that help balance the field sales tasks and boost the overall progress of the field sales team. The following are the primary field sales tools that can boost your sales:
Sales route planner
As discussed above, field sales reps spend most of their working hours on the road, so how will we manage that? The simple way to minimize the road time is to find shortcuts to reach your prospects.
First of all, make a list of the addresses of prospects that you are going to meet. Then add those addresses to the sales route planner app or website. If you’re looking for an all-in-one solution, Resco Field Sales+ includes an intelligent Route Planner and Routes AI that automatically optimize each trip, even without internet connection. Reps can open the pre-calculated itinerary with a single tap, saving up to 25 % drive time and freeing more hours for customer meetings.
That’s how you will spend less time on the road, less fuel/gas, and increase the chances of meeting more prospects in a day.
Customer relationship management (CRM) tools
Every sales field manager and representative wants to spend more of one’s time in revenue-generating chores rather than writing customers’ details, accounts facts, etc. However, these tasks are also significant to tailor to your prospect’s needs, so how will you balance all your tasks’ time?
The best way to optimize your task is to use CRM tools. Customer relationship management tools, apps, and websites generate computerized jobs and details of the customers, reducing the admin workload on the field sales reps. This way, field sales representatives can easily manage their time and focus on sales strategies.
Task management tools
Field sales reps’ duties are not as easy as it seems, and communicating with other members and managers could be problematic when they are on the journey. So, what are the possible solutions for this kind of obstacle? For this purpose, the field sales manager needs task management tools to communicate better with team members.
Task management tools allow you to assign a task to your field sales rep individually or in a group. With the help of this tool, you can easily send and receive large files and data in seconds. The faster you communicate with each other, the better the outcomes will be for your sales team.
Sales forecasting tools
It is the core duty of the sales team to analyze the current data to make a better sales strategy in the future. Now, along with your all-other responsibilities, how will you read the bulk data without any slip-ups? For this purpose, you need sales forecasting tools to moderate analyzing data and optimize your future sales strategy.
Moreover, sales forecasting tools not only read bulk data and create charts but also suggest automated future sales strategies according to your previous history. That’s how you can boost your field sales with tools.
Rep tracker tools
The success of field sales entirely depends on the productivity of the sales reps. If your field sales reps are not active in meeting with the prospects, then it will become tough to achieve your goals. So, how will you evaluate each rep’s progress and activities?
For that purpose, you can utilize the services of rep tracker tools. With this tool’s help, you will get individual reports on each rep. Such as how many prospects they have met per day, deals they have closed, hours they have spent on the road, and many other things.
After getting a report, you can quickly consult the reps on their low activity and develop better solutions to boost road sales.
Lead tracking tools
Lead tracking tools are the tools that can benefit you to boost your field sales. Lead tracking tool highlights the potential leads, monitors the lead/prospect activity, and aids you with much helpful information about the lead. With this tool, you can customize your sales deal according to the prospect activity and close the deal in less time and effort.
Track ready-to-buy Customer tools
Track ready-to-buy Customer tools, one of the best tools you must use to boost your field sales in less time. The method of using this tool is straightforward, and you can master it just in seconds. Every company has ICP data (ideal customer profile), and the data mainly covers the existing clients’ reports that are more likely to buy your products.
For instance, if your company has launched a new product, you must add ICP data to the tool, giving you a list of prospects. These prospects are more likely to buy your products because the tool has evaluated that the new product aligns with the prospect’s need. That’s how you can make easy field sales with tools in less time.
Challenges for field sales reps
There isn’t any doubt that every job comes with some challenges that employees need to encounter. Here are a few challenges that field sales face and some recommendations on how they can overpower them:
Duties of admin tasks
Admin tasks are the most time-consuming and focus craved but at the same time very significant for future sales. So, instead of performing these tasks manually, you can use the CRM tool to lessen your burden.
Finding potential prospects
It is challenging for a sales rep to locate the potential prospect to close the deal. However, you can take assistance from lead tracker tools and content analysis reports to find out who’s more interested in buying your product.
Rejection of offers
Sales reps also face challenges when their prospects reject their offers. In this case, instead of selling the product, you could share important information with the prospect that resolves one’s problem. After developing a relationship, you could visit the prospect after a fortnight to present the product again.
Route management
Managing the time and spending on gas is another challenge sales reps face in this job. For this challenge, you could use the sales route trackers tool to optimize travel time.
Challenges for field sales managers
It is challenging for the field sales manager to keep the team at the top in the sales department and boost sales. Here are a few challenges field sales managers face and suggestions to overcome them:
Assigning territories
Assigning territories to the reps is the major challenge to face. Neither can they give large domains nor small to your reps. Before posting the task, field managers must calculate the travel hours and the number of prospects in a particular region.
For this purpose, use digital maps. They will assist you with enough geographical information that overcomes your burden.
Reps’ low productivity
Sales team reports get affected whenever a rep slows down its productivity, and at the end of the month, it will be challenging to undo this. For this, use the rep’s tracker tool, and get a daily report to beat this problem.
Loss of customer due to inactivity
Losing a potential client due to inactivity in the account will also become a challenge to fight with and badly affect your sales. For this purpose, use the automated task generator tool, which automatically tells the reps to send the email to the customer, it’s time for the meet-up, and many other things.
It is pretty challenging to attain your goals 100%, but achieving them will highlight your team’s potential and boost your team’s overall outcomes.
Tools
Mobile sales tools are the applications or software that field sales reps use to access prospect information, location, and other essential data with the help of their smartphone and tablets. Two field proven options to consider are Resco Field Sales+ and Resco Field Service+. Both apps work fully offline, sync with Dynamics 365 or Salesforce in seconds and bundle route planning, task management and digital forms in a single interface.
These tools are the best way to optimize a rep’s performance proficiency. Because if field sales reps are using a notebook to manage the data manually, that means it is consuming most of their time. To conquer this issue, use the mobile field sales tool. It offers multiple options, including automated generated tasks, monthly progress, revenue details, and more.
All products and services require exceptional demonstration to give clear illustrations to the prospect, and you cannot do that without using mobile field sales tools. Mobile field sales tools grant access to a technological solution that saves time and brings productivity to your sales.
Following are mobile field sales tools that you can use to increase sales revenue for your company.
- PowerPoint slides – Field sales reps can use mobile tools to display the PowerPoint Slides to give more idea of the product’s usage and benefits to prospects. It also converts the boring talking-selling strategy into more lively marketing.
- Video tutorials – Mobile sales tools give easy access to video tutorials of the products and services that reps can use to show the prospect. That’s another fascinating idea to sell the product creatively.
- Automated generated task
Similarly, mobile sales tools provide excellent access to many other things, such as a manageable leaderboard, chat box with your manager and prospects, notification of coming events, assignment reminders, and many other things. Mobile sales tools are the best way to optimize your field sales conveniently.
What industries to look for in mobile or field sales jobs?
After assembling the information about mobile or field sales strategies, and tools, you must wonder what the best industries to look for field sales jobs are. There isn’t any doubt that mobile or field sales jobs are considered a good paying occupation all around the world, especially in the US, and the annual salary ranges from $75,000 to $110,000.
Studies show that these industries offer a wide range of seats in mobile and field sales jobs such as manufacturing, pharmaceutical, retail, insurance, technology, and telecommunication. Some industries offer a commission per sale, and some don’t. However, most offer health insurance, security, and other employee benefits.
Benefits
In the world of virtual selling, people often underestimate the benefits of field sales for their company. However, surveys have shown that companies make more sales force as compared to the inside sales. Although the help of the field sales doesn’t end here, there is much more for you to explore:
- Mobile or field sales have a long-term positive effect on your customers and clients and keep them from moving to other retailers.
- It also constructs a relationship between a rep and customer that strengthens the reputation of the brand/company.
- Field sales are the only sales that can close the complex product deal hand-to-hand and create a selling cycle that produces a good profit.
- With the help of the field sales force, you get enough feedback and customer data to customize your product outlet and selling strategy.
- The other type of sales brings the same profit percent throughout the year while field sales boost the profit on sale monthly basis. (If field sales strategies are elevated by the sales manager every month)
Bring mobile sales to life
Field and mobile selling will continue to beat virtual-only channels, but only if your reps have the right strategies, clear KPIs, and a mobile workspace that works anywhere. Solutions like Resco Field Sales+ and Resco Field Service+ give your team offline CRM access, automated route planning, task management, and digital forms in one streamlined app. The result? Your reps spend less time on admin tasks and more time building relationships.
Ready to see the impact for yourself? Start a free trial or book a live demo and give your field team the tools they need to close bigger deals faster.