The life of an "in-the-field" salesman or saleswoman can be hard. They are constantly on the road "pounding the pavement" as they make their way from office to office and lead to lead. Often, they are met with nothing but a firm "no" or even hostility and disrespect. However, when a hard deal is closed and won, it is a moment of great elation and victory for the sales rep.

In this process, sales reps are plagued by the difficulty of trying to run their work from outside of their office and away from their desk. Their steering wheel becomes their desk, their notepad becomes their laptop, and their cellphone becomes their corporate phone system. This can lead to problems, as keeping up with data-logging and data-entry while on the road can be difficult, and, accordingly, it is often done incompletely or missed entirely by sales reps.

Addressing this problem is where mobile apps can become useful and provide value. In this article, we will outline several benefits that a mobile app can provide sales reps and their team.

Mileage Reimbursement

The cost of an on-the-road sales rep is often more than just their salary and bonuses, as car mileage and gas expenses are often part of the reimbursement package. With multiple stops throughout the day, tracking car mileage and gas expenses can quickly become a hassle, and it can end up distracting your sales reps when their minds should be focused on nothing but selling. A mobile app with GPS-enabled tracking can automatically track and log traveled miles during the work day. A custom expense report can then be automatically compiled from this data.

Granular Data

The sales rep's day is often a blur filled with multiple client meetings, phone calls, and cross-town commutes. Extracting actionable data from this activity can be hard. However, with a mobile app that tracks the sales rep's movements throughout the day, sales reps can begin to better understand how their days are being spent. For example, a mobile app can provide data on what the ratio of time was between commuting and selling. This data can be logged by keeping track of the time the sales rep was driving via GPS, and the sales rep can track how much time they spent with a client by simply tapping a button in the app to log their client-facing hours.

Incentives & Gamification

With this easily collected, granular data, sales rep teams can add incentives and gamification to their jobs. This can especially be done when sales rep data is compared against data from other sales reps on their team. For example, at the end of the month, sales reps can see who on their team visited the most clients per day, or who spends the most hours selling per hour commuting. Sales reps with the best performance can then be compensated with bonuses for their superior work. This competition and reward can often lead to increased productivity and employee engagement among sales reps.

Better Record Keeping

Rather than relying on scribbled notes written on top of the steering wheel after a client meeting and hoping they can find (or even read!) these notes the next time they meet with the client, sales reps can keep better and more accessible records through the use of a mobile app. Using a mobile app, sales reps can neatly type notes from a client meeting on their phone, and these notes can be stored in one place for easy access during future client meetings. Additionally, using GPS, client notes and documents can be automatically populated in the sales rep's mobile app whenever they are in the same location as the client's office.

As discussed above, a mobile app can help address several pain points in the sales rep's workflows. Most of these pain-points have to do with data tracking and data entry, and a GPS-enabled mobile app is the perfect tool to help tackle these issues. Importantly, solving these issues can help make the sales rep's job easier and ultimately more productive. To read more about mobile apps and mileage tracking, check out our blog post on our mileage tracking product Psngr.