As an independent field sales rep, the only thing limiting your revenue is who you decide to sell for. That also means you have an overwhelming amount of choices to make each day.

That’s why Badger is built to help independent reps manage complex territories and multiple product lines.

Here’s how you can use Badger to be a better independent sales rep:

Sales Planning & Reporting for Independent Reps

Visualize Field Templates

Badger uses the fields in your sales data to color and filter the accounts on your map.

For instance, you could have a field called “Product Line” that corresponds to the products you’re selling into each account. This will allow you to color and filter your pins on the map so that you can plan your day accurately.

Click here to learn how to build fields in Badger

Here are some fields successful Independent Sales Reps use to Visualize their territory:

Business Type

Creating a business type field will color and filter your accounts by their assigned industry. 

Use this field to highlight pins so you can find your most important accounts more easily. Filter by business type to remove unnecessary accounts off the map and plan your day even easier.

Product Lines

Every product line you carry is another stream of revenue. The more you carry, the more the money flows. If you've been an independent rep for a while, you're selling to a lot of different companies. Keeping track of the lines you're selling into each one is essential, that's how you'll discover your best up-sell and cross-sell opportunities.

Sales Stage

All of your accounts are at a certain sales stage. You have: 

• Leads - potential clients you haven't met yet 
• Qualified leads - promising leads
• Opportunities - Leads who are ready to close
• Customers - Buyers who've purchased one of your product lines

Keep the sales stage of your accounts accurate. By updating your sales stages your staying up-to-date on the progress of your deals, and you'll always know exactly where the most important use of your time is. 

Next Step

Tracking the next step of your accounts is equally important. This helps you know the next thing you need to do to move a deal forward, which isn't always clear at first glance.

The next step of an account should always be action-based. 

• Cold drop-in - these are leads you should visit, but not urgently
• Follow-up - this field is for customers who require attention after they've purchased something. Consider these qualified opportunities for up-sells and cross-sales
• Schedule meeting - This is for leads you've made contact with already, and who are qualified to purchase
• Warm visit - a warm visit means you've made contact with a prospect already, and the next meeting may close the deal

Priority

Priority is the field that ties it all together for you. Each priority tier references a certain class of customer, highlighting how you should focus your time on them.

• Priority A Leads - Visit soon, but not urgently
• Priority A Prospects - Visit immediately, these are hot opportunities
• Priority A Customers - Visit ASAP for a renewal, cross-sale, or up-sell

Use your priority filter in combination with your other filters. For instance, priority A prospects who need a warm visit are very likely to close soon.

Building your Badger Process

Prospecting with Badger

Regular prospecting keeps you ahead of the curve and ensures that you have a steady flow of deals in your pipeline. Luckily, Badger makes finding leads easy.

Use Places to search for any business type relevant to the product lines you’re carrying.

Example, search for “manufacturing” and badger will pull all of the manufacturing companies in your area.

Click on one of the blue pins that pop up to find contact information and company details.

It’s always a good idea to give leads a call as you prospect. Are they open to discussing your solution? Making contact on an exploratory call will help you keep your map clean and focused on potential buyers only.

Add these leads to your accounts list, but make sure you tag them as "Leads" in your Sales Stage field so they don’t get mixed up with your qualified prospects or customers.

If the call went well and they’re already qualified, you can set them as a prospect and assign them as a “warm visit” in your next step field. This will help you separate leads who are a fit, but need a personal introduction, from the ones who are really ready to buy when you visit.

Assign them a priority to make planning easier down the line. Are they an ideal customer for your highest grossing product line? Tag them as Priority A if they’re ready to buy and they fit your ideal customer criteria. Assign less important prospects as Priority B. They’re a great fit, but they won’t provide the absolute best ROI for your time.  

This system will help you minimize decision overwhelm and spend your time where it counts.

Planning Routes with Badger

Badger can plan your entire sales process in minutes.

Open badger to see all of the accounts in your territory, where should you spend your time?

If you’ve used Badger before, use last week’s check-in report to see what your next steps are for your priority accounts. Your meeting notes will tell you how each deal is doing so you aren’t planning unprepared.

First, use visualize to color your map by Priority. Where are your best opportunities? Zoom in on the area with the most opportunities and then filter everything except your Priority A accounts off of the map.

These will be your top priority visits.

Priority A Leads = Visit soon, but not urgent

Priority A Prospects = Visit immediately, hot opportunity

Priority A Customers = follow-up immediately, ready for renewal

Use the Next Step filter to see which Priority A accounts need attention. Your prospects in group A who need warm visits will be the ones closest to buying, and you should focus on them before they go cold.

Use Lasso to circle the high priority prospects who need a warm visit. Create a route out of them and then reset your filters.

You’ll see all of the accounts near your high priority prospect route. Switch colorization to sales stage to see a mix of leads, prospects and customers.

Use your filters to find nearby customers who need a follow-up and and leads who could use a warm visit. Add these to your route to fill out your day, but don’t overwhelm yourself.

Reset your filters and then focus on warm visit customers who never specified that they need a follow-up, but who are still qualified to buy. This will help you maintain your customer base as you build out your territory.

Sell Better Independently with Badger

Badger Maps is the best solution for independent sales reps to plan and manage their sales routes. Learn more about how Badger can save you 10 hours a week (135 hours a quarter) and start a free trial by clicking here.