Beat plan i.e Permanent Journey Plan (PJP) is a route map prepared for field sales professionals to chalk out their visits, timings & frequency in advance. Organizations dealing with consumer good products deal with sales routes, typically called ‘beats’ to manage sales & delivery in a controlled manner.
A Beat Plan defines whom to visit, when to visit, based on the company’s priorities on stores category/segment. These visits can be made for the purpose of sales order collection, visual merchandising, etc.
Challenges arise when organizations create their own routes i.e. conventional routes which are based on local knowledge, intuitive belief, assumptions for deliveries and collecting orders, etc. Managing this along with multiple delivery hubs, varying fleet capacity and the constraint of time. This often leads to underutilization of certain assets and resources and negatively impacts return on investment.
The beat plan is basically a time table-cum-route map for a week/fortnight. It has 2 components:
- The schedule of clients to be visited each day.
- The route to be followed each day.
The beat plan is quintessential for a salesperson. Carefully draft a good beat plan and stick to it to cover your sales territory effectively.
Any salesperson/manager should instinctively consider the above 2 factors while making a beat plan.
Beat Plans are planned, mostly for a month, to ensure no deviation is there and each of the stores gets required visits from company representatives.