The rep's first visit

A rep who visits six corner shops in a morning has a short window at each one. The shopkeeper is serving customers, the delivery is due tomorrow, and an order written on a pad still has to be typed in by someone back at the office. This tour shows a rep's first visit of the day done on the phone instead: the visit list, the account, the order, the moment it appears in the office and the visit marked done.

Step by step

1. Open today's visits on the phone. At 8am the rep's planned visits are already there in the visit planner, each with the shop, its address, the planned time and the purpose of the visit. She does not need a printed list or a call to the office to know where she is going first.

2. Start the order for this shop. At the first shop she opens a new order and picks the customer. The visit and the order are separate records: the visit says she planned to call, the order says what the shop bought. Keeping the order on the phone from the start means nothing is written on a pad to be typed up later.

3. Read the account before talking prices. Before a word about this week's deals, she checks what the shop owes, how much credit it has left and when it last ordered. In the tour's sample, the shop owes £760 against a £2,000 limit, so it has £1,240 of credit to use. Knowing this first changes the conversation: you do not push a big order on a shop that can only take a small one on account.

4. Notice how long since the last order. "Last ordered two days ago" is a regular. "Last ordered three weeks ago" is a shop that may be buying elsewhere. That is worth a question before you start.

5. Add products and quantities. The rep adds what the shop wants. Prices are taken from the shop's own price list, so a trade customer on special terms sees their price, not the list price. There is nothing to look up and no chance of quoting last month's figure from memory.

6. Check the total against the credit left. The order screen shows the previous balance beside the new total. Credit is checked when the order is confirmed: an order inside the limit goes straight through, and one that would go over is refused, with the credit available and the order total shown. Because the rep is still standing in the shop, she can agree to trim it or take a payment there and then.

7. Confirm the order and mark the visit done. One tap confirms the order. Back in the visit planner she taps Mark done on the visit, so the day's count of visits done is right. She moves on to the next shop with nothing left to write up tonight.

8. See it arrive in the office. Back at the warehouse, the order is already on the new-order screen with the customer, their price list, their discount and their credit on it. It is ready to pick for tomorrow's van without anyone retyping a line.

The visit at a glance

A worked example

Say the shop wants eight cases of cola at its trade price of £8.75, six cases of still water at £4.99, and two boxes of milk chocolate bars at £21.50. That is £70.00, £29.94 and £43.00, so £142.94 before VAT. All three lines carry VAT at 20% in the tour's sample, so the order comes to about £171.53 with VAT. With £1,240 of credit left, it goes through comfortably.

Now take a shop that owes £1,180.40 on a £1,500 limit. It has £319.60 left. The same order fits, but a second one like it later in the week would not. The rep sees that on the phone, the second order would be refused when confirmed, and she can say so in the shop, instead of the office ringing the customer tomorrow to explain why half the order has been held back.

Tips for reps

• Mark every visit done, even a quick drop-in. A visit with no order still counts, and an unclosed visit shows as missed the next day. If you want to record why there was no order, put it in the visit's notes.
• Start with the account, not the deals. A shop with an overdue balance should hear about it from you, politely, before it hears about the promotion.
• Ask about gaps, not just top-ups. If a regular has stopped ordering a line, ask why. It is often a competitor's price.
• Confirm each order before you leave the shop. An order confirmed at 8:20 can be picked for tomorrow; one typed up at 6pm might miss the cut.

Common mistakes

Quoting from memory. Prices change and customers sit on different lists. Let the shop's price list fill the price in.

Taking an order the credit will not cover. It feels like a sale, but it becomes a problem for the office and an awkward call for the customer. Deal with it in the shop.

Leaving visits open when in a hurry. A visit that is never marked done shows as missed once the day has passed, and the office cannot tell a visit that happened from one that did not.

Writing on paper "just this once". Every paper order has to be typed in by someone, and that is where wrong quantities and missing lines come from.

How this fits the rest of the day

The rep's order gets its own pick wave in the warehouse the next morning, goes out on the van in route order, and becomes an invoice. If the shop pays late, it shows up on the owner's Home and in credit control. If the shop rings later to add two more cases, the office edits the order and the invoice follows.

What to do next

If you are deciding how your reps should work, our guide to van sales and route orders compares selling from the van with taking orders for next-day delivery. To set limits and terms your reps can actually hold, read customer credit for wholesalers. And if your price lists have grown messy, how to price products covers setting trade prices that still leave a margin.