In a recent HubSpot report, sales productivity tools were ranked second (behind only sales management tools) in terms of the best ROI for sales-related technology. We’d argue that anything that enables sellers to spend more time selling and less time on other tasks should fall into that category—meaning that the potential ROI for a sales rep route planner is potentially quite high. 
After all, the less time sales reps spend on the road between stops, the more of their time they’re able to spend on what really matters: developing and maintaining relationships with prospects and customers. While sales routes aren’t necessarily as difficult to optimize as delivery routes (for one thing, delivery routes often involve many more stops per day and a more complex set of parameters), there’s still huge value to be gained by ensuring that your sales personnel are making the shortest, most-efficient trips and doing the optimal sequence of stops.
For businesses where sellers spent significant time on the road—whether that’s because they double as delivery or service personnel or simply because it’s a high-touch environment—it’s becoming increasingly clear that manual sales rep route planning doesn’t cut it. Not in a world where automated, intelligent, AI-powered sales rep route planners exist.
If you’re in the market to potentially improve your sales reps’ productivity and efficiency—and delight your customers and prospects with timely visits in the process—there are 5 key steps you need to take achieve that end:
1. Automate Sales Data Integration and Route Optimization
Like we mentioned above, planning out sales rep routes by hand has real limitations. Sure, you can eyeball a sensible route most of the time, but you certainly can’t test out dozens or hundreds of different route options to model which ones will be most efficient.
That’s where the right technology comes in: rather than relying on domain knowledge and being limited by the number of hours in a day, automated routing tools are able to rapidly optimize routes by analyzing thousands of potential route permutations in minutes. When you remove the manual effort from this process, you save time for your team and ensure that your sales reps are being dispatched routes that are actually efficient.
This means they spend less time on the road over the course of the day.
One of the keys here is to make sure you have all the right data in the right places. You don’t want manual data entry between your ERP, PoS, or sales management software into your routing software to slow down the process. Find a solution that can automate data transfer between your different solutions to streamline the process.
2. Update Your Territories Frequently
Once you’ve sped up sales rep route planning with automated route optimization technology, you can suddenly build much more flexibility and adaptability into your processes.
Take sales territory planning as an example. Generally, it’s a process that takes so much time to do by hand that businesses are loath to do it more than a couple of times each year. But when your routing is automated, you can significantly cut down the amount of manual effort that goes into revamping your sales territories to ensure efficiency as well as equal selling potential.
This means that you can adapt that much more quickly to changes in your market, customer base, and team. We recommend transitioning from a twice a year model to an “as-needed” model—as long as you have the software to support it.
3. Leverage a Mobile App for Connectivity
Routing isn’t the end-all-be-all of the sales and field services management process. Ideally, your sales reps would be making stops as part of a connected process that other teams have visibility into throughout.
The best way to make this happen is to pair your routing capabilities with a sales rep mobile application that enables you to track route progress in real time. In this way, you can see what’s happening along each sales rep route, including status, location, and ETA to the next stop.
Your team can even leverage the app to document sales calls, take or adjust orders, and communicate with the rest of the team as needed. Once this data is captured, it should be made instantly visible within your larger solution—so that you can see whether your routes are actually working as intended.
4. Ensure Coordination Between Sales and Delivery Management
One of the other benefits of leveraging a mobile app that’s connected to your sales rep route planner is that it can empower improved visibility and coordination between teams. You might be working in an industry where it’s common practice for a sales rep to arrive at the delivery site with the delivery truck to schmooze with the customer and handle any potential issues or concerns—in those cases, it’s crucial that sales and delivery teams be able to keep tabs on one another’s locations and activities.
Ultimately, the sales and delivery functions are part of the same cohesive whole—sometimes that’s literally true, and your drivers are also sellers—and your route planning process should reflect that.
5. Use the Right Sales Rep Route Planner
Really, using the right sales rep route planner is step one. But we’ve put it towards the bottom of the checklist because you can use all of the above as guideposts for determining what the right sales rep route planner actually is.
Not all route optimization solutions are created equal. If you’re trying to improve the productivity of your sellers and boost visibility across your broader operations, there are a few things you should look for in the right sales rep route planner:
- Fast, AI-powered capabilities to save your route planners time
- A connected mobile application that ensures connectivity with sales reps in the field
- Connectivity between sales routing and delivery/service routing so that different teams can gain insights into one another’s activities
- Real-time tracking as sales reps complete their routes and status updates as they move from stop to stop
- Automated sales data import into the routing solution
- Robust integration between routing and other solutions—including comprehensive last mile logistics management capabilities
The right solution will have all of these capabilities, and it will be easy to implement and will have a track record of saving customers time and money with intuitive, purpose-built capabilities.
How a Route Planner for Sales Reps Drives ROI
Investing in route planning software for sales teams delivers measurable returns across your business. The most immediate impact is on productivity: When reps spend 25-30% less time driving, that translates directly into additional customer visits, follow-up calls, and deal progression. Organizations implementing intelligent routing typically see sales reps completing more appointments per week without extending work hours.
The financial benefits extend beyond just more meetings. Fuel costs drop when routes are optimized for distance and traffic patterns. Vehicle wear and tear decreases with fewer miles driven and less stop-and-go driving.
Perhaps most importantly, customer satisfaction improves when reps arrive on time, unhurried, and prepared. Automated routing with real-time ETAs means fewer missed appointments and better communication with clients. This strengthens relationships and increases close rates. Combined with the ability to respond faster to urgent customer needs by optimizing routes on the fly, route planning software transforms your sales operation from reactive to proactive.
The data collected through route planning systems also provides invaluable insights. Sales managers can identify which territories are under-performing, which routes consistently run over schedule, and where additional resources might be needed. This intelligence enables continuous improvement that compounds returns over time.
Common Sales Route Planning Mistakes to Avoid
Even with the best route planner for sales reps, implementation mistakes can undermine results. Understanding these common pitfalls helps you maximize the value of your routing technology from day one.
The first mistake is underestimating appointment duration variability. Not all sales calls take the same amount of time, and failing to account for this creates cascading delays throughout the day. Your routing software should allow for customizable appointment windows based on customer type, meeting purpose, or historical data. A quick check-in at a convenience store requires different scheduling than a quarterly business review with a major account.
Another frequent mistake is not accounting for traffic patterns and real-world driving conditions. Routes that look efficient on paper can become nightmares during rush hour or in areas with construction. Modern routing tools incorporate real-time traffic data and historical patterns, but you need to activate and configure these features properly. Treating all roads as equal leads to frustrated reps stuck in traffic when alternate routes exist.
Many organizations also make the mistake of setting up territories once and never revisiting them. Markets evolve, customers relocate, new prospects emerge, and your territory boundaries should reflect these changes. Static territories that made sense last year might now have significant imbalances in potential revenue, customer density, or drive time. Regular territory optimization—enabled by your routing software—ensures each rep has an equitable opportunity to succeed.
Finally, failing to integrate your sales route planner with other business systems creates data silos and duplicated effort. When your CRM, order management system, and routing software don’t communicate, reps waste time on manual data entry and risk working with outdated information. True efficiency comes from a connected ecosystem where customer updates, new orders, and route changes flow automatically between systems.
Smarter Sales Rep Route Planning with DispatchTrack
DispatchTrack is the global leader in last mile logistics software. Our platform is built on robust route optimization capabilities that are designed to meet the challenges of a large number of different use cases, including sales rep route planning.
Our platform offers:
- Fast, flexible route optimization so that you can ensure the most efficient, up-to-date routes across the board
- A separate sales rep mobile app for ensuring connectivity and visibility across teams
- Comprehensive last mile logistics capabilities that ensure total logistics visibility and seamless integration between routing and the rest of your technology and processes
The result of leveraging these capabilities is that businesses improve productivity, speed up route planning, and ultimately improve the level of service they offer to customers and prospects.
If you’re ready to boost the productivity and efficiency of your sales reps with smarter sales rep route planning, reach out to one of our experts today to learn more.
Route Planning for Sales Reps FAQ
What is a route planner for sales reps?
A route planner for sales reps is software that automatically optimizes the sequence and path of customer visits for field sales teams. It uses AI and algorithms to calculate the most efficient routes based on factors like appointment locations, time windows, traffic conditions, and drive time. Unlike manual planning with maps or spreadsheets, automated route planners can evaluate thousands of potential route combinations in minutes to find the optimal solution that minimizes drive time and maximizes selling time.
How much time can route planning software save sales reps?
Most organizations see sales reps save 15-30% of their daily drive time after implementing route planning software. Since the average sales rep spends 25-33% of their time driving between appointments, this translates to 1-2 additional hours per day that can be redirected to customer-facing activities. Over a year, this recovered time allows reps to complete significantly more appointments and close more deals without working longer hours.
Can route planning software integrate with CRM systems?
Yes, modern route planning solutions integrate with most major CRM platforms including Salesforce, HubSpot, Microsoft Dynamics, and others. These integrations automatically sync customer data, appointment schedules, and contact information between systems, eliminating manual data entry. When a sales rep schedules a meeting in the CRM, it can automatically appear in the routing system for optimization. Similarly, visit completion data and notes from the mobile app can flow back into the CRM to keep customer records current.
How often should sales territories be replanned?
With automated territory planning tools, you can replan territories as needed rather than adhering to a rigid annual or semi-annual schedule. Best practice is to review territories quarterly and adjust whenever significant changes occur—such as adding new sales reps, opening new market segments, or experiencing major shifts in customer distribution. The key advantage of modern software is that territory optimization that once took days or weeks can now be completed in hours, making frequent adjustments practical and cost-effective.
What’s the difference between route planning for sales reps versus delivery drivers?
While both use similar optimization technology, sales routes typically involve fewer stops per day (usually 5-12 versus 50-150 for delivery), longer appointment durations, and more flexibility in timing. Sales routes prioritize relationship-building and meeting quality over pure stop density. Sales routing also needs tighter integration with CRM systems and often requires coordination with delivery schedules when reps need to be present during product drop-offs. However, the core goal remains the same: minimize non-productive travel time to maximize customer-facing time.
Do sales reps need special hardware to use route planning software?
No special hardware is required. Modern route planning solutions work through mobile apps on standard iOS and Android smartphones or tablets that your sales reps likely already carry. The mobile app provides turn-by-turn navigation, allows reps to view their daily schedule, update appointment statuses, and communicate with the office. Some organizations provide company devices to ensure consistency and security, but the software itself works on consumer-grade mobile technology.