Beat Plan Generator: Decide Every Outlet Visit Before the Week Starts

A beat plan answers one question for a field salesman: which shops do I visit today, and in what order. Behind it sits a harder question for the supervisor — is every outlet being seen as often as its value deserves, and can anyone prove it.

How it is done today

The common version is a route diary. A supervisor who knows the market writes six day-wise lists in a notebook and the reps copy them. It works while one person holds the market in their head.

The next version is a spreadsheet beat sheet emailed to distributors with a tab per salesman. That is a real improvement, because the plan finally exists outside one head. What it still cannot do is confirm the visit happened.

Everything below sits on the outlet, not on the salesman. That single decision is what makes the plan survive staff changes. One row per shop:

• Outlet code and shop name — a stable code matters more than the name, which is spelled three ways across two lists.
• Market or town, and cluster — cluster is the walkable group, and it drives visiting order within a day.
• Route or beat name — the label tying the outlet to a specific day.
• Outlet class (A, B, C) — set from average monthly purchase value, reviewed quarterly.
• Visit frequency — derived from class, then overridden where stock turn demands it.
• Weekly off — the field that removes the most wasted visits from any cycle.
• Average order value and last order date — for spotting outlets sliding towards lapsed.
• Last visit date and days since last visit — the calculated field that exposes silent gaps.
• Assigned salesman and distributor — one owner per outlet, never shared.
• Credit status and outstanding — so a collection stop is planned rather than improvised.
• Travel minutes from the previous outlet — the field most sheets skip, and the reason day plans overrun.

An illustrative example for one salesman covering 96 outlets in a single town, not benchmark data. Frequency follows class: A weekly, B fortnightly, C monthly, with the fortnightly and monthly outlets alternating into the same days.

Two details make this plan work rather than merely exist. The Saturday catch-up slot absorbs shops that were shut, so a missed call is recovered inside the same cycle. And planned calls are capped by travel time rather than ambition.

The plan generates itself

Once route, day, frequency and weekly off live on the outlet record, today's call list is a filter rather than a document. An outlet added on Wednesday appears in the right route next week without anyone editing a file.

Coverage becomes evidence

A GPS check-in at the counter turns the visit into a record. Planned against actual coverage can be read per route the same afternoon, and the interesting cases are routes where coverage is high but orders are not.

Between-visit conversations stop disappearing

Most retailer contact happens between visits. Holding those threads against the outlet record means an order placed by message counts like any other, and mobile capture at ₹899 per user per month replaces the evening data-entry ritual.

Routing by pin code instead of geography

Administrative boundaries do not match travel time. Build clusters from driving order, not from an address field.

Giving every outlet the same frequency

A uniform weekly cycle looks fair and is expensive. It spends the same rep hour on a shop buying a tenth of the value.

No definition of a productive call

If a visit and an order are recorded as one event, strike rate cannot be measured and coverage becomes a number that rises while sales do not.

Never revisiting classification

Outlet value moves. A class assigned two years ago optimises the cycle for a market that no longer exists.

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