Coverage maths: the four numbers a sales manager should read every morning

A field sales manager with forty reps cannot visit the market with all of them. What they can do is read four numbers every morning and decide who to call. This is what those numbers are, and why they are hard to get from a spreadsheet.

The four numbers

• Total calls: outlets visited yesterday, whatever happened there.
• Productive calls: outlets that gave an order.
• Strike rate: productive calls divided by total calls.
• Call coverage: outlets visited divided by outlets planned in the journey plan.

Why a spreadsheet gets them wrong

Because the spreadsheet only knows about orders. A visit that produced no order is invisible, so total calls are undercounted, the strike rate looks better than it is, and coverage cannot be computed at all because nobody wrote down which planned outlets were skipped.

Targets records the visit, not just the order. A rep who visits an outlet and sells nothing records why: shop closed, no order, payment issue, next week. That one habit makes all four numbers real.

What the numbers tell you

• High coverage, low strike rate: the rep is walking the route but not selling. Look at schemes, stock at the distributor, or the outlets themselves.
• Low coverage, high strike rate: the rep is cherry-picking easy outlets. Look at the journey plan and the check-in map.
• Both low: a conversation, today.
• Both high and target still short: the target or the territory is the problem, not the rep.

Reading it by node

A regional manager sees regions. An area manager sees areas. A territory manager sees reps. Each sees their own part of the hierarchy and everything beneath it, with the pace needed to close the month and a short list of what needs attention today. The four numbers are the same at every level; only the rows change.

If it takes you longer than a cup of tea to get to those four numbers each morning, the reports are doing the wrong job.