Do you sink into a sea of worries whenever the sales reps are out in the field? Worry no more if you’re struggling to track their real-time location or determine whether they visited the assigned accounts. In this guide, we’ll reveal the best apps for outside sales reps to help you stay on top of every field sales activity.
We tested numerous apps and settled on five that help track outside sales reps’ time, location, and mileage. In addition, some apps have messaging, scheduling, and route planning to help sales reps avoid traffic congestion.
If you’re short on time, Timeero is the best sales rep for outside sales reps. Besides the features mentioned above, the app has a cool feature called segmented tracking, which enables you to determine the time an agent spends with each account — no more slacking off.
Timeero can streamline your field sales team activities.
Using apps for outside sales reps isn’t just about streamlining location and mileage tracking. The apps should offer insights to iterate and level up sales productivity, efficiency, and performance to hit your quota. The following tools can help you achieve these goals:
Timeero — All-Around Sales Rep App With Segmented Tracking
B2Field — GPS Tracking With Route Planning
Outfield — Best App for Route Optimization
Google Maps — Effective Sales Route Optimization
Badger Maps — Free Navigation App for Solopreneurs
The best apps for outside sales reps should streamline field sales activity. To that end, the app should sport features such as GPS location tracking to help you monitor the rep’s location in near real-time. The apps should also track mileage for fair remuneration and tax purposes.
Time is scarce, and if you want to hit big numbers, ensure that each field sales rep uses the available time with intent. The app you pick should help determine how each agent uses their time. Thankfully, we included apps that separate the rep’s driving time from in-person meeting time.
It’s also important to find an app that consolidates helpful functions. In an era where two-thirds of sales reps use an average of 10 tools to fuel sales automation, adding more tools to their tech stack could lead to click overload. The litany of tools could eat away at vital reps’ time and prevent them from hitting their sales quota and metrics.
Top 5 Apps for Outside Sales Rep
Without further ado, let’s discuss the strengths and weaknesses (if any) of the best apps for outside sales representatives:
Timeero — All-Around Tracking App for Outside Sales
The Timeero app works seamlessly on Android and iOS devices.
Timeero is the best app for sales reps by merit. It wraps the helpful tools for outside sales reps in an easy-to-use app. Whether you’re struggling to schedule or monitor reps’ movement, mileage, or time, Timeero has the remedy. Let’s see how some of the tools work:
Segmented Tracking
One of the significant challenges sales managers face is determining the time field sales reps spend with each account. Traditional tools require representatives to clock in when they reach a client’s location and clock out as they leave. This conventional method leaves room for human error since it hinges on the rep’s ability to remember to punch promptly.
Timeero segmented tracking solves the time tracking challenge without the click overload of multiple clock-ins. The sales rep will clock in once at the start of the day and clock out once they are done, leaving Timeero to handle the tracking details.
Segmented tracking helps monitor reps’ movement as they do sales prospecting, close deals, and reactivate customers.
Sales managers can quickly analyze the rep’s time usage during the day. When you click the car icon on the rep’s time entry, you’ll see when and where they clocked in and out. Timeero also displays the time the representative spent driving and the miles covered between customer locations. When you click on a segment, Timeero shows the corresponding location on the map.
Even better, the tool displays the rep's time at the client’s location. If you have configured each account with geofencing, you’ll know if an agent spends time elsewhere and not with the client — guesswork out of the window.
Watch this video to learn more about segmented tracking.
GPS Location Tracking
Timeero is the best GPS tracking app for sales reps, for good reasons. The app uses GPS technology to track the rep’s location and updates the details every other minute. When you open the “Who’s working” tab, you’ll see each sales rep’s location in real time.
You can zoom in on each rep to see how long they have been working and the tasks they are working on or click “show breadcrumbs” to monitor their movement during the day.
Besides letting you know the rep’s promptness in attending client meetings, the Timeero GPS tracker helps you better manage your sales team and resources. Suppose one rep is unable to reach an account on time. You can easily spot another rep in close proximity and request them to stop in the customer’s place.
Suggested Mileage
Today’s customers are more crunched for time than ever before. For this reason, when a sales rep sets up a meeting, they have to show up on time, no matter what. This is where Timeero’s suggested mileage comes in handy.
While not actually a route planning tool, Timeero does save some minutes on the road, enabling reps to reach clients’ locations in time, especially on subsequent trips. Timeero analyzes a rep’s first trip to a place and suggests a shorter alternative. This way, the agent can spend less time driving and more time with the client.
Mileage Tracking
When it comes to tracking mileage for outside sales, accuracy is vital. You want to ensure reps are not falsifying their mileage to claim higher reimbursement than they should. It also pays to keep IRS-compliant records for tax purposes.
Enter Timeero’s automatic mileage tracker, which tops our list of best mileage-tracking apps. The app uses motion-detection technology to automate mileage tracking. The rep only needs to clock in and get on the road. When they exceed the predetermined speed threshold, Timeero will log their miles automatically. Easy peasy.
Not just that. Remember that commuter mileage isn’t tax deductible. For this reason, you should deduct it from business miles; doing so manually can be taxing. Thankfully, Timeero commuter mileage does the job for you. Once you set the rep’s commuter mileage, Timeero automatically deducts it from their business miles.
Offline Mode
Last but not least, Timeero has an offline mode. If the outside sales rep traverses areas without internet connectivity, it will work just fine. The app continues tracking mileage, time, and location and uploads the data once the agents reach areas with internet connectivity.
Other Features:
Time tracking with geofencing and facial recognition
California break tracker
Employee scheduling
Message blast
Time-off tracking
Integrations: Quickbooks Desktop and Online, Gusto, Rippling, ADP, Xero, Viventium, Paychex and Paylocity.
Timeero pricing: 14-day free trial. Paid subscriptions start at $4 per user per month.
B2Field — GPS Tracking With Route Planning
B2Field history helps you discover where each rep has been during a workday or workweek.
Our second app, B2Field, ticks the right boxes if you need a reliable GPS tracking app. It helps track reps’ location, monitor their movement, and log their mileage every step in the sale journey — from lead generation through deal closing. Besides displaying reps’ real-time location, the app shows whether they’re at a standstill or moving — and in what direction.
It doesn’t automatically track time or compute the rep’s time with a client. However, it records the timestamps when a rep starts and stops driving. You can select an agent and click “history” to see all the places they visited, travel, and parking times. If a rep ‘parks’ at a geofenced client spot, you can equate their parking time to time spent with the client.
Another arrow in B2Field’s quiver is route planning. While it’s not the most effective tool, it helps find optimal routes. The rep can select a destination and hit the direction icon on Android or iPhone to find the optimal route. The only niggle is that agents must repeat this process for every destination, which can be tedious.
In addition, B2Field offers three mileage tracking modes: driving, walking, and special. The walking mode records mileage when the speed is as low as 1 mph and is ideal for door-to-door sales reps who need to know the miles they trek. On the other hand, the driving mode records mileage when salespeople exceed 4 mph.
One quibble is that B2Field offline mode doesn’t work as defined. During our testing, the app lost connection to the server when we switched off the internet connection, making it unusable.
Other Features:
Cost management
Customer data
Forms and checklists
Integrations: Zoho, Salesforce, SAP, Microsoft Dynamics and Google Suite
B2Field pricing: 7-day free trial. Paid subscriptions start at $20 per user per month.
Outfield — Best App for Route Optimization
Outfield helps small businesses streamline sales rep tracking, travel planning, sales workflow, and project management.
Outfield is more of a sales CRM than a team tracking app, so tools such as mileage are on the back burner. However, it snags the third spot thanks to its effective route planning, which makes it ideal for outside sales reps in areas prone to traffic snarl-ups.
Outside sales reps can select all their destinations and click “plan route” on a smartphone. The app leverages real-time traffic updates and historical data to find the most convenient route. This helps reps adjust to traffic jams and other unpredictable conditions to visit more accounts quickly.
Like the top two apps, Outfield enables you to create geofenced customer locations. When a rep enters or leaves a geofence area, the app notifies them to check in or out. The agent can also upload live pictures as proof they visited the assigned account and add brief notes about the meeting.
You can also manually calculate time spent with the client by getting the time difference between the rep’s check-in and check-out timestamps. Sadly, the manual method depends on the rep’s ability to see the check-in/out notification and act accordingly. If they forget to check in or out, it would be difficult to understand the time they spent with each account.
Another notable Outfield feature is sales gamification. You can set up head-to-head matchups for outside sales to promote healthy competition and improve performance. Outfield lets you create a leaderboard where sales can track their performance against that of their colleagues.
Other Features:
Performance management
Territory management
Sales tracking and mapping
Sales operations management
Sales pipelin management
Note-taking
Integrations: Quickbooks, Stripe, Xero, Asana, Salesforce, HubSpot, and more
Badger Maps helps sales team members to optimize routes to improve efficiency.
Like Outfield, Badger Maps’ standout feature is route optimization. The app does it differently, though. You first add all your accounts and their corresponding address, and the app will map their location on a map with a pin. You can add the accounts manually or import them in different formats from your CRM or spreadsheet.
When you click “route,” Badger Maps prompts you to pick your start location and destination. Using the “add location” button, add as many customer locations as you intend to visit in a day and hit “optimize.”
The app optimizes the route around live traffic patterns to find an optimal route, allowing you to spend less time on the road and more with the clients to close deals. The outside sales reps will only need to hit “go” on a smartphone and use Badger Maps as a navigational tool.
Beyond route optimization, Badger Maps cannot track sales rep location or mileage. Moreover, you cannot tell the rep's time with each account, which can be off-putting if you want an in-depth look into the rep’s performance.
Other Features:
Team management
Customer/lead management
Day planning
Follow-up reminders
Badger Maps pricing: 7-day free trial. Paid subscriptions start at $49 per user per month, billed annually.
Google Maps — Free Navigation App for Solopreneurs
Outside sales teams can use Google Maps on mobile devices, including Android and iPhone.
Google Maps navigation assistance capability is undoubting, but is it efficient for outside sales reps? The short answer is yes. However, Google Maps works best for solopreneurs and not teams, mainly because it doesn’t offer a team management dashboard. Moreover, you can’t use it to track time, location, and mileage.
But, if you need an app to help you wade through densely populated areas such as major cities, Google Maps is apt. When you enter a destination and click “direction,” the app displays the best possible route and time it would take you to get there. To do so, Google Maps analyzes live traffic patterns to help avoid gridlocks and accidents.
It also displays the nearest amenities, such as restaurants and gas stations, to help you plan your trip better. Sadly, if you’re looking for a team management app, you’re better off using one of our three best sales apps. With Google Maps, you can’t tell where each sales rep is or estimate their time with each client.
Google Maps pricing: Free forever
Pick The Best App For Outside Sales Reps
By now, you’ve probably decided which cloud-based outside sales app suits your style of operations. Hopefully, the app you intend to use helps maintain a lean technology stack without missing vital features.
If you’re still undecided, we recommend starting with Timeero for apparent reasons. The app is easy to use and affordable, consolidating all the sales tools you need to manage your outside sales team. The standout feature is segmented tracking, which lets you see each sales rep’s time with their accounts.
Start a free trial today to get a first-hand feel for the useful Timeero features free of charge for 14 days. No credit card is required.
FAQs: Best Apps for Field Sales Reps
What Are the Best Apps for Sales Reps?
The best apps for outside sales reps are Timeero, B2Field, Outfield, Badger Maps and Google Maps.
Use Timeero tracking tools for outside sales reps.
Samson is a mathematician turned content marketer specializing in SaaS and Tech content. He focuses on the practical aspects of software systems while keeping abreast of the industry’s cutting-edge principles to create informative and engaging content. When he’s not writing, Samson spends time playing or watching soccer.
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