Beat planning for distributors: a practical guide
A beat plan decides which outlets get visited, how often, and in what order. Get it wrong and agents quietly rewrite it themselves.
6 min read
A beat plan is the schedule that decides which outlets a field agent covers on a given day, and how often each outlet is revisited. It is the single biggest determinant of field productivity, and it is usually built once in a spreadsheet and then left to rot.
Start with coverage frequency, not geography
The instinct is to draw territories on a map first. It is the wrong order. Decide first how often each class of outlet deserves a visit, because that determines how many visits you need to fit into a week, which determines how large a territory can be.
- High-value or high-velocity outlets: weekly, sometimes twice weekly
- Mid-tier outlets: fortnightly
- Long-tail outlets: monthly, or on a call-in basis
- New or at-risk accounts: temporarily elevated frequency
If the resulting visit count does not fit in the working week, the plan is wrong. Agents will not tell you this; they will simply skip the outlets that are furthest away and least rewarding, and your coverage data will slowly stop matching reality.
Design territories around travel time
Distance is a poor proxy for effort in Indian cities. Eight kilometres across a market area at 11am is not the same as eight kilometres on a highway. Territories built on radius rather than travel time systematically overload agents in dense areas.
If you have historic route data, use actual travelled times rather than planned ones. The gap between the two is usually where the plan is broken.
Sequence the day properly
Within a beat, order matters. A few rules that survive contact with reality:
- Put outlets that open late later in the day, not first
- Cluster tightly rather than optimising purely for shortest total distance; agents value predictable days
- Leave slack for one unplanned call, because there is always one
- End the beat near the agent's home or the depot where possible
Measure the right four things
- Coverage: percentage of planned outlets actually visited
- Productive calls: visits that resulted in an order, as a share of visits made
- Lines per call: whether agents are selling range or just the fast movers
- Travel share: proportion of the working day spent travelling rather than selling
Coverage alone is a trap. An agent can hit 100% coverage by making brief, useless calls at the nearest outlets. Read it alongside productive calls, or you will optimise for the wrong behaviour.
Review it on a schedule
Markets move. Outlets close, new ones open, a competitor pushes into a territory. A beat plan that is not reviewed quarterly drifts out of alignment with the market it was built for, and the drift is invisible until a number drops.
Put a recurring review in the calendar, bring the coverage and travel-share data to it, and be willing to move outlets between agents. The plan is a working document, not a settlement.
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