Short answer Field sales means selling in person, on the buyer's own premises, instead of by phone or online. It is also called outside sales. For a retail brand in Kenya or Nigeria, it means reps who call on dukas, kiosks, provision stores and supermarkets on a fixed cycle. Each call books an order, checks the shelf and keeps the outlet buying.
Most definitions describe a rep chasing one big contract. In Nairobi or Lagos the job looks different. A field team spends its week going back to outlets that already carry the brand. Think of the estate duka, the kiosk by the bus stage, the provision store and the wholesaler in the open market.
Where field sales sits between the depot and the duka
Few brands deliver to every outlet themselves. Stock goes to a distributor, and often on to stockists and wholesalers who serve smaller shops. What the distributor sells on to outlets is the brand's secondary sales. The field team lives at that outlet end, because that is where a product gets ordered, put out and bought.
A rep's week is cut into beats: a set list of outlets for one day, in a fixed order, repeated weekly or every other week. Our guide to beat planning shows how to draw them up.
Once the order is booked, the goods reach the counter by one of two routes:
- Pre-sales. The rep books the order on a phone. The distributor invoices and delivers later, usually the following day. No stock rides with the rep.
- Van sales. The stock rides with the rep. The owner pays on the spot, gets a printed invoice and has the goods there and then. Our van sales software runs the van's whole day from one phone.
What a field sales executive does in each outlet
A field sales executive is the person who makes these calls. Some companies say sales rep, salesman or pre-seller instead. The work is the same, and a good call covers five tasks, usually in this order:
- Book the order. Use today's price list, the running schemes and the stock left, and suggest one product the outlet does not carry yet.
- Look at the shelf. Is each must-sell product out front, in its spot, at the right price, and not sitting in the back room? That check is the core of retail execution.
- Tell the owner about offers and launches. A scheme the shopkeeper never heard of cannot move a single carton.
- Collect money and returns. Where the rep handles payment, take it in cash or by mobile money, and record damaged or expired goods going back.
- Open new outlets. Sign up the shop on the same street that does not stock the brand yet. That is how reach in an area grows.
A field sales example. A pre-seller for a snacks brand reaches a duka in an Eastlands estate at mid-morning. The owner wants the usual top-up. The new pack, delivered last week, is still in a carton in the back. She puts it out front, explains the launch offer and adds it to the order. Last week's invoice is paid by mobile money. Two doors down, a kiosk new to the brand places a first order. Five tasks, one stop.
Head office counts the order. The shelf check decides the next one. A pack left in the store room or behind another brand's crates sits unsold. An owner stuck with old stock does not reorder.
Who is on a field sales team in Kenya or Nigeria
Titles change from company to company. Most teams that sell through distributors still have four layers:
- Sales rep or field sales executive. Works the beats in one territory and owns the relationship with each outlet owner.
- Distributor salesman. Often the person at the counter is on the distributor's payroll, not the brand's. The brand still decides the beat, the targets and the must-sell list, and follows the work in its distributor management system.
- Supervisor or sales officer. Coaches a handful of reps and goes out on their beats with them.
- Area sales manager and up. The ASM answers for an area's distributors, reps and results. Regional and national heads set the targets and schemes.
Visit, phone or WhatsApp: when to send a rep
Inside sales is selling from an office, by phone, email, video call or chat, and here that chat is often WhatsApp. A rep at the counter sees the shelf and can fix it. A phone order only hears what the owner says.
| Rep visit | Phone or WhatsApp order | |
|---|---|---|
| What you learn | What is out front, what is in the back, the prices on show and what other brands are doing | Whatever the owner tells you |
| What you can fix that day | A missing product, a poor display, an unpaid invoice, a new outlet next door | The order, a question, a follow-up |
| Cost per contact | Higher: fuel, traffic and time at every stop | Lower: far more outlets reached in a day |
| Suits | Outlets where shelf position matters, or where the owner buys from people they know | Top-up orders between calls, and small outlets spread far apart |
| Weak spot | Fewer outlets a day, and hard to supervise from the office | Blind to the shelf, so problems wait for the next visit |
So the choice is seldom one or the other. The question is which outlets need someone at the shelf, and how often. BeatRoute's TeleOrder AI Agent rings retailers between calls and takes their order in their local language. That saves the visit for the shelf, the scheme and the new outlet.
Five numbers that show field sales is working
Each one is simple to count and simple to misread when you look at it alone.
- Coverage: of the outlets on a rep's list, the share called on this cycle.
- Calls: how many outlets a rep visits in a day.
- Productive calls: calls that end in an order. Divide them by all calls to get the strike rate.
- Lines per call: how many different products an average order holds. A low number means reps push the best seller and skip the range.
- Order value per call: total sales divided by the number of calls.
Check coverage before the strike rate
Count coverage against the full list each rep is given, not against the calls they logged. A rep can report a busy day and a strong strike rate while the dukas at the far end of the estate never see them.
Low coverage is a beat and route problem: too many outlets on one list, stops in a poor order, or nobody checking which were missed. A weak strike rate with good coverage is a problem inside the call. The rep works outlets in the wrong priority, or leaves before asking for the order. Fix coverage first. A strike rate built on the easy outlets flatters the team.
AAVA Brands in Nigeria saw missed beat coverage and weak must-sell compliance surface too late in its own field team. It moved sales force automation and distributor management onto the BeatRoute platform, across general and modern trade. Coverage and must-sell lists were then tracked outlet by outlet. Store-level sellouts grew 25–30%, as the AAVA Brands case study shows.
What a field sales app changes for the manager
Without an app, these numbers come from a notebook and reach the manager late. A field sales app holds the day's beat, order taking, shelf photos and payment collection on one phone. Every call is checked in at the outlet, so coverage and strike rate land as data the same day. Our guide to what a field sales app does lists the features and what to test before you buy.
BeatRoute's field sales app works on coverage and strike rate together. Route optimization sets the order of stops on each beat. The Scheduling AI Agent puts the outlets most likely to order, or most overdue for a call, at the top of each rep's day. In BeatRoute's figures, productive visits rose from 45% to 78% with it.
To see your own beats counted this way, book a demo and bring the outlet list for one territory, from a Nairobi estate to a Lagos market.
Questions sales leads ask about field sales
How many outlets should a field sales rep visit in a day?
Work it out from the outlet list. Set how often each outlet needs a call: a busy supermarket or wholesaler may need one every week, a small kiosk one every two weeks. Add up the calls in a cycle and divide by its working days. Then test that against a real day in traffic. If it does not fit, split the territory or call on the smallest outlets less often.
How is field sales different from trade marketing?
Trade marketing decides what the brand offers outlets: schemes, displays, promotions and incentives. Field sales takes those plans to the counter and reports back on whether they ran. If the two teams keep separate records, head office cannot tell an offer that flopped from one no shopkeeper ever heard about.
