Short answer Field sales, also called outside sales, is selling in person on the buyer's own premises, instead of by phone or online. 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.
In Nairobi or Lagos, a field team spends its week going back to outlets that already carry the brand: the estate duka, the kiosk by the bus stage, the wholesaler in the open market.
Field sales meaning: the seller goes to the buyer
Field sales is any selling where the rep travels to meet the customer face to face, at their shop, pharmacy, clinic or site. A medical rep calling on doctors in Kano does field sales. So does a building-materials rep who works one contractor for months to win a large order. A biscuit brand's pre-seller in the same Eastlands dukas every Tuesday does it too, and this guide is about that kind.
What field sales gains you, and what it costs
What you gain
- Trust. Owners tend to give shelf space to the brand whose rep they see every week.
- Eyes on the outlet. The rep notices what the owner would never mention on the phone: a gap on the shelf, a carton near its expiry date, another brand's crates stacked in front.
What it costs
- Time on the road. Fuel, traffic and distance mean a rep reaches far fewer outlets a day than a phone seller.
- A blind spot at head office. Without a check-in at each outlet, the brand knows only what reps tell it, and results swing with each rep.
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 works at that outlet end, 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.
After the call, 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 next day.
- Van sales. The stock rides with the rep, who sells off the van, prints the invoice and takes payment at the counter. Our van sales software runs the van's whole day from one phone.
The person making these calls may be called a field sales executive, sales rep, salesman or pre-seller. Often the distributor pays them, not the brand. The brand still decides the beat, the targets and the must-sell list, and follows the work in its distributor management system. A supervisor or sales officer goes out on beats to coach a handful of reps, and an area sales manager (ASM) answers for an area's distributors, reps and results.
What a field sales executive does in each outlet
A good call covers five tasks:
- 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. At a duka in an Eastlands estate, a snacks pre-seller books the usual top-up. She moves last week's new pack from a carton in the back to the front shelf, adds it to the order and collects the old invoice by mobile money. Two doors down, a kiosk new to the brand places its first order.
Head office counts the order, but the shelf check decides the next one: an owner stuck with unsold packs in the store room does not reorder.
What makes a good field sales executive
- Plans the day so no outlet on the beat is left out, even the ones at the far end of the estate.
- Reads a shelf at a glance: what is missing, and what sits at the wrong price.
- Keeps the call short while the owner serves customers.
- Reports honestly, including the outlets they skipped.
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.
| 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 |
Only a rep can put a product back on the shelf, so decide which outlets need someone at the shelf, and how often. Between calls, or when a rep cannot reach an outlet, BeatRoute's TeleOrder AI Agent can ring the retailer and take the order in their own language. That saves the visit for the shelf, the scheme and the new outlet.
Five numbers that show field sales is working
- 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: wrong priorities, or leaving before asking for the order. Fix coverage first, since a strike rate built on the easy outlets flatters the team.
AAVA Brands in Nigeria found missed beats and weak must-sell compliance too late. It moved sales force automation and distributor management onto the BeatRoute platform, across general and modern trade, and tracked coverage and must-sell lists 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
A field sales app holds the day's beat, order taking, shelf photos and payment collection on the rep's phone. Every call is checked in at the outlet, so coverage and strike rate reach the manager the same day. Our guide to what a field sales app does lists the features 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?
Set how often each outlet needs a call: weekly for a busy supermarket or wholesaler, every two weeks for a small kiosk. Add up the calls in a cycle and divide by its working days. If that does not fit a real day in traffic, 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.
