Corona Virus: Thinking outside the Route Sales Van

The Corona Virus (Covid19) is making businesses come up with innovative solutions.  What are some out of the box ideas your Route Sales people could do to keep your business going and possibly even growing?

You can go old school by taking fax or email orders.  You can take orders from your website.  Or perhaps an iPhone or Android App like Order Trakker, that makes it easier to order your products from you than getting them anywhere else.

Let’s talk about innovation in a pandemic.

So here we are, about 2 1/2 weeks into this social distancing for Corona Virus (Covid19) and it’s been extended out for another four.

So there are some really great Innovation things that are going on right now.  I’m actually kind of  excited to see what Innovations were going to come out of this that we’re really going to be excited about and people going to say, “boy why haven’t we been doing this for a long time?”  But then we’ll be others were will say that wasn’t great.  It helped to get us through right now, but that’s not what we want to do for the long term.  So it will be real interesting to see how this plays out the next few weeks.

A lot of restaurants are offering carry out that normally don’t.  A lot of businesses are offering pick up options that normally don’t.  This is a great opportunity for looking at what types of Innovations can you make in your business.  Either for the short-term or perhaps it’ll be a longer-term solution.

So with Route Sales, services is an important part.  Right now getting into some businesses is not happening.  So they’re taking deliveries and having them dropped off outside their door on the loading or at the front door.   Then they are having somebody bring it in, but they are not having even delivery people in to bring in things.

One solution to help with that would be of course to go old school and let your customers order over the phone,  fax, or email, or more modern, from your website.

Another solution would be to use an app.  We have an app, Order Trakker, that used by grocery store chains, warehouse distribution center, supply houses, things like that where their customers will place the order on a tablet or phone.  On their iPhone or Android while they are actually standing there looking at the product they need.  They can either enter in the product number off of it, they can look it up, they can even scan it if there is a barcode.  If there is a barcode they can scan the number and scan it in and load that with a quantity and submit that order  and then have it delivered.

So without having to go write down a piece of paper and then have to go back over someplace and look it up on the computer through the website and try and re-find.  Just right through their tablet, find the item enter once for they need.  Set  a quantity.  Confirm it and place the order.  It immediately goes to you and then your service people can then just deliver it to them to the door.

This isn’t the Route Sales traditional model I know.  But it isn’t a traditional time right now.  So to allow the customer to still get what they need from you, while allowing that social distancing that they’re not able to come into the physical facility.

Learn more about Order Trakker