How a salesman sells more in the same shop: lines per call, explained

When sales are flat, most distributors look for new shops. New shops are expensive. Each one is another stop on a route that is already full, another owner to win over, and another credit balance to watch.

The cheaper growth is sitting in shops your van already stops at: one more of your products on each bill. Say a salesman covers 40 shops a day and adds one ₹150 line in each. That is ₹6,000 more billing a day, about ₹1.5 lakh over 25 working days, with the same van, the same fuel and the same salesman. (Put your own numbers in. The point is the multiplication, not our example.)

Three numbers, in plain words

• Productive calls. Of the shops visited, how many actually billed. 32 bills from 40 visits is 80%.
• Lines per call. How many different products are on an average bill. A bill with biscuits, soap and two drinks is four lines.
• Drop size. The average bill value.

Lines per call matters most, and not only for today’s billing. A shop that stocks two of your products can drop you next week and hardly notice. A shop that stocks eight of them depends on your van.

1. Look at the shelf before you open the order book

“Anything else today?” almost always gets “no”. The shop owner is busy, and “no” is the fastest answer. “Your 1-litre is finished” is different. It points at something he can see with his own eyes, and that is hard to wave away.

Make it a habit: twenty seconds at the shelf before the order, noting what is empty, what is low, and what is dusty. The dusty items matter too. Stock that is not moving is a problem you can help him with, and helping is what earns you the next suggestion.

2. Suggest a number, don’t ask a yes-or-no question

“Do you want the new mango drink?” invites a no. “I’ll put six of the new mango drink, it is moving fast near the school” gives him a number to adjust. Most people adjust from the first number they hear rather than starting from zero. Psychologists call this anchoring, and it is why the first number spoken matters.

Anchoring works both ways, so the number has to be honest: what the shop can sell before your next visit. Push twelve where six will sell and the other six come back to you as returns, expired stock or a balance that never gets paid. The shop remembers who overloaded him.

3. Keep a must-sell list of five

Each week, the owner picks five products for every salesman to mention in every shop: a new launch, a scheme item, a high-margin line, something slow in this area. Five, because that is roughly what a person keeps in his head on a busy route. Give a salesman twenty “focus products” and he will mention none of them.

4. Talk about his profit, not your price

A shop owner does not think about what an item costs. He thinks about what he makes on it and how fast it sells. “It’s ₹36” starts a price argument. “You make ₹4 on every piece and it sells out in a week” answers the question he is actually asking.

People also react more to losing something than to gaining the same amount. “Customers asking for this are walking to the next shop” lands harder than “you could earn more”. Use it only when it is true. He will check, and he will remember.

5. Give first

People want to return a favour. A salesman who rotates old stock to the front, takes back expired items under your returns policy, fixes a wrong bill the same day, or brings the item the owner asked for last week has done something for the shop before asking for anything. His next suggestion gets heard.

The cheapest favour is memory. “Last week you asked for the 500 ml pack, I’ve brought it” tells the owner he is dealing with someone who listens. Write those requests down, because nobody remembers forty shops.

6. Use real proof, never invented proof

People copy people like them. “Shops on this road are taking two cases a week of this” works because the owner trusts his neighbours’ judgement more than yours. That is also why made-up proof is so costly. Shop owners talk to each other, and one invented claim ruins every true one after it. Say only what you know, and never repeat what another shop buys or owes by name.

What not to do

• Don’t buy lines with discounts. A line added only because of an off-bill discount is margin you gave away, not a sale you made. See where a distributor’s margin goes.
• Don’t push stock the shop cannot sell before your next visit. It comes back as damage or as credit.
• Don’t rank salesmen on a board in week one. Compare each one with his own last month. People improve against their own record; a public league table mostly teaches the bottom half to give up.

Ten minutes a week

For each salesman, write four figures: shops visited, productive calls, lines per call, drop size. Look for the shops that buy only one or two of your products. That short list is next week’s work, and it usually adds more than a new route would. It works best on a fixed beat where the same salesman sees the same shop on the same day.

How Mulberry Sales helps

Every bill is made on the salesman’s phone with each product as its own line, so the figures above come from real bills instead of memory. Reports break sales down by shop, product and salesman for any date range, so the one-product shops are easy to find (Growth plan and up). A note saved against a shop, such as “asked for 500 ml”, shows on screen when the salesman bills that shop. Scheme items are added to the bill automatically, so a free-goods offer is never forgotten (Growth plan and up). See FMCG distribution software.