How to manage your team using Google Maps

You are a sales manager with a growing FMCG brand, managing a team of 10-20 sales reps in a territory (say Punjab). Your company hasn’t implemented a good Sales Force Automation (SFA) software yet. But you want to monitor your team’s movement and market working.

Follow this 3-step process, put your entire team on Google maps and start tracking their market working to become a more effective sales manager.

As a Sales Manager, it is your job to constantly talk to your sales team and get regular updates about their location, sales calls, orders were taken, training, and so much more. It often gets hectic to call each salesperson to inquire about their status. In such cases, you can use the freely available and easy to set up Google Maps to track your team.

Step 1: – Create your Virtual Beat/Territory

Using Google Maps, you track your location and even create your own “territories,” also known as Layers. You can create multiple layers in a map and use those layers on top of Google Maps to see your beat.

To create your map, you should visit – www.google.co.in/mymaps on your device. If you have never created a map, you would find an empty dashboard. To create your map, click on the “+Create a New Map” button.

After clicking on the Create a new map button, a new screen opens that shows the map of the world. On the left-hand side, you will see an information box that has all the details in regards to your current map.

For this example, we shall simply change “Untitled Map” to “Delhi – Karol Bagh Territory for Peri” by clicking on the title.This name of the map will help you identify them in your account. While changing the name, you will get an option to add a Description about the map. This description will help you and other collaborators understand what the map is about.

Let us assume that we have 3 Sales representatives in Karol Bagh area named Gautam, Harsh and Vivek. Based on the outlets listed in that area, we can create a “Territory” for each sales representative and add them in a single layer. We can rename this layer as “Beats”.

To create our first beat, let’s search for the area “Karol Bagh” and locate it on Google Maps. You can search your target area/outlet directly.

Once your map shows the searched area, click on the “Draw a Line” option followed by “Add line or Shape” to start drawing your territory.

You can then click on all corners of your selected area to define it as a Territory. Once you complete the path, you will be asked to name the area as well as provide a description. In the name, you can specify the name of the Sales Rep to whom the beat is allocated. This naming will help you to assign a specific location to a specific individual. You can also change the color of the territory for easier recognition

The final result might seem something like this: –

Congratulations! You have successfully completed the first part of the process.

Note:- The maps that you create on Google My Maps are automatically saved in your Google Drive making it super easy to share and collaborate.

Step 2: – Add your Teammates

To add your teammates’ GPS data, you need to connect with them on the Google Maps app. This feature is only possible on the mobile device. So, go to Google Maps on your phone. Open up the menu on Google Maps and go to “Location Sharing”.

Click on the add member icon that would allow you to add your teammates. You can select to share your location using Gmail or sharing your link via Whatsapp. Simply share the link with your teammates so that they can see your live location actively.

Once your teammates can see your location, they just have to allow access to share their location with you by clicking on the button next to “Share your location”.

Once you share your location, you will be able to see all your teammates in the top bar next to the add button.

Once your teammates share their location with you, you can start requesting access from them in the future. If someone has turned off their location, you can simply click on their image and click on “Request” to send a request to share their location with you.

In just 2 clicks from your sales representatives, you can easily see their locations at any time.

Step 3: – Add your custom Map over the location

Now that you have access to everyone’s location and can see them on your map, you simply need to overlay the saved map that you created earlier. You can now see the maps that you have created by simply going to Menu and selecting “Your Places”. In the many tabs available, go to the “Maps” tab where you will find a list of all your maps that you have created.

Since we have created a territory named – “Delhi – Karol Bagh Territory for Peri”, we click on it to show the beats that we had created. You can see the person’s name, location, as well as the level of their battery in the map itself!

Pros

1. Most of the sales professionals have Android phones and low storage as well. Installing a new app to track their location would include a lot of extra efforts and storage from the sales representative. Hence, this method is super light on the phone as Google Maps is pre-installed on all Android devices.
2. Easy to create beats and territories using Google My Maps.
3. 2 click on-boarding of your sales representative.

Cons

1. Requires time to create territories/beats
2. List of registered outlets not listed on the map
3. Does not show orders taken or sales calls made

Peri CRM has location tracking features as well as showing the outlets, orders, sales summary and so much more in a single dashboard. Email us – sales@pericrm.com or call us at +91-96259-235-17 to see how Peri can be useful to your company.