How much does a poorly targeted field visit really cost you?

Every week, you measure the number of field visits carried out by your teams. Goal achieved? Well done. But ask yourself this question: were these visits really made to the right stores?

In reality, many prospective managers meet their visit targets but go to… the wrong place. Low-potential stores, sales points already saturated, visits outside business priorities. The result: a checked KPI, but 150 € lost on average per useless visit. Without this being immediately visible in your results.

In this article, discover how poor targeting discreetly impacts your profitability, and above all, how to avoid it.

How much does a store visit really cost?

To estimate the cost of a field visit, let’s take a concrete and realistic example.

Factors to consider when calculating the cost of a visit

To calculate the real cost of a store visit, several parameters must be integrated:

• Preparation time

• Travel time

• Visit time

• Hourly wage + employer contributions

• Mileage expenses / gas / company car

• Professional tools (CRM, tablet, phone…)

How to calculate it?

On average, a sales representative makes 5 visits per day, which is 25 per week.

In our study on the field sales representative profession, the average salary was €43,000 gross, variable included. With 42% employer contributions in France, this gives:

€43,000 (salary) + €18,060 (contributions) = €61,060 total employer cost

A field sales representative works an average of 251 business days - 25 days of paid time off, which equals 226 working days in the year.

The daily cost of a field sales representative is therefore: €61,060 ÷ 226 = €270

The hourly cost of a field sales representative is therefore: €270 ÷ 7 = €38.57

Cost per action taken during a visit

Travel cost

Let's add the mileage expenses:

• Average round-trip distance: 30 km

• URSSAF mileage allowance scale (5CV): 0.568 €/km

• 30 km x €0.568 = €17.04

This allowance includes: fuel, maintenance, insurance, wear and tear, and depreciation of the vehicle.

Tool cost

Let’s add any potential tools:

Samsung tablet

• Example: Samsung Galaxy Tab Active3 (current standard pro field model)

• Purchase price: ~ €450 Excl. Tax

• Standard company depreciation period: 36 months (3 years)

• €450 ÷ 36 months = €12.50 / month

• Average number of visits / month: 80 visits

• €12.50 ÷ 80 = €0.16 per visit

Field CRM

Let’s take the example of a subscription to Sidely.

• Subscription: €99 / month / user

• Average number of visits / month: 80 visits

• €99 ÷ 80 = €1.24 per visit

Professional phone

• Example: Samsung A53 ~ €350 Excl. Tax

• Depreciation period: 36 months

• €350 ÷ 36 months = €9.72 / month

• €9.72 ÷ 80 visits = €0.12 per visit

Complete minimal cost of a field visit

This results in a minimal cost of €76.50 per visit.

And in total cost?

Because that’s not all.

If we add:

• Indirect costs (management, overheads, HR)

• Full vehicle depreciation

• Additional costs (meetings, training, sales management)

• Administrative time outside of appointments

The actual full cost of a field visit generally varies between €120 and €150 per visit, or even €180 depending on the sector, agreements, and company policies.

What is the hidden cost of a useless visit?

Let’s stay positive and assume an average full cost of €120 per visit.

If your sales representatives make an average of 1 useless visit per week, and they work about 32 weeks a year, that makes 32 useless visits, representing a lost cost per representative of €3,840 / year.

Now, let's look at a sales team of 25 representatives. Scaled to your team size, this results in a direct loss of €96,000… every year.

Now you see why every visit must have a real purpose:

• A useless visit = immediate cost + missed opportunity.

• A useful visit = impact on numerical distribution (DN), shelf share, volumes, customer relationships, and revenue.

Are you sure that each of your sales representatives' visits really contributes to your company's performance? That’s what we will look at in the next section.

Why do your sales representatives sometimes target their visits poorly?

In many sales teams, route planning remains based on habits. A field sales representative always visits the same store at the beginning of the month, or organizes their days based on geography before even looking at business priorities. These habits are reassuring: they optimize logistics and maintain good relationships with the stores. But they have limits. In reality, a high-performing route is not based solely on habit or proximity, but on the true commercial impact of each visit.

The problem is that most sales representatives do not have access to consolidated data to objectively prioritize their travels. They must juggle multiple tools or files to know the sell-out performance of their products, check inventory and out-of-stock levels, or identify a store's potential according to its clientele and revenue. As a result: lacking a clear and centralized vision, the choice of visits remains mainly guided by intuition and field experience.

Let’s take a concrete example in supermarkets. A sales representative goes to a hypermarket where all products are well stocked, inventories are full, and the ongoing promotion is already perfectly set up. The visit goes quickly, with no major issues to resolve. Meanwhile, a neighboring supermarket is out of stock on a product during a major promotional campaign. No signage has been installed and the department manager is waiting for an urgent order on a high-volume reference. Result: the actual visit brings no priority action or immediate increase in revenue, while the unmade visit leads to lost sales, failed promo execution, and a weakened store relationship.

Visiting a store that is already full and has no urgent needs, while another is out of stock, means losing twice: first in time and money on a visit with low ROI, and second in revenue on a priority retail outlet that was not visited.

Why doesn’t this show up in your KPIs?

Your weekly reporting shows no warning signs. Your sales force meets its quantitative objectives well. But are they meeting their qualitative objectives? Just because the number of completed sales visits corresponds to quantitative targets does not mean that those visits align with business goals. Not all visits have the same business impact.

Are you sure that the activity you see on your CRM is the same as what is actually happening in the field?

Because in practice:

• Visits are indeed carried out, but they do not always target priority stores.

• Some physical outlets visited show low potential for immediate growth.

• Others had no particular need at that moment (no out-of-stock, sufficient inventory, promotion already set up).

• Route planning is often based on historical patterns rather than objective data-driven targeting.

And this sometimes has invisible consequences on your field performance.

These unstrategic visits do not appear directly in your KPIs. However, their impacts are very real:

Wasted time = fewer high-ROI visits

Every useless visit is a missed opportunity in a store with higher potential. Consequently, your teams spend less time where sales growth could be activated quickly.

Fewer commercial negotiations and win-win agreements

When store targeting is not optimized, your sales representatives carry out fewer high-value activities: listing new products, negotiating promotional campaigns, and sending order reminders.

An indirect drop in revenue

A poorly targeted visit can result in undetected out-of-stocks in other stores, forgotten restockings, and thus invisible but significant volume losses.

So, what is the solution?

How to avoid store targeting errors?

Today, without a suitable tool, store targeting often remains subjective and biased. Sales representatives organize their tours based on habit or intuition, without always prioritizing the sales outlets that actually generate revenue.

With Sidely, you turn your retail targeting into a true performance driver. Thanks to our additional, calculated, and survey fields, you can refine your sales outlet segmentation according to your key performance indicators and business objectives. Concretely, this allows you to quickly identify:

• Priority stores to visit based on their potential and performance.

• Outlets experiencing a drop in DN or showing a risk of delisting.

• Customers who have not been visited for a certain period of time.

• Stores requiring special attention (promotions, innovation listing, resolving out-of-stocks…).

These fields are easy to configure and dynamic: they evolve with your needs and maximize the effectiveness of your field teams. Your sales representatives only need to use the views and tags previously created and saved for them. With just one click, they gain access to lists of high-stake stores and can easily organize their routes.

“Map visualization is a true asset for Club Maté. It allows us to target key sectors, estimate distances between outlets, and optimize the sales representatives’ work. At a single glance, we have an overview of our geographical presence.” Nicolas DECHAMBRE, Co-founder, CEO & Business Manager at YM - Club-Mate

Sidely also allows you to create dynamic filtered views. From the interactive map, segment your customer data and display only the physical outlets that meet your criteria. For example, you can determine your visit frequencies and automatically generate lists based on the status of each store: overdue visit, DN below 50%, priority outlets by category, etc.

These lists are dynamic and customizable: by sales representative, geographic zone, commercial catchment area... You can also adjust their visibility according to users or user groups for management that is both global and targeted.

“Sidely’s filtered views allow us to cross-reference data from any angle, which saves us valuable time.” Nicolas DECHAMBRE, Co-founder, CEO & Business Manager at YM - Club-Mate

And that’s not all. With our new AI-powered automated routes planning feature, you cut in half the time spent each week organizing your visits. How does it work? You simply indicate the number of available days. Sidely automatically selects priority stores according to your goals (out-of-stocks, innovations, promotional operations…) and suggests optimized routes. The AI considers your contacts' hours, overnight stays if necessary, and your visit targets code for a fully tailored and maximized schedule.

Behind every useless visit, a hidden cost accumulates: wasted sales time, expenses incurred without returns, and above all, missed strategic opportunities elsewhere.

These invisible losses end up weighing heavily: lower DN, less shelf display, lower revenue. Yet, today there are practical solutions to address this, by helping your sales representatives target the right stores at the right time based on objective and business-oriented criteria.

What if, tomorrow, your teams spent less time visiting… and more time selling?