General trade is won one outlet at a time. A salesperson — or a distributor's salesman — works a beat: a planned set of shops visited on fixed days. The beat is where a brand's distribution strategy meets the street, and it is also where it most often goes unmeasured.
Most managers know their primary sales to the rupee. Far fewer can tell you, for last week, how many planned outlets were visited, how many ordered, and which have not ordered in a month.
The numbers that matter
| Measure | What it tells you |
|---|---|
| Outlet coverage | Share of planned outlets actually visited |
| Productive calls | Share of visits that produced an order |
| Lines per call | How many products each order covers — your range depth |
| Drop size | Average order value per productive call |
| Silent outlets | Outlets on the beat with no order for N weeks |
| Collections per beat | Money collected against outstanding |
Coverage without productivity means visits are happening but not selling. Productivity without lines per call means you are selling one hero product and missing the range. Silent outlets are next month's lost distribution.
Why these numbers are usually missing
- Visits are reported, not recorded. An end-of-day message says "covered 40 shops".
- Orders are taken on paper or by phone and typed in later, without a link to the visit.
- The network is weak in exactly the markets that matter, so apps that need it get abandoned.
- Distributor salesmen use the distributor's tools, which the brand cannot see.
How Zaqnet records retail execution
GroundLink, Zaqnet's mobile app, is built for the outlet:
- Visits, orders and collections are recorded at the shop, against the customer, online or offline — they sync when the connection returns.
- Productive visits are recorded as such, so productive calls are counted, not estimated.
- Location is recorded with the work, and managers see the day's trail, halts and stops in Trackboard.
- Customers are pinned to their location, so coverage can be read on a map, not just a list.
In ControlRoom, the office sees the same records: who visited which outlets, what was ordered, what was collected, and which outlets have gone quiet. Day-end closure brings the day's work together for review.
A beat plan you cannot measure is a wish list.
Using the numbers
- Look at silent outlets first — they are the cheapest growth you have.
- Compare productive calls across people on similar beats, not across the whole team.
- Watch lines per call after a range launch to see if the new product is really being sold in.
- Rebalance beats where coverage is consistently low; the beat may be too long, not the person too slow.
Estimate with the calculator below what poor retail execution is costing you.