Callplan: An Interactive Salesman's Call Planning System

Abstract

CALLPLAN is an interactive computer system designed to aid salesmen or sales management in allocating sales call time more efficiently. The system increases their capacity to consider the allocation in a logical and consistent manner. CALLPLAN uses as input the salesman's own best estimates of expected contribution of all possible call policies for each account and prospect. The computer can help the estimating procedure by fitting curves through estimated points on a response function or by obtaining expected values from probability estimates. The system solves a mathematical program which determines the best time allocation to maximize contribution according to these estimates. Factors considered by the system include travel time and costs to get to geographical areas within the territory, amount of time required per call on an account within an area, account profitability, and minimum and maximum account call frequency limitations. An efficient incremental analysis routine is discussed as a solution procedure for the mathematical program. CALLPLAN seems best suited to repetitive selling situations where the amount of time the salesman spends with an account is an important factor in the magnitude of sales generated. Preliminary applications have been made by fourteen salesmen in six sales situations. A transcript of a session at the computer terminal of one application is presented. Anticipated sales increases, based on the salesman's judgmental inputs, for the call policy generated by CALLPLAN were between five and twenty-five per cent in the majority of applications.