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Coverage is the decision about which stores your team visits, how often, and in what order. Your field team’s time is the scarcest thing you have, so tiering stores and matching visit frequency to each tier decides where that time goes. Use this page to segment your stores, set a service model for each tier, and turn it into call cycles, recurring visits, and routes in FieldKo.

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Why It Matters

A store that isn’t visited can’t be fixed, and stores drift away from standard between visits. Bain recommends setting the number of visits by balancing the cost of a visit against the sales lost as store conditions degrade between visits, and prioritizing outlets by their potential, not only their current sales.1 Unvisited stores are also unmeasured stores. POPAI UK and Ireland, the United Kingdom (UK) and Ireland arm of Point of Purchase Advertising International (POPAI), reported that when in-store campaigns are audited at all, often only about 20% of stores are checked, usually the highest-turnover ones.2 Without a coverage plan, the rest of your estate runs on assumption.

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Best Practice

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1. Segment Stores by Value and Potential

Group stores using data, not rep instinct. Common inputs are store size and channel, your category sales in the store, growth potential, and shopper profile.1 Rank the stores in each channel and cut them into a few tiers, such as A, B, and C. Three or four tiers are enough for most teams; more tiers are hard to serve differently.

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2. Set a Service Model for Each Tier

For each tier, decide how often stores are visited, how long a visit takes, who serves them, and which perfect store standard applies. There’s no industry benchmark for visit frequency by tier, so start from your own economics and measure the result. Here’s an example to adapt, not a benchmark: Some teams serve their smallest stores by phone or through a distributor instead of a visit. Whatever you choose, write it down, so planners and reps apply it the same way.

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3. Weigh the Cost to Serve

A visit costs the rep’s time in the store plus the travel to get there. Ask whether the sales a visit protects or adds in each tier are worth that cost. Two common mistakes show up here: visiting every store at the same frequency, and over-serving low-value stores because they’re convenient to reach. When the numbers don’t add up, change the frequency, the visit length, or who serves the store.

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4. Build Call Cycles and Journey Plans

A call cycle is a fixed planning period, such as 4 weeks, and a journey plan is the repeating set of visits each rep makes inside it. Build the journey plan from the tiers: an A store visited weekly appears every week of the cycle, and a C store visited monthly appears once. Group stores that are close to each other on the same day, so reps spend their time in stores rather than in the car. Keep journey plans stable from cycle to cycle. Store staff learn when to expect your rep, and missed visits stand out in reports.

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5. Plan the Route

Before each day, put the visits in an order that cuts travel time. Leave space for time-bound work, such as a promotion setup or a launch, and add it to the visits already planned for those stores where you can, instead of creating extra trips.

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6. Review Tiers Regularly

Stores change: new stores open, ranges grow, and a C store can become an A store. Review tiers on a fixed schedule, such as every quarter or every year, and when a major customer or range change happens. Then update the visit frequency to match.

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How FieldKo Helps

Route optimization works differently in Salesforce and in the app. On the Visit Map tab in Salesforce, accepting an optimized route also changes the planned times of your own visits. In the FieldKo Atlas app, it changes only the route on the map. See Plan Your Route on the Visit Map Tab.

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A Coverage Recipe in FieldKo

Put the practices together like this:
  1. Record each store’s tier in an account field, such as Grade, so you can filter and report by it.
  2. Create call cycles for every rep for the fiscal year.
  3. Create a recurrence pattern for each tier’s frequency, and assign it to that tier’s accounts, or to an account set.
  4. Create recurring visits for each tier, using the tier’s visit template.
  5. Each week, check the Overdue Stores report and plan visits for stores that are Past Due.

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Common Pitfalls

  • No active call cycle. A rep without an active call cycle that covers today gets no visits in the app. Check cycles before each fiscal year and when you add reps. See Check Call Cycle Coverage.
  • The same frequency for every store. It spends A-store time on C stores.
  • Tiers that never change. A tiering from two years ago sends reps to the wrong stores.
  • Missing store coordinates. Stores without coordinates don’t appear on the Visit Planner map, and the app can’t route to visits that have no location. See Keep Account Coordinates Current.

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See Also

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Sources

  1. Bain and Company, “How Advanced Analytics Is Transforming Sales Execution,” accessed 2026. Read the article
  2. POPAI UK and Ireland, “In-Store Insights, Issue 24: Compliance Report,” 2015. Read the report
Last modified on October 26, 2026