Should I drive or fly to that customer meeting.
For destinations within a few hours distance, this used to be an easy question to answer. But with gas at over $4 a gallon, taking a closer look at the cost of driving may not be a bad idea either.
Even if flying is no option, calculating the cost of your trip may help you be more critical of the deals you decide to pursue and those you don’t.
Here’s a tool that will help you with that.
Built on top of Google Maps, DrivePricing.com allows you to set your departing and arrival locations, your ZIP code (so it can calculate your local price of gas) as well as your car mileage and the type of fuel it uses. When you’re done, it gives you the cost of your trip and plots your journey on a map.
What a wonderful tool for road warriors. $180 for a trip from Chicago to St Louis? I think I’ll suggest a conference call instead.
Give DrivePricing.com it a try.
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Jan,
This gets very real, very fast, if you are a small business owner with only a few small unknown clients you are trying to peddle. Creativity in the sales process becomes the name of the game real fast. I am looking forward to the day when the majority of the sales process can be done via telecom and internet using web based tools. However that being said, there is no replacement for the face to face and catching the body language etc.
@ Paul – there’ll continue to be a need for face-to-face in many sales processes.
What the use of tools like these hopefully accomplishes is to help ensure that:
1. a deliberate decision is being made whether an on-site visit is needed or technology (conference call, web conference etc) can be used.
2. if the face-to-face meeting is needed, make sure a clear set of objectives for and outcomes of the meeting are being drawn up and agreed upon.
Run your territory like it’s your own business. This could be a sales tool to help you look at your own activities in that context.
Hey Jan, thanks for the tip !
I’ll be able to use this almost daily.