The field rep who can't answer "when did we last visit this account?" in under ten seconds has already lost the conversation. The territory is too large, the account list too long, the mix of existing customers and active prospects too complex to carry in memory. What makes the difference at quota time isn't effort — it's pattern recognition across visit data that only exists if you logged it.
Reading the Territory at a Glance
Client Type and Visit Type are the classification axes that turn a list of accounts into a readable territory map. Whether an account is an existing customer on a rental agreement or a prospect with a competitor's equipment in-house changes everything about what the visit is for. Logging both against the Activity Date means you can look back across thirty days and see immediately whether your visit mix is weighted correctly — too many existing customer check-ins relative to new business development calls is a pattern that shows up before it shows up in the pipeline numbers.
Business Name with Contact Person and Opposition Info in the same record creates the competitive intelligence layer that most CRM systems bury in separate modules. Knowing which competitor's equipment is currently installed at an account — and having that field in the same record as the contact details and visit history — means the conversation about switching costs starts from a position of preparation, not improvisation.
Address with Email, Work Phone, and Mobile Phone complete the outreach record. Having the mobile in the visit log specifically matters for field sales: the mobile number for the decision-maker isn't always in the main company record, but a rep who got it during a site visit and logged it has a direct line that bypasses the front desk.
The Service and Satisfaction Record
Happy With Service is a field that earns its place by being honest. A visit record that includes an explicit satisfaction indicator alongside Issues creates a longitudinal view of account health that's different from what any survey system produces. A survey is a snapshot at a moment the customer was prompted. A field rep's visit log reflects ongoing reality — accounts where "happy" appears six times in a row are defensible; accounts where it doesn't are at risk before they request to terminate.
Notes alongside Issues handles the nuance that binary satisfaction fields can't. The account where the hardware is fine but there's a billing dispute, the account where the contact person changed and the new one doesn't know the contract terms — these are the situations that show up in Notes and that determine whether the renewal conversation goes smoothly or sideways.
Rental Equipment as a Financial Relationship
Current Equipment, Rental Facility, Current Rental, Rental Period, Commencement Date, and Cartridge Cost Monthly constitute a rental equipment ledger attached to the CRM record. This is the data that tells you the financial relationship, not just the sales relationship. A client who's been on a three-year rental at a commencement date now two years past is at a different stage of the relationship than a client who signed six months ago. The Rental Period against the Commencement Date tells you when the agreement becomes renewable — and that date, with enough lead time, is when the visit frequency should increase, not when the renewal notice goes out automatically.
Equipment and Rental fields — separate from the current equipment fields — handle the historical or proposed equipment detail that doesn't fit in the active rental record. Tracking what was previously installed, or what equipment was demoed during a visit, builds the product history for an account that matters when the renewal conversation turns to an upgrade.
The Cartridge Cost Monthly is the recurring revenue figure attached to the account relationship. Territory managers running monthly recurring revenue calculations need this at the account level, not aggregated from a billing system that doesn't segment by rep or territory. Logging it in the visit record means the field rep can run their own MRR calculation by account without waiting for finance to produce a report.