What Does a Field Sales Visit Cost? The Calculation for Wholesale

Last updated: October 2026

Monday morning, the yard of a plumbing contractor. The appointment has been in the calendar for eight weeks. The warehouse is full, the owner needs nothing, and there is coffee. Two towns over, a roofer hasn't ordered any underlay membrane for weeks, and nobody has noticed.

At the latest in the budget meeting, management asks what a field sales rep actually costs. The figure then serves as an argument: for a new position, against a new position, or for software. From our point of view, a visit at just under €100 is cheap if it is with the right customer. The expensive visit is the one that only happens because the calendar says so.

What counts toward the cost of a field sales rep?

The cost of a field sales rep is their full cost: everything the employer bears for them in a year. This includes gross salary, the employer's share of social security, company car, expenses, and IT and equipment, plus commissions and a share of management costs.

Definition: The annual full cost is the sum of all employer costs for a field sales rep. The cost per visit is this full cost divided by the number of customer visits per year.

Five terms are often treated as the same but mean different things:

• Salary is only one item of the full cost, albeit the largest.
• Field sales compensation covers the fixed salary and variable components, but neither vehicle nor expenses.
• Sales costs cover the entire sales function, including inside sales and management.
• A commercial agent is self-employed and does not appear as a personnel cost.
• The cost per visit refers to the appointment, not to the order.

How do you calculate the cost per year and per visit?

You calculate in two steps. First: full cost = gross salary + employer's share + vehicle + expenses + IT + commissions + management costs + other attributable costs. Second: cost per visit = full cost ÷ (field days × visits per day).

The formula has two levers. The numerator is the costs, which can hardly be moved without paying people less. The denominator is the visits, and what a visit brings in depends on them as well.

The model calculation for wholesale

The study uses the median gross salary from the Entgeltatlas of the Federal Employment Agency (KldB 61123, as of 31.12.2025: €5,344 a month). To this are added 21% employer's share based on the 2026 social security figures and vehicle costs based on ADAC car costs 2026. The denominator comes from roughly six visits a day from our conversations (median of 42 responses) and the 176 field days assumed in the model calculation.

Item	Basis	Amount per year (on paper)
Gross salary	12 × €5,344	€64,128
Employer's share	21%	€13,467
Vehicle	Estimate based on ADAC car costs 2026	€12,000
Expenses	Study estimate	€6,000
IT and equipment	Study estimate	€2,500
**Full cost**	Total	**around €98,000**
Visits per year	6 × 176 days	around 1,000
**Cost per visit**	Full cost ÷ visits	**just under €100**

If you pay commission, add it on top. The range of €76,000 to €129,000 depends mainly on the salary level.

Field sales as a cost factor: Which blocks weigh the most?

Salary with the employer's share weighs the most. Vehicle, expenses and IT together come to €20,500 in the model calculation.

On salary, the sources diverge. The median target salary in field sales is €56,000 gross at Experteer, and Stepstone cites €48,800 for field service in the trades. The BA median is higher. Reliable figures for your own industry come from paid compensation studies for sales and marketing.

The company car is the second-largest block. Often more expensive than the car itself is the time spent in it, because every hour of driving is an hour missing at the customer.

Meal allowance and mileage allowance

For domestic business trips in 2026, the rates remain unchanged at €14 for absences of more than eight hours and €28 for a full 24 hours. For trips abroad, there are country-specific flat rates in the Lohnsteuer-Handbuch of the Federal Ministry of Finance. The mileage allowance applies only to trips in a private car. Both are tax figures. What your company actually pays is set out in its travel expense policy.

Is your field sales team expensive or market standard?

Around €98,000 is a calculated benchmark for wholesale. Whether your field sales team is expensive, however, depends on what the roughly 1,000 visits a year deliver.

According to our study, a field sales rep looks after 247 customers on average, 175 at the median. On paper, they see each customer about four times a year, just under six times at the median. For example: someone who visits their 30 most important customers monthly uses up 360 visits on them. That leaves a good 600 for the remaining 145 customers.

In one of our conversations, an interviewee calculated about 600 customers per field sales rep, at six visits a day. There is never enough time for all of them. The selection is then made in the rep's head, because the CRM rarely provides anything for it: in 49% of 182 analyzed conversations with wholesalers, it is barely used or not used at all in field sales.

“We have so many customers to look after that it is simply difficult to really keep every customer in view. As a rule, we are actually operating reactively at the moment.”

(IT Director, €600M food wholesaler, customer conversation)

At what revenue does a single visit pay off?

A visit pays for itself if the gross profit it triggers exceeds its costs. The break-even point per visit equals the visit cost divided by the gross margin.

Example (hypothetical): With just under €100 per visit and an assumed gross margin of 25%, a visit has to trigger roughly €400 of additional revenue. The margin is made up; use your own.

The second calculation usually convinces finance more. Suppose 200 of the roughly 1,000 visits take place at customers with no reason for a visit. On paper, that is around €20,000 a year per field sales rep, with not a single euro of revenue set against it.

Field sales staff or commercial agent: What pays off?

A commercial agent costs money mainly when they sell. According to our model calculation, an employed field sales rep in wholesale costs around €98,000 a year without commissions and management costs, even in a weak quarter. In return, management, customer knowledge and the relationship stay in-house.

Criterion	Employed field sales	Commercial agent
Cost structure	mostly fixed	mostly variable via commission
Management	Visit planning and instructions	self-employed, via contract
Customer knowledge	stays in-house	rests with the agent
End of contract	Notice periods	Compensation claim under § 89b HGB
Fits when	Existing business with many customers carries the revenue	New territory, uncertain volume

At the end of the contract, the agent gets more expensive again: the compensation claim can reach up to one average annual commission over the last five years. In the agent's favor is the fact that a permanent hire takes time. According to the Fachkräfteengpassanalyse 2025 (skilled labor shortage analysis) of the Federal Employment Agency, filling a position in wholesale takes 85 days at the median.

How can you reduce the cost per visit?

More visits at the same cost lower the cost per visit; more yield per visit improves profitability. The second lever is bigger, and it starts with planning visits by signal rather than by date.

Rigid intervals of four, eight or twelve weeks follow the calendar. The field rep then stands in front of a customer who needs nothing, while another quietly churns. Churn happens product group by product group, and total revenue looks healthy for a long time because the standard items keep selling. A signal looks like this: a customer otherwise buys a product group every 16 weeks and has ordered nothing for 25 weeks. Such deviations from the customer's own order frequency have long been sitting in the ERP, as we show in our article on churn risk.

If the search for signals stays manual, it eats up the time it is supposed to save.

“Once a month we get a report listing all customers who are 15 days or more outside their regular ordering rhythm. Then the really laborious, cumbersome work begins. You can definitely count on a good hour per customer.”

(Head of sales, mid-sized manufacturing company, initial conversation)

Field sales reps are salespeople, not analysts. The data work should be outsourced; sales needs ready-made recommendations. Route planning cuts travel costs but doesn't say which customer is due this week. A white-spot analysis by potential answers that. Less admin work through automation also gives visit capacity back. Preparation pays off as well: in one in four conversations with wholesalers, field sales barely prepares visits, if at all.

Checklist: What must a solution be able to do?

• Analyze signals from ERP and CRM daily, per customer and product group.
• Deliver ready-made recommendations instead of reports you have to analyze yourself.
• Appear where field sales works: Outlook, CRM, smartphone.
• Allow follow-up by voice.
• Work with the data quality you already have.

You should continuously measure cost per visit, visits per day and the share of customers beyond their usual order cycle. More on this in our field sales KPIs.

Not for you: When this calculation and the signal approach don't fit

The model calculation does not replace a full-cost calculation from your accounting, because commissions and management costs are missing. Visit prioritization brings little if a field sales rep looks after only a handful of key accounts that they already follow closely anyway. It also hardly helps in pure new-customer business, because the signals come from order history. And no software lowers salary or company car costs. It changes what the paid time is used for.

How to implement visit prioritization with Acto

Acto is the vendor of the software described here. Acto analyzes the order data from your ERP and presents field sales every morning with the customers where a visit is worthwhile. Schäfer Shop increased revenue by 11.2% with Acto, and sales there marks 92% of signals as relevant. Plate increased revenue by 10.0% and saves 1.5 hours a day.

• Prioritize customer visits by order gaps, revenue decline and missing product groups.
• Prepare conversations with the customer's open opportunities and risks.
• Follow up visits by voice instead of typing visit reports on a laptop.

Gespräch vereinbaren

Frequently asked questions (FAQ)

What does a field sales rep cost per year?

In wholesale, roughly €98,000 on paper, with a range of €76,000 to €129,000. This includes salary, employer's share, vehicle, expenses and IT, but no commissions or management costs.

How high is field sales compensation including commission?

There is no reliable flat figure for this, because commission models vary widely from company to company. Stepstone cites a median salary of €48,800 gross a year for field service in the trades, Experteer a median target salary of €56,000 gross a year for field sales. You add the variable pay from your own model.

How high is the meal allowance?

Domestically, €14 for absences of more than eight hours and €28 for a full 24 hours. For abroad, country-specific flat rates of the Federal Ministry of Finance apply.

Is a commercial agent cheaper than an employed field sales rep?

In a new territory with uncertain volume, often yes, because almost only commission is incurred. In existing business with many customers, you lose management and customer knowledge in return. At the end of the contract, the compensation claim under § 89b HGB comes on top.

We're missing a field sales rep. Shouldn't we just hire?

First calculate how many of your visits per field sales rep had a reason; our model calculation assumes roughly 1,000 visits. If a noticeable share goes to customers without a need, better prioritization lets you steer existing capacity toward customers with a need before you commit roughly €98,000 a year to a new hire.

How many of your visits have a reason is something we are happy to work out with you using your own figures.