Sales management · Sales expenses
A hotel limit that works in Nashik fails in Mumbai, so set limits by city tier.
A city tier expense rate card sets a daily ceiling on hotel, food and local travel, with a separate figure for metro cities, tier-2 towns and tier-3 towns. This page shows how to choose the lines, borrow your tiers from a published scheme, test the draft on real claims and set a review date.
Scope, fee, reporting and term are agreed in writing after we have read your brief and spoken to you.
In one paragraph
A city tier expense rate card sets a daily ceiling on hotel, food and local travel, with a separate figure for metro cities, tier-2 towns and tier-3 towns. This page shows how to choose the lines, borrow your tiers from a published scheme, test the draft on real claims and set a review date.
A pump manufacturer in Rajkot gives every rep the same nightly hotel limit. In Ahmedabad the limit buys a room near the railway station that the rep will not sleep in. In Junagadh the same sum buys the best hotel in town, so that rep takes a bigger room than needed. The Ahmedabad rep pays the shortfall from pocket. Nobody mentions it.
The rate card is a single table with cities in the columns and expense lines in the rows. Everything on it is a limit for a day or a night, and each limit is a number your accounts person can check a bill against. It carries the figures that the written expense policy leaves blank.
Start from the city classes that salary structures already use for house rent, the X, Y and Z grouping, because your reps and your CA both know them. Put each town your reps visit into a class. Do not build your own list of tiers from scratch.
The owner approves the card, accounts keeps it, and the sales manager tests it. It sits after the reimbursement or allowance decision, which says which lines are paid up to a limit, and before the claim workflow, which checks bills against it.
Where this sits
Topic 8 of 14 in sales management: sales expenses. Policies and controls for the cost of selling.
- The topic before
- Compensation
- The topic after
- Quotas and targets
If you want this done for you
Reps report to someone who is too busy selling to manage them.
The work
What this is actually like.
“Test the card on bills you already have”
Take last quarter's claims and run each against the draft limit. If every hotel bill in a tier is over the limit, the limit is wrong. If none is, it is too generous. The aim is a few exceptions, not none.
“Festivals and fairs break the table”
Hotels in Pushkar, Madurai, Tirupati and Mysuru double their rates in fair and festival weeks. Add a short seasonal note or a pre-approval route for named weeks, or reps will either stay away from good customers or fight every claim.
“Town is not the same as tier”
A rep sent to an industrial estate on the edge of a metro faces metro prices for food but town prices for rooms. Decide whether the card follows the city name or the place where the rep works, and write that down.
“Meals are harder than rooms”
A hotel bill is a single receipt. Meals on the road are small cash payments with no bill. Use a fixed daily meal figure per tier and say that no bill is needed, instead of asking for proof that does not exist.
What we do
What you end up with.
The documents this topic produces, what each one is for, and how you know it is finished.
The rate table
Rows for hotel per night, meals per day, local conveyance per day and outstation travel class. One column each for metro cities, tier-2 towns and tier-3 towns. Each cell holds a figure and its unit. Accounts fills it using a published benchmark such as government daily allowance tables or listed hotel rates.
Result: Finished when every cell has a number and a unit and none says to be decided.
The town-to-tier list
Every town your reps visit, with its tier. A two-column sheet kept next to the card. When a rep goes to a new town, the sales manager adds it the same day.
Result: Finished when a rep can find any town on their route without asking.
The exceedance test
A sheet showing each tier, how many recent claims went over the draft limit and by how much. The owner reads it, then moves the limits that fail. Keep the final version on file.
Result: Finished when the share of claims over each limit is small enough that the owner is willing to approve every exception.
The review date and season note
The date on which the card is looked at again, and a line for peak weeks in the towns where rates jump. Put the card inside the expense policy and inside whatever tool reps use to file claims.
Result: Finished when a rep who opens the claim form sees the limit for the city they entered.
Why us
Why owners pick GullySales over an agency.
Marketing and sales, as one job
Most agencies stop at the enquiry. We also fix what happens after it: the reply, the follow-up, the quote and the CRM.
The person on the first call does the work
No account managers in between. You are never handed to someone you have not met.
A baseline before anything starts
Your numbers are written down on day one, so every later report compares against something honest.
The fee in writing, split three ways
Our time, your media spend and production on separate lines. You always see what goes to us.
No guarantees we cannot keep
The term is agreed in writing and never a default twelve months. We never promise a ranking or a lead count, because nobody controls those.
One office, and we say so
Nagarbhavi, Bengaluru. We work across India by call and WhatsApp and travel when a session needs to be in person.
#257, 3rd floor, Sri Nanjundeshwara Complex, Nagarbhavi 8th Block, Outer Ring Road. How we work.
Your brief
Tell us what you need, and we will read it before we call.
Eight short steps about your business, what you want and who decides. Most questions are a tap, and you can skip any you would rather answer on the call.
FAQ
Questions owners ask before they call.
Not here? More answers, or ask on WhatsApp.
How many tiers do we need?
Where do I find hotel and meal figures to start with?
What if a rep must stay in a dear hotel near the customer?
Do tiers matter for a business with only a few reps?
How much does it cost?
How long is the contract?
How soon will we see results?
Who will actually do the work?
What do you need from us?
What if we are not happy with the work?
Where to go next
The work that carries this topic further.
The rest of sales expenses
Or read all of sales management.
Your next practical step
Tell us what you are trying to grow, and we will read it before we call.
Eight short steps, mostly taps. Skip anything you would rather answer on the call.