Mapping the future of field sales 

 A conversation with Steve Benson, CEO of Badger Maps   

What if saving 10 hours per week was just one click away?

Field sales can feel like a whirlwind: navigating routes, balancing territories, and closing deals—all while racing the clock. But what if you had a tool that made your daily grind not just faster but smarter?

In our first 2025 episode of the Zoho CRM Podcast, we sat down with Steve Benson—the CEO and founder of Badger Maps, a Stanford Business School grad, former Googler, and now a serial entrepreneur—who launched Badger Maps in 2012 to change how field sales teams work.

Badger Maps is a powerful Zoho CRM extension that helps reps streamline mapping, routing, lead generation, and territory balancing.

We interviewed Steve to understand how businesses can manage their outside sales in a challenging economy, and here's what Steve had to say:

What are the some of the biggest challenges for sales managers during an economic recession?  

During an economic downturn, sales managers face a double-edged sword: shifting customer behavior and increasingly aggressive competitors. One of the first major challenges is the unpredictability of competitors. As the pressure mounts, many companies become desperate and start slashing prices, offering steep discounts, throwing in free consulting, or even liquidating inventory just to stay afloat. These reactive tactics can disrupt the market and lure away your customers if you're not paying close attention.

On the other hand, customer resistance becomes more prominent in a down economy. Prospects who were previously open to engagement may delay meetings, hesitate on commitments, or push harder during negotiations. Their internal procurement departments, often driven by cost-cutting mandates, begin demanding better terms or deeper discounts. This puts direct pressure on your margins and weakens deal value unless it's properly handled.

What separates successful teams in these conditions is their ability to prepare early. Effective salespeople ensure their teams focus on uncovering the customer's perceived value right from the first call, not during the negotiation. By identifying clear ROI indicators from early conversations, sales reps can justify their product's pricing and stand firm during deal closing. To facilitate that, you need to equip your teams with the right discovery questions, tools to understand and analyze the customer's losses for every month they delay action, and ensure that they tie every proposal back to a concrete, agreed-upon business impact.

How should companies adjust their sales messaging when customers are hesitant?  

Sales messaging that works in a booming economy can fall completely flat during a downturn. In strong economic conditions, businesses respond well to messages that promise improvement, faster performance, higher growth, and better efficiency. But when the economy tightens and budgets shrink, that same message starts sounding like a luxury, not a priority.

This is when a strategic shift in your messaging becomes crucial. Instead of focusing on “getting better,” you need to speak directly to the survival instinct of your prospects by emphasizing how to do more with less. It's not about adding more tools to their available resources; it's about helping customers get the same results with fewer resources.

For instance, instead of saying, “We'll help your field sales team sell 20% more,” the message might shift to, “You can maintain your current revenue even with 20% fewer reps.” The former appeals to ambition, while the latter addresses necessity. And in challenging times, necessity wins. The value your product has to offer doesn't change, but the way it's framed is perceived differently depending on the economic conditions.

The product and its ROI remain the same, but the messaging that leans into efficiency rather than enhancement is far more likely to resonate with your customers. Companies that understand this distinction are better equipped to maintain momentum even when their customers are hitting the brakes.

What are some tips to improve response rates for outbound campaigns?  

When inboxes are flooded with AI-generated cold emails that all sound eerily similar, standing out becomes a serious challenge. The average outbound email today often leans on predictable personalization—referencing a local coffee shop or a recent blog post—but these tricks have become so overused that they no longer feel personal. They've started to feel templated.

To cut through the noise, your outbound messaging needs to pivot toward clarity, simplicity, and direct value. Instead of trying to charm your way in, get straight to the point: What does your product do? What does the prospect gain from your product? How much time or money will it save them? Where can they learn more?

A major misstep many campaigns make is asking for too much, too soon. Pushing for a meeting in the first message or—worse—pitching the sale outright creates resistance. It feels pushy and desperate. Your goal should be to spark curiosity, not close the deal. A good call-to-action would be directing them to a resource, a video, or a landing page—somewhere they can explore your offering on their own terms.

The structure matters too. Two or three short paragraphs or a few bullet points are all you need. Skip the tracking links and complex formatting that not only reduces deliverability but also makes the message feel over-engineered. Clean, honest communication earns more trust and avoids the spam folder.

In short: Be brief. Be real. Be valuable.

Besides negotiation, what are the key skills sales managers need to succeed when things get unpredictable?

In an unpredictable economy, strong leadership needs more than just mastering negotiation tactics. One of the most underrated but impactful skills for sales managers is learning how to pass decision-making down to the front lines.

The reps who are out in the field every day speaking with customers, hearing objections, and tracking sentiment are the ones closest to reality. They have the clearest view of what's actually working and what's not. That's why empowering them to act, adapt, and provide feedback isn't just helpful but essential.

Sales leaders need to act like curators. Spot the reps who are consistently winning deals despite the tough climate. Study their behaviors, dig into what they're doing differently, and most importantly, replicate their success. Maybe they've discovered a segment of customers that's still spending. Maybe they've fine-tuned a message that's hitting just right. Whatever it is, uncover the playbook and distribute it across the team.

You can also turn your top performers into internal coaches. Let them teach the rest of the team the skills, tactics, or even the small tweaks that are bringing in results. In a rapidly changing environment, agility is key, and the answers are usually already within the team, waiting to be shared. It's not about micromanaging; it's about listening, learning, and scaling what works.

How should companies leverage mobile CRM platforms and real-time data to empower field service teams?  

There's a big difference between the way people work in the field and how they operate behind a desk. Yet most software tools are designed with desk-based users in mind. This creates a major disconnect for field reps who need quick, mobile-friendly access to the information they need while constantly on the move.

The key is delivering a purpose-built CRM experience that's tailored for field usage. Rather than forcing your reps to dig through layers of CRM tools designed for marketing or sales ops, mobile CRMs simplify and streamline access. Field reps can pull up customer info, details of upcoming meetings, and nearby leads instantly, all from their phone.

Time management is also critical in the field. Meetings shift, traffic hits, and people are always running a few minutes behind. That's why reps need fast visibility and flexible tools. Whether it's color-coded customer maps, filters based on CRM data, or tools to rearrange appointments on the fly, real-time data and location intelligence play a huge role in helping reps make better decisions on the spot.

It's about giving reps only what they need, exactly when they need it. No clutter, no distractions—just smart tools that work in motion. The result is better planning, tighter schedules, more punctual visits, and a smoother customer experience from start to finish.

How is AI impacting outside sales and the role of field reps?  

While AI is shaking up plenty of industries, the world of sales is being enhanced rather than replaced by it. Field sales, in particular, remains rooted in human interactions and real-world problem solving; it's the kind of work that AI can support but not replicate.

The most powerful benefit of AI for sales reps today is how it does the heavy lifting behind the scenes. Tasks that used to take hours—like reading financial reports, researching company updates, or figuring out a client's latest strategic focus—can now be done in minutes. With the right tools, reps can instantly summarize customer data, extract insights from public reports, and prepare for meetings with more precision than ever before.

This kind of support helps reps tailor their approaches. For example, knowing whether to lead a conversation with cost-saving benefits or revenue growth potential can make or break a pitch. AI helps uncover that direction quickly and accurately, even before the first handshake.

On a practical level, tools like ChatGPT and Perplexity are already part of the everyday toolkit for many professionals. They're used not just to gather information, but to understand it, organize it, and make decisions faster. For field teams juggling multiple meetings a day, this kind of speed is a game changer.

How do CRM platforms and field service integrations improve customer communication and experience efficiency?  

At the heart of every strong sales operation is real-time access—to information, insights, and direction. For field reps, that access needs to be simple, mobile, and made for their reality, not just a scaled-down version of a desktop tool.

Standard CRM apps often try to serve everyone. They cater to marketers, analysts, and inside sales teams all at once. But for field sales or service teams, this all-in-one approach becomes cluttered. What they need is a focused extension of the CRM, one that lives on their phone and is designed specifically for the tasks they perform every day on the move.

Field service integrations, like those offered by Badger Maps for Zoho CRM, bring that clarity. They give reps a real-time window into customer data, mapped visually and organized for quick decision making. From routing and appointment tracking to territory planning, everything is optimized to make reps faster, smarter, and more precise.

This also translates directly to the customer experience. When reps show up on time, know exactly what the client needs, and can adjust their schedule instantly if something changes, it creates trust and reliability. It removes friction from the sales process and allows service to feel seamless.

Instead of giving vague arrival windows, reps can offer precise timings. Instead of making a second call to confirm details, they already have everything they need on their screen. The combination of smart routing, territory tools, and CRM insights makes field reps sharper and customers happier.

Wrapping it all up  

According to Steve, the world of outside sales is changing fast, and the teams that win are the ones that adapt early, stay lean, and stay human. Through every insight he shared, one theme stayed constant: Success in field sales today is built on clarity, agility, and value-driven communication.

When the economy gets rocky, sales leaders can't afford to rely on old playbooks; companies need to rethink everything from how they frame their messaging to how they structure their teams. Instead of telling customers they'll do better, the pitch becomes about helping them survive and do more with fewer people, fewer resources, and fewer hours.

In a down economy, outbound sales campaigns need more than just small changes; they need a complete reset. Steve points out that the most effective cold emails today aren't filled with personalization tricks or long-winded pitches. Instead, they're clear, honest, and to the point; no pressure or desperation—just real value and a thoughtful next step. He also emphasizes that sales managers shouldn't try to fix everything from the top down. The most powerful strategies already exist in the field with top-performing reps, so it's important to turn them into internal coaches for others and scale what works.

In the end, as Steve made clear, the future of outside sales is not about doing more; it's about doing things better, faster, and with purpose.

Catch the full interview with Steve Benson on the Zoho CRM Podcast and discover how to future-proof your sales strategy.