How to reduce T&E expenses for your sales team?

Establishing a clear and comprehensive travel policy is crucial for managing T&E expenses and T&E reimbursement effectively. This policy should detail acceptable travel-related costs, define approval processes, and set specific spending limits.

By providing clear and concise guidelines, you ensure that your sales team understands what is expected of them, which reduces the risk of overspending and promotes consistency across the organization. A well-defined travel policy not only controls costs but also streamlines the T&E process, making it easier to manage.

Do you know that your sales team spends 65% of their time doing low-priority tasks, instead of selling? Instead of converting high-ticket prospects into clients, your sales team is doing tasks such as filing travel and expense reporting, remembering to store hundreds of little receipts to apply for reimbursement, etc.

When your sales team is more focused on manually doing tasks that can easily be automated, you are essentially paying them for doing chores that drive neither revenue nor any growth.

Let your sales team do what it does best and leave these secondary tasks to be automated by a spend management software like Volopay that provides corporate cards for T&E expenses accounting and automated travel and expense reporting. Remove the added burden of carrying receipts by using digital receipt capturing technology.

You have set a strict expense policy in place, but to enforce it, you need your managers to be on top of your sales team’s expenses. However, since expenses take up to 6 to 8 weeks to get processed for reimbursement, it is only at least a month after expenses have been made that you realize any expense policy violations.

Which begs the question - who is this helping? What you need is a real-time update on your sales team’s expenses so you can curb the unnecessary ones as and when they happen. A corporate T&E credit card provided by Volopay lets you set expense categories so that your employees cannot make any expense that the card isn’t allowed to.

When your sales team is used to receiving reimbursement later, they prefer to use their personal credit cards for out-of-pocket expenses. Personal credit cards offer perks to your employees in form of reward points.

Think about it - what are these perks if not a reward for spending as much as you can? They make your employees overspend because they know they’ll get bonus points for it, even if that means extending their food budget as much as they can to the maximum limit in corporate expense policy.

How about you switch the gears on this mindset? Instead of letting personal credit cards dictate your T&E expenses, encourage them to spend within the comfortable limits and award them with bonuses left from your T&E budget when the sales team hits revenue goals! More revenue, more rewards.

Leveraging modern expense management tools is key to optimizing T&E processes. These tools automate expense tracking, submission, and approval workflows, providing your sales team with a seamless way to manage their expenses.

Features like receipt scanning and real-time spending insights reduce administrative tasks and minimize errors, leading to more accurate and efficient T&E management.

By adopting these technologies, you can gain better control over your T&E budget, ultimately achieving significant cost savings while improving overall process efficiency.

Encouraging your sales team to replace in-person meetings with virtual ones can significantly reduce T&E expenses. Platforms like Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and other video conferencing tools offer effective ways to interact with clients, eliminating the need for costly travel.

While certain face-to-face meetings may still be necessary, virtual meetings can maintain strong communication and relationship-building without the associated travel costs. This approach not only cuts down on expenses but also enhances flexibility and productivity, allowing your team to connect from anywhere.

Establishing clear and specific guidelines for reimbursable expenses is essential to prevent misunderstandings and curb unnecessary spending.

Your policy should detail everything from meal allowances to accommodation standards, ensuring that your sales team knows exactly what is covered. This clarity helps avoid disputes and ensures consistent spending practices across the organization.

Regularly reviewing and updating these guidelines allows you to adapt to changing circumstances, maintain control over your T&E reimbursement, and ensure they align with your overall budgetary goals.

Implementing incentives for your sales team to embrace cost-saving behaviors can significantly reduce T&E expenses. Offering rewards to employees who consistently stay within budget or find innovative ways to cut travel costs encourages adherence to your travel policy.

These incentives not only promote fiscal responsibility but also create a culture of mindful spending within your team. Recognizing and rewarding cost-conscious actions can lead to long-term savings and a more disciplined approach to managing travel expenses across the organization.

Regular monitoring and analysis of travel expenses are vital for uncovering trends and identifying areas where costs can be reduced. By consistently reviewing expense reports and leveraging analytics tools, you can detect inefficiencies and make informed, data-driven decisions to optimize spending.

This proactive approach enables you to adjust travel policies and practices as needed, ensuring that costs remain under control. Regular analysis not only helps in managing current expenses but also informs long-term strategies for more effective T&E management.

Building strong relationships with preferred vendors can lead to substantial savings on travel-related services. By negotiating corporate rates with airlines, hotels, and car rental companies, you can secure exclusive discounts and more favorable terms for your sales team.

These partnerships often offer additional benefits, such as streamlined booking processes, priority service, and enhanced customer support. Regularly reviewing and renegotiating these agreements ensures you continue to get the best possible deals, further reducing your T&E expenses over time.

Travel management software centralizes all travel-related activities, offering a streamlined approach from booking to expense reporting.

These platforms feature tools like pre-trip approvals, policy enforcement, and automated expense reconciliation, which help ensure compliance with company policies and simplify the entire T&E process.

By adopting a dedicated travel management system, you can gain greater control over T&E expenses, reduce administrative burdens, and provide a seamless, efficient experience for your sales team, ultimately leading to more effective expense management.

Encouraging your sales team to choose cost-effective travel options can lead to substantial savings. This might involve booking cheaper flight routes/travel dates, opting for budget-friendly business traveler accommodations, or using public transportation rather than taxis.

These small adjustments can significantly reduce T&E expenses without sacrificing the quality of the travel experience. Promoting a culture of mindful spending helps ensure that necessary travel remains affordable, allowing your team to achieve their goals while staying within budget.

Regularly reviewing and updating your travel policy is crucial for maintaining its effectiveness in controlling T&E expenses. As business needs and market conditions evolve, your travel policies should be adjusted to reflect these changes.

This process allows you to address new challenges, such as rising travel costs or shifts in employee travel patterns and ensures that your policy remains relevant. By staying proactive and flexible, you can keep T&E expenses under control and align them with your overall business strategy.