What is an accompaniment visit? When a sales manager accompanies a sales rep on a field sales call, it is referred to as an accompaniment visit.

It is common for a new salesperson without any sales experience or very little experience to be accompanied by either a sales manager or a senior sales rep for the first few sales calls that they do. These accompaniment visits are usually part of a training program in which the new sales rep gets to learn from the professionals that have a lot of experience with selling.

The accompaniment visit also allows the sales manager to observe the new sales rep in action in front of real prospects and customers. That provides the opportunity to provide critical feedback to the new rep - What is he doing wrong? What is he doing right? What sales skills could be improved? Does she have the proper demeanor?

The feedback from an accompaniment visit is referred to as an accompaniment report. The accompaniment report provides the sales manager with the opportunity to provide feedback to the salesperson. The report should not only emphasize what was done wrong and how to go about correcting those sales skills, but also what was done right so that the salesperson could use the positive reinforcement to improve.

The accompaniment visit, while normally used with new sales reps, is also often used with other, experienced, reps as a part of the yearly employee review. Another case where it would be used is if a sales rep has an appointment with a very important account or the revenue from a potential sale would be huge; it is not uncommon for even the CEO or the owner of a company to accompany the rep on this type of sales call.