Van sales vs pre-sales vs DSD: which model actually fits your routes

A beverage distributor running eleven vans out of a single depot started the way most do: one model, van sales, for every stop on every route. A rep drives out with a truck loaded by gut feel and yesterday's numbers, knocks on a door, sells whatever the owner wants that morning, and moves on. For the first two years, with a customer list made up almost entirely of small, independent shops, that worked fine. The truck was the store's inventory. The sale happened at the curb.

Then the distributor picked up its first modern-trade account: a regional supermarket chain with three stores and a purchasing department. The sales team treated it like any other stop — load the truck a little heavier, drive over, sell off the back. It went badly almost immediately.

Where the model stopped fitting

The supermarket didn't want a driver improvising an order at the loading dock. It wanted a purchase order raised against a catalog, a delivery that matched that PO exactly, and an invoice a buyer could reconcile without a phone call. The van showed up with some of what the store needed and a lot of what it didn't — because the rep was guessing off truck stock, not the store's actual order. Cases that didn't sell rode back to the depot. Cases the store actually wanted sat on a shelf at the warehouse because nobody had pre-picked them.

The cost compounded in ways that weren't obvious from the P&L at first. Delivery windows slipped because the rep was now negotiating a full order in the parking lot instead of executing a route. The supermarket's goods-in team started rejecting deliveries that didn't match a PO line for line, which meant credit notes, which meant the receivables ledger stopped matching what was actually collected. And the small independent stores on the same route — the ones van sales was built for — started getting shorter visits, because the rep's day was eaten up by one account that needed a completely different kind of interaction.

The ops manager's read on it, eventually, was simple: this wasn't a performance problem, it was a model problem. Van sales assumes the driver decides what the customer buys, in real time, off truck stock. A modern-trade account needs the opposite: the customer decides in advance, and the truck exists to deliver exactly that decision, proven on arrival. Trying to force one workflow to do both jobs was the actual source of the shrinkage, the late deliveries, and the reconciliation mess.

Two different jobs, not two tiers of the same job

Once the distributor stopped treating this as "van sales, but for a bigger account," the fix was mostly a segmentation exercise. Small independent outlets — high visit frequency, low order value, no procurement process — stayed on van sales exactly as before: rep on the truck, catalog on the handheld, sell and invoice in one visit. That part of the business was never broken.

The modern-trade account got split into two separate steps that used to be bundled into one visit. First, pre-sales: the order gets booked ahead of the delivery day, either by a rep visiting with a device that captures the order against the account's actual catalog and pricing, or through a simple order form the buyer submits directly. Second, DSD execution: a driver runs a route built from booked orders, delivers proof-of-delivery against each one, and the invoice is generated from what was actually agreed — not from what happened to be loaded that morning.

The warehouse benefited immediately, because loading now followed the order instead of the other way around — pick lists came from booked demand, not from a rep's memory of what usually sells. And the two workflows could run on the same route without colliding: a driver could deliver three pre-booked cases to the supermarket first thing, then spend the rest of the morning doing straight van sales at the independent stores on the same street.

How to tell which model a customer needs

The distinction isn't about account size — it's about who decides what gets sold, and when.

• Van sales fits a customer that buys reactively, in small quantities, on a schedule the rep controls — corner stores, kiosks, informal trade. The truck is the inventory; the visit is the sale.
• Pre-sales fits a customer with a procurement process — even a simple one — who wants to see a catalog, agree a quantity, and get exactly that.
• DSD is the delivery leg for pre-sold orders: sequenced drops, proof of delivery, and an invoice that matches the PO line for line.
• Most distributors running more than one type of customer need all three running at once, not one chosen for the whole business.
• Watch for the warning signs of a mismatch: rising credit notes, delivery rejections, reps spending visit time negotiating instead of executing, or trucks returning with unsold stock that should have been pre-picked.

iotoms runs van sales, pre-sales order capture, and DSD delivery execution as one system rather than three separate tools — so a distributor can segment customers by how they actually buy, without reconciling data between a route app, an order-taking app, and accounting afterward.