Market coverage is the evaluation of the marketplace and determination of how much of it you should cover with your promotional strategy of a product or business.
Optimizing the market coverage can be a very effective and beneficial activity for any FMCG and Consumer Durables company. FMCG sales managers can increase their overall sales by channelizing their field sales resources for optimum coverage of the market.
Although market coverage optimization has always been a concern for FMCG/CD companies, the year 2020 gave a boost to that concern. The rise of the COVID-19 pandemic has completely restricted business growth, sales, and the traditional ways of market coverage. Lockdown restrictions have halted the travel of sales reps which have resulted in a decrease of order taking frequency, thus decreasing the sales. There is also a need to connect with existing retailers and further increase the network.
Optimized market coverage strategies and models not only help in targeting and converting the most valuable retailers but also helps the company in achieving the overall sales goal. It also helps in planning the right strategy for the right set of customers backed by insightful data. Thus, we can safely say that for a company to become successful, optimizing the market coverage is very essential.
Let us understand the three important reasons as to why FMCG and Consumer Durables companies should optimize their market coverage strategy:
Right Optimization Leads To Right Growth
Every FMCG company has a vision to grow. The growth has to be continuous, predictable, and scalable. Having the right vision and the right control over the coverage strategies will not only help to scale them but also let sales leaders control them in the right direction.
Thus, a right market optimization strategy allows sales leaders to cover the targeted market in a step by step and a much predictable manner. It allows a predictable growth of the business and allows sales leaders to drastically scale the market growth.
Right Optimization Leads To Cost Reduction
An important aspect of growing a business is to increase the returns on investments from all of the operations. Every business leader wants to have a higher ROI on their daily and monthly sales activities.
Now, consider a company investing in a set of retailers that might not be having the right and predictable potential to increase the sales for the company, but due to the lack of optimized coverage, unknowingly the company is regularly investing in them. This not only wastes the company’s expenditure but also loses an opportunity to invest in the right set of retailers.
Market coverage optimization involves techniques such as Customer Profiling, which allows sales leaders to have a data-driven segmented structure of their customer profiles, allowing the companies to target the right amount of investment on the right set of retailers.
Right Optimization Leads To Increased Productivity
Most of the companies fail to achieve their sales targets because they fail to utilize the complete productivity of their sales reps. The unorganized way in which the sales reps cover the market leads to reduced productivity.
Market coverage optimization allows FMCG companies to formulate the right targeting strategies based on their customer base. It allows the sales reps to invest their energy at the right place and at the right time and eventually, it helps in increasing their productivity as they no longer waste their maximum part energy on the wrong set of customers.
Market coverage optimization involves techniques such as Route Optimization, which helps in optimizing the routes of sales reps based on various factors. It ensures that every visit of the sales rep is productive leading to higher sales output.
Conclusion
Increasing the sales of a company involves two important exercises: 1) Finding the right customers and 2) Winning those customers. Although FMCG companies need to train, motivate, and improve their sales reps, it is equally important for companies to optimize their market coverage to find and invest in the right set of customers. With growing competition in each sector, the FMCG companies must focus on coverage strategies and models to increase the overall sales of the company.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the need for Market Coverage for an FMCG company?
All the FMCG companies predict their growth based on their sales pipeline. To build a healthy sales pipeline, an optimized market coverage strategy is required. Not only it helps in targeting and converting the most valuable retailers but also helps the company in achieving the overall sales goal.
What are the reasons for FMCG & Consumer Durables companies to focus on optimizing market coverage?
Although there are many reasons for FMCG/CD companies to focus on optimizing the market coverage, the top three reasons include 1) Optimized market coverage leads to increased productivity of sales reps 2) Right optimized market coverage leads to increased growth, and 3) it also helps in reducing the overall cost.
How does Route Optimization help in cost reduction?
Route Optimization plans the most efficient route for sales reps. It recognizes the best routes with the least distance according to the store location and mapping. This makes sure that the sales rep can visit the stores with the highest priority according to their prerequisites, which in turn avoids the unnecessary visits by a sales rep and reduces the cost. It also ensures more face time for the sales rep which leads to more conversions and increases the productivity of sales reps.
