Do we really need to tell you that what manufacturer sells to its direct customers such as distributors or stockiest is called Primary Sales and what these direct customers sell to dealers or retailers is called Secondary Sales? We know most of you already know it but just to put things in context before we discuss specific points. Well on that note let’s also state that what finally consumer picks from the retail store is called Tertiary Sales unless there were other parties in the chain Continue Reading →
5 Points to Ponder about Sales Force Automation for Secondary and Tertiary Sales
1) Sales Training Automation If you thought you are going to call the field users in a classroom from every far-off territory to train, it’s not going to work. Repeating that for newly joined resources is even more impractical. The software platform that you choose has to come bundled with a mechanism to A) propagate training through the sales network hierarchy itself B) access to multi-media reference material within the mobile app 2) Sensitivity to End User Experience Keep it simple – Make a clear distinction between functionality that is core to your goals and functionality that appears fancy Continue Reading →
TC, PC, BPA and what else is your Sales Force Effectiveness metric?
In FMCG industry, Sales Force Effectiveness (SFE) metrics can be as complicated as one wants to make them. There is no perfect answer that fits all, but there are some bare essentials. We genuinely want to know what works for you as a sales leader. So do respond. Put your comments on this blog. However as a starter, we are just summarizing what hundreds of customers and prospects desired as we interacted with them over the period. Metrics presented here are the absolute essentials. Before we go into each one of these, let’s not forget all this measurement is required Continue Reading →
Sales Force Automation beyond Policing the Field Force
Death knell for the most irritating question “Where are you Continue Reading →
Demand-Pull V/S Stock-Push
What's your strategy to drive sales and get the maximum out of your potential product!! 1) Stock-Push with Distributors On one side practitioners continue to focus on stock-push with distributors by offering margins, schemes and promotions. This has worked traditionally on the belief that if your business partners has stake in it, he will go ahead and replenish at existing retailers and find new retailers continuously. Challenge however remains that often a distributor does not have the knowledge base on what is the exact potential of a territory and its demographics. The question is should you consider your distributors Continue Reading →