In 2000, Gartner estimated that 80% of sales force automation (SFA) projects fail during implementation. Things have improved since then, but most studies put the average adoption to about 60%. It’s a big contemporary problem. Here are top 4 ways to improve your chance of successful SFA implementation Simplicity and Ease of use Field force comes in a wide spectrum of skillset. Even the most skilled like in Pharma industry require easy to understand navigation with near zero training requirements. Neat and clean user interface with simplest navigation ensures adoption during the first rollout and most importantly when new employees Continue Reading →
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New Aadhar regime and KYC Conundrum of India
It was a phase that lasted a few months when telecom, lending and fintech industry celebrated the birth of digital identity for Indians - Aadhar. So did everybody else, who envisioned financial inclusion of large portion of un-banked and un-connected masses of India. With full electronic process of verification, cost of customer acquisition had dropped drastically, hence the viability of providing service far and wide. Then came the Supreme Court judgement in Sep 2018 that Aadhar electronic verification process cannot be used to facilitate the KYC (Know your Customer) norms. Not even with voluntary consent of the individual. However, as Continue Reading →
Customer Profiling – Reason no 1 for SFA failure in FMCG Industry
You implemented an SFA. It looked great in first couple of months. But the excitement faded away. First nobody wanted to use it. Then it became pointless even if they used it. Here are the symptoms a few months down the line. Symptoms of Failure 1) You have no clue of the visit adherence because you are not sure of the customer geo-codes 2) Retail coverage data coming from the system is not clear because you are not sure how many duplicate store data exist in your SFA system 3) Beat Plan adherence does not make any sense because of Continue Reading →
Winning customers at the Point Of Sale – Product Promoter Enablement
Winning customers at the Point Of Sale - Product Promoter Enablement Are you concerned about your product getting lost amongst similar products and not getting the set of eyes that it actually deserves? It is quintessential in today’s world to get the attention of potential customers. Winning it at the point of sale is one thing that can never go wrong. Deploying Product Promoter at the POS can not only help increase your sales but it also helps you avoid stock-outs and ensure compliance with visual merchandising campaigns and get competitor insights. For you as a Sales Manager, Continue Reading →
Deep Assets of Consumer Products Industry – Product Promoters
Deep Assets of Consumer Durables Products Industry - Product Promoters Deep assets of Consumer Durables; because they are out there in the field where action is. Because they influence decisions in a very localized and intimate environment of point of sales. And lastly because we believe they are unsung Hero in the battlefield. Let’s look at top 4 reasons why we thought it was so important for BeatRoute to devote a fair mindshare to this role for all our customers across industry in consumer electronics, consumer durables, FMCG in general and cosmetics and apparel and footwear industry in particular – Advocacy Continue Reading →
Ghost Retail Stores that Sell Your Products
What are ghost Retail stores for an FMCG brand? Well! I am talking about the ones that exist only in your database. For various reasons they crept in over the years. Nobody cared. However times are changing. Need is to increase deeper engagement with point of sales. Sales Directors and their IT partners are out on a hunt to - • Weed out the ghost stores • Have enriched profile data of retail stores Some of them are also trying to discover hidden stores at the ground level. Others are also mapping them in context of demographics. Big deal! But Continue Reading →
10 times more effective distributor visits…
They are running driverless cars now by relying on software intelligence. My focus in this blog is a much lesser possibility, however highlights significantly impactful of use technology to make distributor field visits more meaningful in FMCG and Consumer durables industry. Consider this when your goal is get maximum bang from the buck you spend on travelling around the county as a sales manager – Integrated Primary and Secondary Performance While primary sales, outstanding credit resides in your ERP system, secondary sales and fulfilment data either resides in papers or resides in another system these days. It’s important to get Continue Reading →
SFA Mobile App – Who’s the biggest Enemy
Well we hate to call it a SFA or Sales Force Automation software but that’s the most popular lingo that the world seems to have been using. What we have put our heart and soul behind is called BeatRoute- mobile app for last mile retail. SFA or whatever you call it, we can’t decide who/what is the biggest enemy of SFA solution. We will let you decide, but here is our list of the biggest enemies – 1) Poor UI and UX For mobile application to be used by hundreds of people, it should require only minimal training. A great Continue Reading →
New-age Territory Manager – 5 Traits
A new age Territory Manager does the same old 5 things in a completely different way. - (1) Territory Planning * Spends at least a day in the month in meticulously reviewing his territory with the help of a map driven tool to ensure routes are efficiently defined and are realistically possible to cover in a day. * Keeps a watch on newly added stores and realigns routes/beats and their schedules based on class of store (2) Associated Beat Visits * Uses data analytics to uncover routes and stores with downward sales trend and makes his associated sales visits with Continue Reading →
Take Care of your Product Promoters
Salesforce Management- Our advisory panel is smart and experienced bunch of folks from some of the best technology and business schools of India and have put in years at some of the most respected international brands in FMCG and Consumer Durables space. Yet we keep talking about the decade old basics. And we keep coming to a conclusion that we have got to do an even simpler implementation of those basics in or product. We call it BeatRoute – Mobile app for last mile retail. Talk about promoters and we say…just take care of them. Absolutely…they are closest to the consumer Continue Reading →