Are you still losing the retail game even though your sales team achieved their targets? Should you worry about market discipline? Quite a few companies are able to achieve their targets but not able to keep up with the market discipline even with sales force tracking software. And this is what makes them lose in the longer run.
I spent most of the time at work reviewing clients’ performance and see if they are on the right track. In this blog, I will share one of my reviewing session experience. The client is one of the largest snack brands in India. I was in the review meeting with the MD and sales head.
They were quite happy and excited to share that they are achieving their sales target. That put me on cloud nine. What more I can expect than them achieving their targets.
But when we started reviewing the field sales team performance, I noticed that sales MTD number is good, but there are issues with the field sales team’s workings. Average day start time was 11 AM which should be 9:30 AM as per industry standard. Their total calls per employee were very low than the industry standard.
When I raised the issue of poor market discipline, sales head responded that we are still achieving our targets, why do we need to focus on market discipline.
After using a sales force tracking software, The team was still not able to understand long-term fallbacks of this strategy. The company was achieving its targets mostly through whole-seller. Salespeople were not visiting outlets because they were able to achieve their targets through whole-seller quickly. Not visiting the outlets reduced the visibility of the product and competition in the market. Let me explain to you why should you be worried about market discipline.
Good Relationship with Retailer
Regular calls and periodic visits to retailers will allow you to get insights about your customer outlets. You can easily keep track of each outlet in your universe and associate sales histories through sales force tracking software. Overall, If your salesman is visiting the outlet, he can collect data which can give you a deeper understanding of the relationship. He will also be able to make good sales pitches.
All information about product placement and competition
The company can easily collect information about product placement and competition through running field surveys in their sales force tracking software. But that to happen, the Field Sales rep has to visit the outlets first regularly. You can feel the pulse of the market quickly and collect information which can be used in tactical decision making.
Real-time visibility of outlet coverage
When your salesmen are not following the discipline, you will lose a lot of data and insights about your outlet coverage. Authentic Field visit data will help you understand your outlet coverage in an area correctly. With sales coverage insights generated from your sales force tracking software, you can develop robust strategies and alter tactics for best market coverage.
Overall, you should first focus on market discipline. If your salesman are visiting outlets regularly, starting their day at the right time, doing total calls as per the industry, your sales will start growing day by day. And it will put you on a high growth curve. As our CEO, Paramdeep Singh keeps saying, “Jo Dikhta hai wo bikta hai.” If your salesman is highly visible in the market, It will make your product more visible on the shelves.
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