What is the goal of Akhil Duggal, Head of Sales Excellence? 

Akhil wants to expand  Atomberg into a category leader in the smart  home appliances industry by creating products that are a blend of mindful design, energy efficiency, and next-gen technology.

What was Akhil’s Wishlist?

Akhil was thrilled with how fast Atomberg was growing, but to make it a household name, the company needed better processes and the right automation to : 

• Boost brand awareness and SKU base of their premium fans amongst conscious customers in metros and as well B2B account in Hotels, Colleges, and other institutions.
• Achieve higher outlet coverage 
• Improve customer engagement at shop counters.

What Hurdle did Akhil face? 

Akhil did not want a vanilla technology solution that could offer good field visibility but nothing more. He wanted a partner who understood the specific challenges of the appliances industry and could use that expertise to help Atomberg implement a better system. 

One key challenge was data sanity and duplication. As both Sales Reps, as well as distributors, could create a new FMCD retailer in their system, this required manual validation of data which was cumbersome and error-prone. Akhil wanted a solution that could automate this process and ensure data authenticity. 

Another hurdle was that his mid-managers did not have sufficient visibility on the market for developing a GTM. For. e.g they were not able to pinpoint their reach in the field, nor did they know how many customers they were catering to or which markets they could expand in. 

Akhil had ambitious plans of launching 2-3 new product categories in the next 2 years and knew that lack of automation would hold him back from achieving the desired efficiency and productivity as the business achieved scale.  

How did FieldAssist resolve Akhil’s challenges?

FieldAssist already had many FMCD customers, and therefore knew of the industry-related challenges that Atomberg could face, e.g. counter-sales conversion, product knowledge, one outlet mapped to multiple salespeople, etc. 

After understanding their challenges, FA’s Customer Success Head, Chitransh, along with his team developed a training calendar for the entire sales team. He knew that to drive adoption, the sales team had to be comfortable with using the app. FieldAssist trained the on-field team so extensively on it, that the company could later conduct its own training when new staff joined their growing team.

Using the Joint Working feature, the mid-managers identified and visited specific outlets that had the potential for growth as well as volume, and built stronger relationships with those retailers. They were able to rectify their own lack of confidence in their SOs by doing these joint calls and resolving on-ground challenges more effectively than before.

The kind of on-field visibility that the managers got was truly transformational. Not only were they able to identify their top-selling outlets, but they could also make proactive decisions to reduce their outlet churn rate. 

For launching new products like the mixer-grinder, Akhil’s team thoroughly used the Instant Survey feature to assess the competition, identify product features available in the market, understand how the shop boys were selling the product, evaluate merchandising effectiveness, and much more. 

FieldAssist’s team also streamlined data flow from SOs, inventory mapping, and end-delivery from distributors by integrating the SFA with their DMS as well ERP systems. 

What have Akhil & FieldAssist achieved together for Atomberg?

When Chitransh, the Customer Success Head at FieldAssist met Akhil a year after deployment, the dashboards showed some really strong numbers into how the SFA app had impacted Atomberg’s sales effectiveness:

• The on-field sales team grew by almost 120% in a year
• The Retailer Universe expanded by nearly 55%
• LPC (Range Selling) improved by 21% despite the pandemic
• Three-fold increase in visibility of market merchandising and competition behavior
• 14% improvement over last year in Billed Counters