Current status of Sales operations
Most companies have a sales operations team with a dedicated sales administrator. We Have found multiple scenarios where this is not enough and the team does not bring desired results. If you are part of a company with a dedicated team you need to ask a few questions to check your company’s sales operations status-
- Is your company getting desired sales growth?
- How many successful SKU’s could your company bring to market in last one year?
- How many new customers your company could bring in last one year?
- How many of the company’s total customer base is Active, Passive, or Sleeping?
- Are Distributors and/or Stockists achieving the target with a uniform spread of SKU’s?
- Is your company able to utilize its planned marketing budget for last one or two financial years?
- Is the outcome of marketing expenses measured?
- Is your company able to measure actual cost of sales for each individual and compare it with planned expenses?
- How many new field executives your company could hire in last one year and make them profitable?
- Could your company plan periodic review of its sales team and identify specific areas of improvement on a case by case basis?
- Does your company have a process to discuss Competitor’s activities on a regular basis?
This is just a sample list of questions where we feel companies do not achieve their potential.Most companies do not perform many of the activities listed above, a few who do are not able to sustain it on a consistent basis. Based on our experience in this domain the main reasons for not getting desired results are –
- Sales efforts on the field are not always aligned with company’s goal and top management’s plan.
- In quite a few companies, sales are not the primary focus of top management and sales activities did not get enough attention.
- In cases where top management focuses on sales, there are some cases where companies do not have enough ways to translate focus into a ground effort.
- In most cases, software tools (CRM/SFA) do not help field sales force team actively in their day to day efforts.
If your company is one of them and you see a need to improve sales operations performance please read on.
Proposed Solution
As part of the solution, ADVANZ101’s KPM experts will engage with the company and come up with definitive action items. Main deliverables from Advanz101 will be:
- Define Standard operating procedure for sales operations.
- Define Key performance indicators of sales and sales operations based on company’s strategy and sales direction.
- Action items for field sales staff, sales operations team and upper management with specific call outs.
- Create case studies highlighting specific areas of improvement and definitive action items.
- Review and refine sales team’s tour programs.
- Facilitate new product and new geographic launch.
- Scheme planning to promote specific SKUs in different regions.
- Scheme execution help to make sure scheme reaches retailers and stockists.
- Periodic scheme audits.
- Competitor analysis covering their SKUs and sales initiatives.
Methodology – As part of the solution, ADVANZ101’s KPM experts will engage with the company to understand its sales operations, SKU’s, supply chain, employee hierarchy etc. Data points related to primary sales, secondary sales, bookings, retailer database, sales pattern etc will be understood. KPM team will work closely with sales operations team and align with top management to get company’s direction in terms of long term and short-term goals. Sales pattern of previous years will be studied to draw important findings related to seasonality and SKU spread.
Why Advanz101?
Here is the case of involving a third party partner to help FMCG Companies in sales management. Following points indicates why this approach can give good results-
- Our KPM team will come as subject matter expert with rich experience.
- Our KPM team has experience in delivering results in short span of time.
- With our team’s expertise, we can look through all the data within the company and identify Strategic gaps. After this, a set of Actionable items will be generated to focus upon.
- Very low engagement cost with respect to the total cost which company is paying even today on monthly basis.
- As this will be a priority KRA for our team, the focus will be a lot more.
It will be of great benefit to involving some subject matter expert in KPM for sales operations management in FMCG & similar companies. The client will get exposure to best industry practices and improvements from such engagement will be in measurable terms.
Benefits to stakeholders
Let us have a case by case look for stakeholders in the value chain. With our solution, everyone associated with sales in the company will get benefited. Some of the benefits are listed below-
Top Management – Benefits to Top management can be listed as under
- Implementation of industry best practices in the organization.
- Additional visibility over complete sales ecosystem with minimal additional efforts.
- Ability to focus and analyze the special area of interest like specific geography / SKU / similar initiative.
- Easier and streamlined new product and new geography launch.
- Better control over cost of total sales initiative.
- Better help in overall planning, identifying corrective steps to get the desired improvement.
- Healthier eco system resulting in lesser employee turnover.
Sales Operations – As sales operations will be the direct beneficiary, the following will be major benefits for Sales operations management team-
- A tool to directly measure important KPI’s on a daily, weekly and monthly basis.
- Design and execution of a standard operating process for the overall sales process.
- Access to system tools which are required to facilitate the execution. This involves apps, reports and other analytics platforms.
- Close level monitoring with an objective to identify the scope of improvement and get it resolved.
- A motivated field force to implement the plan.
- Better access to competitor’s SKU’s and Sales initiative data.
Field staff – In this well-planned approach, field staff is the biggest beneficiary of KPM initiative for sales.
- Working with executives gets due respect and empowerment.
- Executive realizes the importance of being last mile enabler and attention of whole company on her/ his roles.
- Better visibility of territory and activities to be done.
- Better support from higher management for product promotion.
- More transparent incentive schemes giving better earnings prospects.
- Present one-way traffic of data from executive to Headquarter will get replaced with two-way communication enabling analytical reports and action points to executives.
Offerings
| Activity | Model1- KPM Care | Model2- KPM Growth | Model3- KPM Premium |
|---|---|---|---|
| Understanding Business Model, Product Mix, Competition and Ecosystem | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Qualified Resources | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Design of SOP to be followed | Basic | Detailed | Detailed |
| Monthly Review meeting with Management and Sales Admin | 1 | 1 | or more |
| Defining SOP for back office team | SOP | SOP | SOP and KRA |
| Case Studies & Alerts | Weekly | Weekly | Weekly and Daily alerts where necessary |
| Review of vitals of sales | Review through Alerts | Review Tour Program, HQ / SKU / Executive performance periodically | Review Tour Program, HQ / SKU / Executive performance regularly |
| Monthly Sales review of field executives | Help in planning | Help in planning and execution | Help in planning and execution |
| Ecosystem points like Product & Competitor review | NA | Periodic review | Regular review |
| New Product Launch | NA | Yes | Yes |
| Scheme planning and execution | General Discussion | Guidelines for Depot, Stockist, team, Retailers and consumers schemes. | Detailed involvement with Depot, Stockist, team, Retailers and consumers schemes. |
| Scheme Audit | NA | Audit of a scheme for costing and execution | Audit of a scheme for costing and execution followed by an analysis of returns from the last mile. |
| Product Training | NA | Yes | Yes |
| Cost of Sales | Reporting | Reporting and detailed analysis | Reporting and detailed analysis |
| Engagement with salesperson | Rarely | Review of performance with an identification of action points | Review of performance with an identification of action points. Discussion with key resources and help them grow. |
| Digital marketing | NA | Planning digital marketing campaign | Planning and execution of the campaign, review of our activities and competitors on social platforms |
| Engagement model | Rs 250 / user / month, minimum 100 users, charged monthly, commitment quarterly. | Rs 600 / user / month, minimum 100 users, charged monthly commitment half yearly. | Rs 1100 / user / month, minimum 100 users, charged monthly, commitment yearly. (Purely result based engagement model also available on request*) |
