Unlocking Steps for Effective sales in any FMCG Company

“You don’t get paid for the Hour. You get paid for the value you bring to the Hour”. (Jim

Rohn)

We all know that sales and marketing in today’s world are not merely constrained to making cold calls and selling products. It’s a constantly revolving field that needs 360 degree approach towards achieving the goals. On Macro Level: Passion for Sales, Creativity and Systematic approach can lead to Effective Sales.

In this article, I would like to throw light on Micro Parameters related to “Systematic steps of essential sales”. For the sake of simplicity, the actions are classified into Long Term activities, Monthly, Weekly and Daily Activities (Refer Fig 1.1). Any Sales admin tool which helps to record such activities, Customized ERP and its analysis will bring operational efficiency, create competitive advantage and reduce cost of operations as well. The steps are divided in Activities and Analysis.

Long Term Activities

☛ Territory Planning: One of the most important aspect is Territory Planning. We need to

divide geography in Beats, Head Quarter, Area, Region and Zones. Names may differ but essence remains the same. Persons should be identified for each territory and made owner of their territory. Benchmarks in terms of Number of Dealers, Retailers, Institutional customers should be defined.

☛ SKU wise Stockist wise targets:

This action will lead to plot “What to sell & Where to sell”. It is an important parameter as Certain focus products or New SKU’s need to be given more weight age in sales. This may differ from one geography to another. Indirectly this will help in setting a standard of right product sales at right place.

☛ Retailer Count wise targets for Field Staff: Number of Retailers / Institutional clients / New clients to be met shall be defined. This will enable us to spread our reach and sales will not be dependent on any particular retailer.

☛ Productive Retailers: Only retailer visits will add no value if they are not giving orders. There should be some marketing efforts to be improve the percentage of productive retailers.

☛Productive SKU:

Defining how many different SKU’s we plan to book on daily basis will also help us to spread our offerings. More number of active SKU will result in more chances of growth.

Monthly Activities:

☛Tour Program (TP) submission:

Pre planning of the coming month in the form of TP will drive sales person to plan visits to all of his territories and be prepared for it before time. At times it appears to be very basic or old terminology, but we can always ask to ourselves that have we effectively used this old tool ever?

☛Review of Retailer List:

A monthly review of retailer list will give a time to time count of active/Inactive and sleeping retailers. The sales person can take measures to leverage the same.

☛Circulation of Target Sheet for upcoming Month:

A simple but missed most of the time activity. We may have Targets defined somewhere, but are we circulating the same to Field Executive before start of month? Are we taking their view on what's their plan on How to achieve it.

Daily Activities :

☛Timely alerts:

System should be designed to assist Field executive (FE) and not to monitor

him. Useful Alerts should be planned covering different KPI’s and delivered to Field person to help him meet his next goals/targets. It is an important factor to keep him motivated.

☛Station to be visited:

Information related to his day working like station to be visited, Retailers pending to Visit, Non productive Retailers, Any new Retailers etc will not only keep him up to date but will also help him in making the day productive.

☛Stockist Interaction:

Stockist / dealer is a vital link in FMCG sales. Effective communication should be done with each Stockist where field working is taking place for today and yesterday should be done from HO or Regional office. Secondary sales for orders booked yesterday should be confirmed and scope of Primary sales to be identified for short stocks. It can be increased through FMCG software for sales

☛AM-SO mid day interaction:

Managers know the importance of Mid day interaction with their team, but the problem is that they do not have information at right time so that they can have meaningful discussions on daily basis. System should support Managers with this vital missing link, 

Analysis:

A timely Analysis of the above mentioned activities is vital for the whole process to become productive. This will help in identifying the gaps in the business process and bringing required improvement for the benefit of everyone in the organization.

☛Monthly review based on KPI’s:

A monthly review with each Field executive in presence of his Manager is of huge importance in sales. Various KPI’s should be discussed, achievements should be appreciated and shortcomings should be discussed for ways of overcoming them. Target compliance, Products sold / missed, Productive call averages, Tour program compliance etc can be managed by MR Reporting software as well as should be discussed and training need should be identified. Required training should be provided on the spot so that doubts can be clarified on immediate basis. Important feedback about market intelligence should be gathered and passed to product management team and other relevant persons.

☛Weekly review:

A weekly review on lines similar to monthly review but to be conducted by First line Manager in field itself will also be of great benefit. In this review current month can be discussed and steps required to improve current month can be taken well in time.

Daily review for some specific KPI’s:

There are certain KPI’s which are too important to be ignored till Monthly review. We should discuss certain KPI in a way which encourages self analysis by field executive. Executives who booked orders for good value, spread ed product range and spread ed productive retailers should be appreciated and others should be encouraged for a better tomorrow. At the same time, the message should be loud and clear that inefficiencies will lead to a win win situation and inefficiencies are neither welcome nor ignored.

Conclusion:

As we know that only taking the gym memberships does not improve your health but what

improves it is the constant efforts towards making days productive. What I mean to say is that a system in place to identify sales activities will be the first step in the positive direction. The operational efficiency will improve with the participation of the people in the system.

Atul Daga is an expert in conventional Retail and Engineering industries CRM. He has done his MBA from Cardiff University, United kingdom. (U.K.). As Business Development & Business Intelligence Manager at Advanz101 Systems, he actively engages himself with some high valued clients in knowledge process outsourcing domain. Atul likes DJ’ing as a hobby. He can be reached at atul@advanz101.com

Sales Call Categorization, FMCG software for sales and Customized ERP

They say that “Understanding a woman is impossible”. I can not disagree on that but at the same time, “Understanding and improvising performance of Field sales executive is equally complex”.

Friends, the conventional sales process of any FMCG and Customized ERP company mostly  account for the basic KPI’s like number of Retailers visited or Retailer Call average and Stockist call average. Same is true with sales monitoring and MR Reporting software

of many of engineering industries as well. Any vanilla sales monitoring will have features like DSR entry, Filling Tour Program and Capturing Order Value etc. With such a system in place, the sales efforts of any sales person is partially measured and usually only the direct product sales or the retailer visits is calculated and talked about. For effective sales in long run, many other dimensions need to be covered. Can we ignore importance of activities like Product Demo, Sampling, Identifying new Stockists / Beats / Retailers, Merchandising activity, Retailer Gathering, Working on passive accounts etc. All these and some other features contribute to the long-term sales of the company. Then why these parameters are neglected in the sales process analysis. I believe that there should be some way to measure such parameters and reward the contributors.   These parameters can be sector specific like for engineering  companies or B2B sales, Sampling is important whereas for a FMCG software for sales providing

company, Competitor Product / Activity analysis is important.

Now, if we agree on these lateral activities then the second bigger question is how to measure them. An ideal Sales Force Automation application or Mobile field force reporting software shall offer Sales Call Categorization feature that will help customer companies derive more value out of their sales process. This aspect helps the organization to take accountability of even the minute sales activities that drive the sales and in turn the profitability. Here we can identify various parameters in the sales process and assign a grading number to each one of them depending upon its importance and efforts required. Lets understand it with an example (refer fig 1.1).  

So if a salesperson has to achieve 50 grades in a week, Sales person A can achieve this by doing 1 Retailers Gathering, 15 personal Retailer Visits, 1 Product Demo and 2 Stockist Visits. Where as, Sales Person B can do 2 Product Demo’s, 25 Retailer Visits, adding a New Beat, and 2 Stockist visits to achieve the same. This way, sales person will be motivated to do direct sales activities as well as later sales activities.

How about making this information available on the mobile application itself. If we are able to do so, It will be an easy & smart way to know the productivity of each sales employee and his team on daily / weekly / monthly basis. It's interesting to think that here every task is considered productive on some level with a unique grading, The sales person will never be off beat about doing a product demo or merchandising activity again. Sales call categorization feature will result in many benefits with few main listed below:

• Accountability of all the activities of a salesperson on day-to-day basis. Analysis on the same can be done on monthly/weekly meetings. Encouraging them to do lateral activities as well.
• Improved all-round productivity as every sales activity is measured and accounted for.
• Certain sales activity can be the need of the hour like a new product launch should be driven by an interactive product demo every week for the coming month. Compliance can be now monitored.
• This Modern system will bring out the innovation of the sales team.
• A system to measure every Sales parameters will set up a 360-degree sales effort.

“The mission should be to help companies recognize their

About The author:

Atul Daga is an expert in conventional Retail and Engineering industries CRM as well as Sugar crm custom apps, Sugar crm developer and Business Intelligence

. He has done his MBA from Cardiff University, United kingdom. (U.K.). As  Business Development Manager at Advanz101 Systems, he actively engages himself with some high valued clients in knowledge process outsourcing domain. Atul likes DJ’ing as a hobby. He can be reached at atul@advanz101.com.

Is CRM A Game Changer In Sales Organizations Of Small And Medium Businesses?

When it comes to management in a sales organization, a right and related CRM plays a vital role in the overall development. Over the time the working of the organizations has changed considerably and it has carved a deep impact in the overall management and the working of the firm. A lot of things depend on the performance and the operations now days that have a huge impact on the sales figures. No organization wants to lag behind from the respective competition and they are now in the queue to use the best CRM that gives technical complexities an ease while aiding in the working of the expensive and huge infrastructures the organizations have. Software for pharma and customized fmcg software for sales helps the technicians to manage the load and the working in accordance to the available resources that aids them to perform the best.

The right CRM with customized ERP helps the organization in various ways. They help in using all the available data in a correct manner and it is further processed in a systematic way to get the most of it. The time is usually saved over the traditional ways as the data processing is done in a considerably less time and it aids in more efficiency. Further all the application and the online management insures that links to the head offices are maintained on the regular and timely basis insuring no information is lost. With our sugarcrm custom apps, all the related data is monitored on the latest basis and is further analyzed in an efficient manner to get the most out of it. All together, it not only helps you to learn new things, it makes the existing system work on its full glory.

When the workings of the CRM and the Business Intelligence are combined, they help the organization in a way that it gets benefitted in a long and short term both. This directly has an impact on the sales of the particular organization as the whole management is done in a smooth and productive manner.

• It Helps You Get Organized

All the data is handled in a manner that leads to full information. The information thus is rightly used where it’s needed and all the details are maintained on a single platform. This makes it a lot easier to fetch the data and it avoids the wastage of time.

• It Makes Things Easy

When the data is on the higher side, it gets very difficult to remember which data belongs to which segment. CRM not only arranges the data in a manner that makes the working easy, but it also helps you to process it accordingly.

• It Helps Nurture Client Relationship

The sales of the organization depend on the client base it has. If the organization is not having the right relationship and the communication with its client base, it can be impossible for it to forecast their needs and demands. The CRM insures that you remember all the necessary details about the clients, and their problems, if they have any, are solved on timely basis. It also further helps you to streamline the whole sales process from start till the end where you get exact information about the deals.

• It Helps You Automate

CRM automates the whole process where the organization works. It includes automation of the mails and reports that are the part of the management and the clients. Further you can send reminders and manage leads in a lot more efficient way using the tools the CRM has on offer.

Can Actionable Reports Improve The Productivity Of A Pharmaceutical Company's Sales Force?

Pharmaceutical companies depend a lot upon the actionable reports that they need from time to time. These reports not only help them to get the details on the working, but they also help them to forecast the decision and making the necessary changes in the current ones. Building a report on the specific sales force that too on the predefined time period can be quite a tedious job and you need a proper channel of communication and the knowledge to come out with the same. There are many people in the company who are directly and indirectly connected to the buyers of the products and taking care of which segment has which product demand plays a crucial role. Over the period of time, this forecasting and report making proves complex as being the Pharmaceutical Company, it becomes important to share a right relationship with the buyers and having a proper channel of interaction within the organization where it is connected to the buyer. This is where the role of SFA with dedicated software for pharma comes into play where all the related information is handled according to the data needed and you get the reports derived from the well managed data that gives you the correct information about the products, buyers and the organization.

The right SFA helps you to gain control on the data and helps you filter out the right and the needed information. This also involves perfect understanding with the management team involved and thus you get the transparency about all the related information. Every Pharmaceutical organization needs to work on the data in a way that it gets all the right info about the working and management within the workforce. The dedicated FMCG software for sales of the related product keeps the time and cost in check and maintains a proper balance within the management and the working thereby helping in the real time information that is often required to further work the data in order to gain control over forecasts. Business Intelligence is nowadays having immense impact on the working of the pharma companies and many find them handicapped if they are not equipped with the right one. It not only brings the transparency in the working of the organization, but it also makes the management work in an efficient and lot easier manner where the decisions are made in a better way for the betterment of the company’s future.

With sugarcrm custom apps and customized ERP you can push the development of your Pharmaceutical to new heights. The SFA helps you to take business decisions in an agile and efficient way that gives you a clean insight on maintaining and applying the decision which gathering the required information across all the channels in the workflow of the company. This gives you an error free working throughout the process. It gives you a clear edge over the competitors as you get to work in a much efficient manner where loads of data is handling with error free distribution and operation giving you a competitive edge. It helps you with the operation and sales and gives you the needed push in increasing the sales by understanding the client’s demands. With the nest SFA you could get your hands on, we help you to get the desired sales you want by bridging the gap between the raw data and the workflow. By using the best of business intelligence, our SFA gives you a clear edge over the competitors where your work is done in a very efficient manner, thereby saving you a lot of time and resources. This in turn aids a lot in the overall sales of the organization. 

SFA For South African Pharma Companies

Every pharma organisation needs a workforce that’s efficient and is highly productive. An organisation cannot survive today without the aid of the Business Intelligence and from the several options of software for pharma and fmcg software for sales that are available for the organisations, you must opt for the one that suits your needs the most. The South African pharmaceutical market was estimated at $3.8 billion in 2011, and is expected to reach at $7 billion in 2018. That growth is combined with an annual growth of 9.2% with Compound rate. This software not only helps you to run an efficient workforce but is designed keeping in mind the growth and the past pharma market in south Africa. They also aid in several workings of the Pharma Companies. The dedicated MR Reporting software helps you to manage inventories in an efficient way thereby giving you help and growth of the Company. The main components of the SFA are as follows:

• The sales reports are generated on daily basis.
• Option of the statement for both stocks and sales.
• Calculation of individual expenses.
• Alerts can be customized according to the importance.
• Comes with a mobile application.
• Tracking can be done with the onboard CRM.

A highly motivated and performing sales force is the backbone of every company. As they contribute a lot in the company’s success. A customized ERP that helps them along is an absolute must for the growth too. Today’s competitive world is lot more fierce and has customers who are demanding and they call for deals that are dynamic. The salesperson of the company need to be attentive and if he has the right customized ERP and software solution to back him up with, he can do wonders for the company. The Sales Force Automation (SFA) software takes care of every need and is an accurate online solution for the pharma companies.

Advantages of the SFA:The SFA solution that we have can be used and enabled both offline and online. This gives you a flexibility to use according to your liking.

• The easy interface helps you to increase the acceptance across all user levels and it has reporting formats like the paper reporting for the web that replicates the work.
• It helps you to market in a focussed way and allows doctors to map the products.
• It shows comprehensive and detailed information about the doctors and lists out the products that are available. This gives MR an edge to increase the overall productivity for the company in terms of sales.

The sugarcrm custom apps comes with the Mobilefield force reporting software that helps the sales force in the sales and the management area giving them ease of working and an overall  Effective Sales Process.

Benefits of the SFA:

• Collection of all the data and then processing it in a systematic way.
• The time taken to process the data is considerably less and results in less efforts and more efficiency.
• No need to send the DCR’s to the respective Head Offices as it’s done directly by the apps and the mailings.
• The data is analyzed on the latest basis and all the activities of the field are monitored in an effective and efficient manner.
• Management of the relations with the doctors with all the respective updated data.
• The products can be targeted after systematic identification for the doctor and the marketing need.
• The workings of the MRs can be tracked and analysed in respect to the deviations and the orders that’s been made by them.

The working of the sales team now depends a lot on the CRM. A right Sales Force Automation can do wonders for your organization if it’s set up right. It not only allows you to build new accounting relations, but it also lets you manage the old one with easiness and efficiency. The customer information is maintained in a right order and you identification of the leads and future stages in the sales opportunities can be tracked and worked upon. The right SFA leads the sales and the management team alike and helps them predict the expectations of the customer and their buying behaviour and helping them to forecast revenues

Myths around Business Intelligence

Business intelligence has been around for many years, but for many, business intelligence(BI) is just a reporting tool; BI is much more than that. There are other various myths circulating around BI that many owners are not clear as to what is right or wrong about reporting. We tried to list some of the common myths that we have heard :

1. Reporting = Business Intelligence : Just running static report is not business intelligence. It can be one BI model but there are several more. Timely alerts (daily/hourly or at the time of events) is a good model to delivery intelligence out of data. Dash boarding with a user friendly view of KPIs is the most widely used form of business intelligence - dashboards give a quick view of important metrics. Dashboards can be used to drill down from any KPI and get into the granular level of metrics. Self service ad hoc reporting, which is generally used by super users, is another way to go beyond traditional business intelligence reporting and get a lot out of company’s data. With ad hoc reporting users can interactively explore data from different sources and get answers to specific questions not answered by reports or dashboards.

2. Manual reporting is better than BI: In manual reporting, every manager will put forth the numbers that suits their territory if departmental managers generate reports. If IT Team generates manual report, then they may not have expertise or knowledge to pull key KPIs. In manual reporting reports are at the whim of who creates the report, higher management will not have a consistent view of what is going on in the organization. Management may not get drill down view along with high level numbers and data. In case of BI reporting, management does not have to rely on someone else to organize all the data. They will always have all the reports and information on their screen any time they need.

3. Implementation Takes a Long Period of Time : Business intelligence on ground up projects, can have a long implementation cycle - that’s where companies need to look at packaged applications. Packaged applications, like Advanz101's solutions, have built-in functionality for pharma and retail sectors. The functionality and key metrics are already baked in the solution - this reduces analysis and implementation effort hence reducing the cycle time.

4. BI is too Costly: For most solutions in the market, if you add hardware cost, development cost and license cost; overall costs can be high, but with Advanz101 that’s not the case. We take a different approach - we do not charge perpetual license fee, take minimal implementation time, and offer flexibility in deployment (cloud and in-house) - which ensures cost effective solutions. Companies should also look at Return on Investment from BI deployment. ROI from BI can be in the form of increased revenue, profit enhancement, decreased cost, and cost avoidance.

5. The Most Popular BI Tool is the Right for My Organization : In BI one size does not fit all. The hype around popular solutions does not necessarily translate to be the best for your needs. BI solutions should be evaluated to see if they will address your specific requirements, along with compatibility and scalability. Organization might set itself for failure if only popular vendors are looked at.

6. Business intelligence is not a priority: Companies always have burning issues and other top priorities - idea of long, costly implementation is painful. But as stated above, BI solution does not need to be long or costly. Having good BI reporting should be company’s number 1 priority. Proper reporting will give company’s visibility into the business like they never had before. BI can help in fixing problems, find areas of improvement, uncover what is working for the company (to replicate elsewhere), free resources from manual reporting, give timely information to help make key decisions.

Advanz101's Sales Force Automation

Advanz101 System’s Sales Force Automation helps field force to update field activities like Call Reports, Tour Program, Stock Statements, CRM Activities, and Expenses etc. on real time basis. This enables a seamless connectivity between field and Corporate Head quarters. With sales force automation Field force also gets relevant information to improve their operational efficiency.

Components of SFA: Advanz101's SFA software consists of the following functionalities within the tool:

• 1) Daily Sales Report (DSR): The DSR provides a quick way for collecting information about daily activities of field sales force through mobile and web interface. Details like Retailer visit/Stockist visits/Product detailing/gifts given/ POB details, etc. can be added with easy clicks.

• 2) Tour Program (TP): The Tour Program module enables the field staff to plan station wise visits in the whole month in advance. Sales agents can map different stations and plan a tour using this intuitive and user friendly module. Seniors in the team can also plan joint working with the field sales team.

• 3) Stock and Sales Statement (SSS): The sales staff can use this feature to record secondary sales only by entering closing stock of stockist. It also helps in proactive stock replenishment at stockist / distributor end.
• 4) Expense Calculation: The tedious task of calculating expense for every field staff is taken care by this module. Distances and miscellaneous expenses can be auto-recorded as per the Standard Distance Chart predetermined by the Sales Admin. The review and approval of expenses is thus made easy for the Sales Admin.
• 5) CRM / Merchandise Tracking: This module can record vital CRM related information like special gifts/promotion done for a specific retailer and their commitments against the same. This module can effectively track merchandising activities of your own company as well as of the competitors.
• 6) Customized Alerts: System Generated alerts keep the various management levels updated with the latest information as and when they happen. Based on the data available in data warehouses and transactional systems like Oracle, Siebel, SAP etc. focused alerts are delivered with actionable information for measurable KPIs. These alerts can be received on a daily basis on Mobile SFA or Emails, making them easier to access.

• 7) Importance of Alerts: Targeted Information – In the sea of data that resides in the SFA, it require efforts to find actionable info on different KPI’s. For such scenarios, customized alerts save the day by providing targeted actionable information. The alerts sent are user oriented as per his territory of work.
• 8) Time-Saving: Provides the exact information on demand, hence eliminating the need to access SFA and browsing through the whole data.
• 9) Reduced Dependency on Human Capital: The dependency on human capital is eliminated as the alerts are system generated and not impacted by availability of training resources, employee turnover etc.
• 10) Mobile Application: The mobile application provides all the functionalities to the field staff and management on their fingertips. This makes reporting and data availability handy. Easy, step-wise interface makes the app a productive tool in daily official activities. Users are able to upload activities from the field using mobile, which save their lot of time and improves efficiency. This app can be used to submit a daily sales report (DSR), edit a DSR, CRM/ Merchandise tracking, check alerts, and review real time data including other things.

Sales Force Automation (SFA)

MR Reporting & fmcg software for sales,software for pharma, customisedERP,Mobile field force reporting software,sugarcrm custom apps, sugarcrm talend&jasper developer

Business Intelligence

Business intelligence aims to support better business decision-making. BI uses technologies, processes, and applications to analyze structured data and business processes to enable top and middle management to make informed decisions.

                       

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ADVANZ101 has designed and developed applications tailored to meet your business requirements. We have developed portals, e-commerce sites and web applications to suit the day-to-day operations of small and medium businesses as well as the individual functional groups in a larger organization. 

                  

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Every day organizations are faced with the challenge of integrating disparate processes, systems, and data.  Large investments in ERP and e-Commerce systems.

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INDIA Office

Advanz101 Systems Pvt. Ltd.
H2, Ratlam Kothi,
Behind Hotel Omni Palace, Indore,
Madhya Pradesh, INDIA.
Tel. : (91) 731 427 4230
E-mail : info@advanz101.com

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Advanz101 Business Systems Inc.

2530 Berryessa Road, #552
San Jose CA 95132-2903
Tel: 408-471-9219
Fax : (408) 228 3735
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