Too many stores, too few field salespeople – how to increase sales in FMCG?

How to increase sales in Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) when the current field salespeople don't have time to meet more retailers and department managers than they need, and the finance department won't promise to hire more salespeople?

Shopkeepers and department managers have a major influence on the sale of grocery products: what products are included in the range, where they are placed on the shelves and what promotions are run in the store. For example, there are more than 1200 Kesko grocery stores in Finland alone. Add to this the other chains and you quickly get to the heart of the FMCG sales manager’s headache: how do you manage this whole thing?

The old sales wisdom of quantity-direction-quality also applies to grocery sales.

The old sales wisdom of quantity-direction-quality also applies to grocery sales. If you can’t increase quantity (at least not without the risk of your driver’s licence ending up in police custody for a long time), you have to focus on direction and quality. Fortunately, there is huge potential for increasing sales in these areas.

Direction: planning the seller’s time and routes based on data

Traditionally, field traders have used familiar routes that have been driven so faithfully that you can drive through the route by following the ruts in the road. An attempt can be made to influence the time use of vendors by setting targets for appointments and dividing them, for example, by visiting x number of supermarkets and y number of smaller shops over a period.

This is not yet smart use of time. Sales visits and their content are driven by products rather than by profit potential. However, data is available from companies such as Kesko and S Group, and this data tells us what is sold in which store. And perhaps more importantly, what is not being sold.

Planning is then based on where the stores have the greatest potential to increase sales.

Instead of vendors planning their routes based on their old habits, the system can be used to plan routes on a weekly basis, for example. The planning is then based on which stores have the greatest potential to increase sales. If necessary, planning can even be done on a daily basis if situations arise that require a quick response.

What about those small shops where the salesmen never have time to visit?

This can be done, for example, through marketing automation by adding communication channels to the digital channels (emails, SMS, WhatsApp, etc.), in addition to just conversations with the salesperson. In this way, the number of sales activities can be multiplied without hiring new salespeople. This is handy, for example, when launching new products or selling outdated batches. But more on this topic another time (or book an appointment on my calendar and I’ll be happy to tell you more).

Quality: help your trader sell more

Once the salesperson’s itinerary is planned and he or she is sitting in front of a retailer or department manager in the store, what is the content of the meeting? Instead of tasting the merchant with new products and offering nice POS promotions and subsidies, this meeting can also be based on data.

A trader is above all interested in making a profit. With data, the retailer has a clear understanding of, for example, what products are sold in stores of similar size and serving similar demographics. The salesperson can be equipped with much stronger sales arguments based on the data. The shopper also learns to value the salesperson who makes them more money.

The trader also learns to appreciate the seller, who brings him more money.

As meetings move from tasting products to data-driven discussions on how to increase sales, in many cases they can also move to remote meetings, allowing for more meetings.

From product presenter to retailer adviser

The FMCG business is not easy. There are so many shops, and success ultimately depends on getting the products on the shelves. If the seller can show the retailer or department manager that certain products sell well in similar stores, there is no reason for the retailer not to stock the product.

There is plenty of data available, but the big challenge is to make it useful. For example in FInland, how do you get the data from Kesko and S Group into a format that allows salespeople to plan their time and sales meetings?