- Payel Adhikary Ghosh
- 0 Comments
- 955 Views
In the fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) industry, optimizing market coverage and sales productivity is crucial for success. Field sales teams play a vital role in reaching retail outlets, maximizing order collection, and ensuring product availability. To achieve these goals, a well-defined beat plan, also known as a sales route plan, is essential. This article explores the importance of beat optimization for FMCG field sales teams and how it can transform sales performance.
The Need for Beat Optimization
Effective beat planning is critical for field sales executives to understand market dynamics, strengthen retailer relationships, and meet consumer demand. A well-defined sales beat plan ensures optimal service levels at every retail outlet and enables the right sales executive to visit the right store at the right time. However, there are several challenges that FMCG companies face in planning sales beats:
- Ambiguous and Incomplete Addresses: Poor communication between retail storekeepers and warehouse management can lead to inaccurate and incomplete addresses, making beat planning complicated.
- Inconsistency in Order Collection: Inconsistent order volumes per beat and product ordering can result in either underutilized transportation or the need to hire additional vehicles, leading to cost overhead.
To overcome these challenges, FMCG companies need a comprehensive solution that streamlines the sales cycle and optimizes beat planning.
Transforming Sales with Field Sales Software
Implementing a field sales software can revolutionize FMCG sales by optimizing beat planning. Here are seven ways in which field sales software, such as AI powered BreezeFSM, can transform FMCG sales:
1. Amplifying Sales Productivity
An effective beat planning mechanism empowers field sales teams to maximize productivity. BreezeFSM field sales management app helps sales executives plan their visits, identify better targets, and design optimized route plans for retail outlets. The software ensures that every sales executive understands their role, responsibilities, and targets, resulting in increased productivity and efficiency.
2. Increasing Order Volumes
BreezeFSM AI-driven beat planning engine matches the right sales executive to the right retailers based on territory, pin codes, and accessibility. This improves the relationship between sales executives and retailers, opening up opportunities for upselling related products. As a result, order volumes increase, leading to maximized sales and profitable long-term associations with retailers.
3. More Sales Visits in One Trip
Field sales executives need to strike a balance between the number of trips and the time spent with retailers. BreezeFSM’s AI-driven engine designs optimized beat plans, enabling sales executives to make more sales visits in a day while allocating sufficient time for each retailer. Additionally, the AI engine recognizes sales visit patterns and recommends the ideal time to visit retailers, increasing efficiency and sales effectiveness.
4. Effective Territory Management
Segmenting territories appropriately is crucial for effective beat planning. BreezeFSM field sales software has an intelligent allocation engine that assigns and allocates leads to the right sales executives based on their skill set, experience, designated territories, and capacity. This provides regional sales heads and senior management with complete visibility and enables better planning and strategizing.
5. Sales Forecasting
A well-planned beat plan plays a critical role in determining the sales potential of each retail outlet and region. By analyzing the number of effective sales visits, replenished orders, visit frequency, and sales cycle time, sales heads and business development leaders can predict the sales potential of each store. This insight allows FMCG brands to run targeted campaigns, focus on low-sales potential stores, and attract new consumers. It also helps in expanding business by opening new stores in locations with improved performance.
6. Reporting and Analytics
Having complete visibility into the sales journey of field sales executives is essential for sales and growth leaders. BreezeFSM’s field sales software eliminates the need for manual data entry and delivers customizable reports on sales performance, revenue potential, store performance, location performance, sales cycle time, and more. These reports equip sales leaders with intelligent insights and help drive business growth.
7. Enhancing Customer Experience
Well-structured beat plans help identify product-related problems at the store level. Field sales executives can assist retailers in improving visual merchandising and provide information on product categories to enhance the customer experience. By showcasing the right products at stores, FMCG companies can provide an enhanced end-consumer experience and drive store sales.
Conclusion
Optimizing beat planning is crucial for FMCG field sales teams to maximize sales productivity, increase order volumes, and enhance customer experiences. By implementing field sales software like BreezeFSM AI-powered sales assistant, FMCG companies can transform their sales performance and gain a competitive edge. Beat optimization enables sales teams to cover targeted markets effectively, reduce costs, and achieve predictable and scalable growth. With the ever-increasing competition in the FMCG industry, focusing on market coverage strategies and models is essential for overall sales success.To learn more about how BreezeFSM Sales can help optimize beat planning and improve sales performance for your FMCG company, get in touch with us.
