Why sales force automation is not enough

For decades, the traditional FMCG sales model in emerging markets has depended on manual sales activities, such as field officers physically visiting retailers and merchants. This leads to high sales costs of between 30 to 40 percent, as brands and distributors need thousands of sales reps to cover their territories and visit each merchant individually. However, the disruption caused by the global pandemic has severely impacted this model and revealed its inefficiency. The need to increase market reach and drive sales growth has caused FMCG sales leaders in developing markets to begin adopting digital solutions.

As a result, sales force automation (SFA) tools have been adopted as research indicates that up to a third of all sales tasks can be automated, and that automating sales tasks can lead to efficiency improvements of up to 15 percent and a sales uplift potential of up to 10 percent.

However, recent studies show that over 60 percent of companies who have made investments into digitally transforming their sales by adopting SFA tools have not achieved returns above the cost of capital. Many brands are stuck initiating pilot after pilot of SFA tools yet are unable to gain any significant visibility into their market, reduce sales costs or increase the efficiency of their sales force.

This leads to a critical question every FMCG sales leader must answer: Are SFA tools the best way to digitally transform FMCG sales?

Is Sales Force Automation the best digital sales solution?

Many of the SFA tools available simply allow sales teams to record their findings from merchant or distributor visits onto a mobile device. While this is an improvement over the manual pen-and-paper note-taking process that sales reps have used for years, they cannot solve many of the challenges that face FMCG brands in emerging markets today, which include:Many of the SFA tools available simply allow sales teams to record their findings from merchant or distributor visits onto a mobile device. While this is an improvement over the manual pen-and-paper note-taking process that sales reps have used for years, they cannot solve many of the challenges that face FMCG brands in emerging markets today, which include:

• ‍Costly sales operating model: Under the traditional sales model, sales reps are reduced to “order takers” who have to physically visit every store in a territory to collect merchant orders. This process is costly and ineffective at capturing variable demand and SFA tools do nothing to change it. This impacts margins and the effectiveness of capturing value.
• Incomprehensible data: SFA tools capture very little useful data, as much of the feedback received is influenced by the sales rep visiting the store. In addition, the little data made available are often impossible to collate or process for any meaningful analysis and simply sit in spreadsheets. Without further processing and analysis, any data advantage that could be gained by automation is completely lost.
• ‍Lack of visibility at POS: SFA tools do not provide real-time syndicated POS data, leaving FMCGs unable to develop data-driven promotional strategies that increase sales velocity and drive revenue growth.

Large amounts of valuable data are generated daily across the supply chain, but brands cannot leverage it, and SFA tools do nothing to unlock that data. To increase sales velocity and capillarity, FMCG sales leaders need more than sales force automation – they need a solution that transforms the traditional sales process, reduces sales costs, and increases the efficiency of your sales force.

Increase your sales with RedCloud’s open commerce platform

RedCloud is the world’s first open commerce platform that completely transforms the traditional FMCG sales operating model by converting your sales team from an order-taking model to a true territory management data-driven sales model. The open commerce platform provides merchants with the ability to drive ordering directly through digital means, reducing need for sales teams to physically visit stores, whilst simultaneously empowering them to capture verifiable data and gain increased visibility across the distribution chain.

RedCloud empowers distributor and FMCG sales teams to understand the flow of goods and consumer demand and allows them to act through digital and physical means to stimulate that demand within their territory. For the first time, FMCG brands and distributors can connect directly with every single merchant along the distribution chain at the same time and capture valuable POS data in real-time.

With our solution, your sales force become more efficient, evolving from simple “order-takers” to data-intelligent territory managers who can leverage syndicated, real-time data analytics to drive sales growth across their geo-locations. The in-built marketing intelligence tool also provides sales leaders with timely insights into the expected shifts in demand for specific products across multiple geolocations and delivers actionable data that can be leveraged to devise data-driven strategies to take advantage of the micro-consumption patterns in the market.

Schedule a demo today to see how RedCloud is helping FMCG brands and distributors transform their sales process, reduce sales costs by up to 80 percent and increase revenue by up to 25 percent.