"I hate the Brand Team"

Its been almost four and haf months in sales training in Tamilnadu with ITC, one thing i got to learn one thing for sure, everyone has an excuse and most of them are lies. I am being rather sympathetic to the sales force by saying that 'Most' of the excuses are lies, but if you have tough sales boss, you would never be excused for an excuse.

Leaving the nature of work aside, to look at a big picture on where does Sales Team and a Brand Team contribute to the moment of truth of selling a product. One thing i kept hearing throughout the training and later on almost started saying it myself is 'I hate the Brand Team'. Now why does this happen. This is why most of the FMCG companies put trainees first into Sales and then into Branding.

Where is the denominator ?

Lets start with the little (so called) unorganised retailer. I was asked in my project in ITC to calculate the ROI of the retailer, when i asked for the same with one of my distributor, he laughed and said, 'you should be joking, the retailer hardly invests, there is no denominator in your calculation.' More often than not, there is only one person who can make the retailer invest, thats the Brand Manager.

Lets take the case of three brands, Britannia Marie Gold,Sunfeast Marie Light,Parle Digestive Marie. First of all Marie is a generic category, though Britannia has a better brand value,thye retailer can still sell the available brand with him.

So, Assume, that Britannia salesman goes to a retailer and takes an order for 50 packets of Mariegold and delivers it the next day, lot of companies follow a bill to bill system i.e You bill to the retailer only if he clears the credit on the last bill, and the companies norm to clear the bill is mostly within 7-15 days.So, the salesman goes to the retailer after 15 days to collect the money, and the retailer cites a lot of excuses and asks for an extension, but 80% of the stock delivered is already sold off the shelves. Now the retailer has a problem of losing his customers, if he doesnt have any Marie in his shop, so enters the Sunfeast salesman and he takes the order of say 40 packets and he gives a credit of 15 days. After 15 days the retailer still wouldnt have paid anything to either Britannia or Sunfeast , but would have ordered from Parle salesman for the next 15 days. The point to be noted here is that the retailer would have sold and earned around 150 packets of Marie, without investing a rupee.After 45 days, he pays back to the Britannia salesman and so will be the case with Sunfeast and Parle.(The case explained here is an extreme case, but in reality , the retailer does follow this kind of cycle in differing proportions).

The question is, how do you correct it? That is what a Brand manager should thrive for, to make his brand Differentiated and Indispensible. The power should be in the hands of consumer and the Brand, The retailer should run to the company for the brand's availability. But it is not as easy as it seems, because in the market, no one is alone, there is a huge force called competition, which keeps fighting you off the shelves, off the minds of consumers.That is why some companies opt for a niche positioning through different variants.There are ofcourse a few other ways to correct this situation like merchandising, Trade loyalty programs and 100% availability.

The sales team gets frustrated when their sales targets are not met due to the credit problem, even the distributor's investment increases and ROI decreases. And when the pressure mounts from bosses above, the sales guys use their ultimate weapon of Undercutting with their dear friend and foe-The Wholesaler. More of it later. But for now, the point is not to hate the brand team, but to acknowledge and appreciate the relation between sales and marketing.

Kartheek