Area Sales Manager - FMCG

Job Title: Area Sales Manager - Traditional Trade/General Trade

Base Location: Kochi

Areas to be covered: South Kerala

Purpose of Job

Drive the primary and secondary sales volume for General Trade for Baby Care, Feminine Care and Wellness care product categories.

Operational Role & Responsibilities:

- Deliver primary and secondary sales target as per Annual Operating Plan in the assigned territory

- Timely Tracking & Monitoring performance of Channel partners and Sales team to identify deviation and plan accordingly for risk mitigation.

- Responsible for developing and expanding Sales & Profitability of the company in the assigned region.

- Add new accounts, retail partners for increasing numeric reach and weighted reach.

- Stock Management at depots & Distributors/Super Stockist/Sub-Stockist, Credit Control, Damage/Expiry Control for complete SKU and product range availability.

- Planning and implementation of sales promotional activities in the territory in collaboration with Marketing team.

- Identify and weed out small and high impact issues faced by channel partners.

- Cultivate and maintain effective business relationships with executive decision makers in large accounts.

- Reviewing visibility of product range at retail counters.

- Analyze and control expenditures of assigned area to conform to budgetary requirements.

- Utilizing retail & distribution platforms to improve efficiency and reduce distribution costs; monitoring the process flow in order to ensure the operational efficiency through dealers and distributors.

Strategic Role & Responsibilities:

- Business planning, forecasting and delivery of short term & long terms objectives (volume/ revenue/ growth/ systems & processes) at geography level and account level and product level.

- Guiding the team towards distributor appointment in line with desired business objectives and maintaining a robust and efficient Channel Partner network, through effective engagement and measures around healthy ROI management in line with defined business objectives/ processes.

- Driving sales team efficiency through regular and effective training, mentoring and coaching of sales team.

- Identification of brand building/ BTL activation opportunities and coordinating with relevant stakeholders (sales team/ marketing team/ external agencies) for timely and effective execution of these activities in line with business objectives/ priorities

- Close monitoring of the competitor's activities and preparing observation reports in order to facilitate the Brand Team to compete with competition.

Education and Work Experience:

Graduation in any stream and MBA/PGDBM in Sales & Marketing.

Strong experience (7 - 12 years) within a large Indian or multinational organisation preferably within the FMCG industry in General Trade.

Knowledge & Skills

- Excellent verbal and written communication skills.

- Demonstrate strong leadership skills and lead by example.

- Strong talent management to mentor and coach large sales team on company payroll and third party payroll.

- Orientation towards achieving operational excellence in regular operational work for enhanced team productivity and delivery.

- Strong analytical skills to derive trends/projections/forecasts from reports for planning and risk mitigation.

- Strong financial acumen to evaluate business impact of various internal and external factors.

- Ability to collaborate with cross functional teams for better business patterning with Sales, GTM, Marketing, Finance, Supply Chain.

- Customer centric approach and strong relationship management for engagement of channel partners and customers.