Assistant Area Sales & Customer Manager - FMCG

Candidates only from Tier 2 MBA institutes need to apply

The Area Sales Manager is responsible for the company's General Trade growth in a specific geography. He manages customer infrastructure by ensuring distributors are in place and running efficiently, leads a team of 10-25 Sales Officers/Executives and drives sales and execution metrices.

The ASM will be working in a dynamic sales environment; he/she will be responsible for prospecting, qualifying, negotiating and strategizing business development for his area. His/her success will be measured by the delivery of business critical goals, growth and gain in market share.

The ideal candidate will possess a demonstrated ability to think strategically about customers, categories and channel challenges, with the ability to build and maintain infrastructure and teams. Some of the key areas of responsibility are as follows:

Customer Infrastructure & satisfaction :

- The ASM is responsible for ensuring a robust Customer Infrastructure is in place in the territory. Distributors are appointed by the ASM wherever necessary and it is his responsibility to track their overall performance on key metrices. ASM is supposed to optimize the quantity & quality of customers in his area such that there are no service gaps while ensuring adequate service levels for trade and financial viability for customers.

- He monitors the financial health and profitability of all Customers and also negotiates TTS discussions with GTM Customers. The ASM also needs to step in from time to time to resolve customer issues which cannot be handled at a field-force level. Along with his team the ASM is also responsible for primary & secondary customer complaint resolution.

Growth & Execution :

- The ASM drives Top-line growth in the area and ensures all execution metrices are also in place. He is responsible for QGP splitting between sales officers and tracking them on a continuous basis. He will also need to monitor channel-wise and category-wise growths in the territory.

- It is also the ASM's responsibility to ensure all new launches are landed in the area and to ensure all merchandising activities are run well. Execution metrics are the input metrics for delivering share gaining growth and are hence very important.

Drive a team of 10-25 reportees :

- Team handling & team building are the most important aspects of an ASM's role. The ASM role is a key leadership role with 10-25 direct reportees. The ASM is responsible for managing the team, motivating them and getting them to deliver their metrices.

- He needs to understand the working style and strengths and weaknesses of each person to get them to reach their potential and also needs to provide developmental inputs on a continuous basis. How an ASM binds his team together is often a make or break factor in performance of a team.

Ensuring right trade support as per category-channel construct and competitive context :

- The ASM works closely with the BOM Team to ensure the right kind of trade support is provided to help deliver metrices. He also feeds back competition activities/ops etc to the BOM Team to ensure we are competitive in the market.

- The ASM will need to meet with trade several times in a month to pick up inputs on these. The ASM needs to ensure higher focus on categories of future & channels of future so as to ensure a balanced category-channel construct, sustainable from growth point of view.

Liaising with key Partner Function :

- The ASM liaises with the Supply Chain Team to ensure packwise estimates are built correctly for the area. He also ensures norms build up at an RS level are hygienic and supplies from depots are in order.

- He also ensures that the stock build up at Customer points are at the acceptable level. The ASM works with the Commercial Team to ensure customers are healthy and that payments to company are in order.

Ensuring controls & financial hygiene: Along with Commercial & Supply Chain team, ASM is supposed to have check on system hygiene at customers on aspects like extent of sales return, extent of damage/ shortage claims, mismatch between primary & secondary, physical vs. book stock mismatch, trade discount hygiene etc. ASM needs to play an active role in probing cases of deviation from norms on the above mentioned aspects.