Channel Sales Jobs and Everything You Wanted to Know about Them

The amount of control a store manager has over the stock varies. In some chains, the store managers have total control. In others, they have none at all. Our sales force structure is set up to accommodate both. For example, the call frequency for a store in which we have very little control and can do very little might be every four weeks. A store in which we have a great deal of control might have a call frequency of every two weeks. So we try to get the sales representatives into the store where they have the most influence as often as possible. Volume is also a contributing factor to how often they go in. If the store is dominated by their headquarters but they do a tremendous volume, then the sales representative is still in there frequently. Under those conditions, the sales representative makes sure that the tags or the display is where they should be. There are a lot of things, even in a headquarter-dominated store, that a sales representative can still do to make the product remain number one. We have 50 percent of the market share in this area, and we have to continue even if we are dealing with chains; we've got to keep that market share. That's what it's all about.

I manage a geographic sales territory. I'm one of fifteen sales representatives in our unit. I go to the grocery trade, the grocery outlets. I call on retail grocery stores. I've got seventy-five stores right now, and they do a total gross dollar volume of about $6 million a week. My basic responsibilities are fivefold: (1) to sell distribution on our product; (2) to sell shelving concepts in terms of shelving our product properly and to convey how the dealer would benefit through our shelving suggestions; (3) to sell displays on our product; (4) to sell companies on advertising our product in their newspaper advertisements; and (5) to maintain over all merchandising support for the retailer in terms of building displays and catching pricing errors for them. I'm also a liaison between the customers and a payment office. If they return coupons or something along that line and they aren't paid for them, I find out where the problem is. I also keep up on competitive activity, finding out what the competition is doing and communicating that upward.

While it's not the most important part, there is a physical aspect of the job. I actually go into a back room in a grocery store, pull out cases, slash them open, price the product, and put it up. It's something the stock boys normally do for a lot of companies. A lot of companies actually say, "The stock boy will get it." Well, when I go in I want to get the product up on display, which is very important. I can move five times more business off a display than off the shelf, so I want to get it working for us as quickly as possible.



We ask that a salesperson make out an itinerary for a month. We are still believers in a five-step call approach, which includes (1) the preparation; (2) the actual approach of your ideas; (3) the presentation; (4) the close (within the presentation); and (5) the evaluation of what happened in the call-bad, good, or indifferent. We do not make cold calls such as door-to-door calls. We know our customers, and we like to convey the impression that we know our customers' business just as well as they do in terms of their needs and especially in terms of our product.

Many times it's an extremely detailed presentation; we stress that we're not selling features but benefits. That's what our customer is interested in, the benefits. The features of a product are fairly well understood. Our products return good profit on their investment, and w make that statement in our presentation. We talk about the rate of sales. We are very fortunate in that we get a lot of information from our market research department.

We are not just here for today; we plan on being here today tomorrow, and the day after. So one of the things we try to do is helping making the correct buy. If you load them up, you are not going to be in very good shape next year. We also try to show ways that we can sell the product in terms of merchandising and advertising the product.

Q - How are you evaluated?

A - Well, the first person who evaluates my performance is the division sales manager. We fill out daily sales reports on the calls we made that day, whether we made a sale, how much was ordered, and so forth. We have objectives of six calls and four orders per day. The division sales manager compares our production against these standards and examines our performance to see how we're doing on distribution objectives. For example, if we introduce a new product and we want to hit 95 percent of our accounts, the division sales manager compares how well we do against the 95 percent goal and evaluates our expenses versus our expense budget.

The standards aren't realistic. I think they're set up just because they want to have something to shoot for. It's a little tough to expect someone like myself who covers two states to make six calls a day and have four orders when someone else only has to cover a city. I may drive an hour between accounts, and the other salesperson may drive fifteen minutes or something like that. But they are very strict about making the six calls and the four orders. If you don't make it, you'll hear about it.

My unit manager deals with me on a day-to-day basis, following my development, my performance, and so forth. Everything I do during the course of a day as a sales representative is documented on a daily report and mailed to my unit manager. Files are maintained on every statistic possible, from calls per day to orders per day, order to call average, cases sold per day, displays per day, and so forth.