Field Force Management

Field force management helps in managing and tracking employee activity and performance which
further helps in improving the efficiency of the distribution system. As stated earlier, Mapro has
its manufacturing plant at Panchgani in Maharashtra. It is the only manufacturing plant in India
and from here, the company transports the products to other states. Thus, the management and
performance of the field force become very important to make the product successful.

We have seen the distribution channel followed by the company. Companies like HUL and
Britannia, have two types of distributors. One, are the exclusive distributors, which deal with only
company-specific products and the other, which deal with products of multiple companies.
Mapro’s distributors were of the latter type, who not only handled the products of Mapro but also
of its competitor. This hampered the sales of Mapro’s products and frequently led to stock-outs,
which we shall see later.

We will consider the role of the distributor and the sales force from the point of view of South
Delhi. In South Delhi, there are three distributors of Mapro. The distributors will be assigned a
certain number of salesforce people. It must be noted that the salesforce people were hired and
paid by the company and not the distributor. The salesforce people were answerable to the Area
Sales Manager (ASM), an employee of the company, and not to the distributer. This led to the
development of a superficial relationship between the distributor and the salesforce of the
company.

Every salesforce personnel would be assigned a beat plan every day. It would be clearly articulated
in the beat plan as to which retail outlets the salesperson is supposed to visit in a day. In South
Delhi, the salesperson was given a target of bringing in 12 productive calls per day, failing which
the salesperson would be marked absent (or on leave) for the said day. After taking order from the
retailer or the wholesaler, the salesperson would forward the order to the distributor. It would be
the responsibility of the distributor to fulfill the order and transport the products to the retailer or
wholesaler in a predefined time interval (usually one day).

To easily track the activity of the salesforce people, to manage them efficiently, to reduce the
hassle of paperwork and to have a record of every transaction, the company went digital by
introducing Bizom app into its salesforce. The below image shows an illustrative screenshot of the
Bizom app.
The app was a great addition however it was not implemented the way it was supposed to be. There
was no actual tracking of the activity daily, which defeated the primary purpose of incorporating
the app. The salesforce people were supposed to get 12 productive calls per day. The salesforce
would enter as 12 even if they had done less than that and would adjust the order to the distributor
on the day, they had higher calls. The salesforce people would take the order on paper and pass on
the same paper to the distributor, who would fulfill the order according to it. The app was just used
as an official entry of the order.

The distributer had products of other companies like Malas and Kissan in his arsenal. If the
distributor received an order of say 10 units from a retailer in area A, he would not deliver the
order to the retailer unless he gets the order of different companies from that area to satisfy his
minimum consignment in order to reduce his costs. This might sometimes run into 10-15 days and
in some cases into months of stockout of the product from those retail outlets. This was mainly
because of poorly defined rules for the distributors and because of a lack of communication
between the company and the distributors. It is the responsibility of the ASM to intervene and
solve the impending issue.

Consider a salesperson is given a target of 1 lakh per month. If the salesperson has managed to get
a sale of 1.2 lakh in that month, and unfortunately, he does not fall in the top 3 sales for that month,
the salesperson will not be eligible for any incentive. Only the top three performers are eligible for
the incentive. This is a huge morale downer; it demotivates the salespeople and does not give them
any reason to meet their targets as they are not assured of being awarded an incentive. The
salespeople had taken up the issue with the ASM a couple of times. The ASM assured them of
incentives if they do business above the targets, he also assured that he would talk to the HR
regarding the same. However, nothing materialized, and the salespeople were left dejected and
fuming. This clearly indicates the poor management of the salespeople who are the first point of
contact between the company and the retailers and wholesalers, which also suggests that the
company has a lot to work and build on to improve its field force management.