Welcome to our latest edition of Expert Speak, ” How data can help your business" which comes from Véronique Motte, President CPM Group of Companies in France.
Impact of data
A few weeks ago, CPM France organised a conference in Paris to explore the impact of accessing data on the sales force team’s performance. For the occasion, CPM France teamed up with its partner, Data Impact, a leading analytics and monitoring e-commerce company.
The purpose of the conference was not to put forward solutions but to create thought-provoking discussions and share opinions or beliefs with the thirty sales directors and e-commerce managers present and understand how data can help your business
Sales force teams
The world of retail is changing, making the sales force teams role more complex
In France, consumers are visiting multiple stores for their groceries (7.8 versus 7.1 in 2010) and are increasingly becoming more specific and demanding when it comes to the source and the quality of products, but they still want a good price and a promotion. Faced with a decline in consumption, especially in hypermarkets, the retail industry is seeking to reinvent itself by digitalising stores and focusing more on small traders, new players and e-commerce. On the manufacturers side, sales forces are not immune to these upheavals. The professions are becoming more and more specialised while their attractiveness decreases.
Today, the use of data by the sales teams is not fully optimised
Following a trend to specialise professions in the past 10 years, today we are seeing a change to versatility for reasons of efficiency. The Area Manager is becoming a Store Key Account Manager with different tasks: numerical distribution, promotion, place, price, but also the management of resources.
However, the job could be reinvented thanks to better use of data. Salespeople could regain interest in their business through a cap on the data. It would facilitate certain tasks and reduce the time required to complete them. Better use of the data would reduce the preparation time, the store audit (automatic check availability, price records...), even transport, by removing unnecessary sales calls. Consequently: using data, the time of a visit could be optimised by about 10% to 30%.
How can data help in execution?
Today, visiting a store is still the main way of collecting data for the offline sales team. Tomorrow, the availability of data will optimise the sales team’s actions on three levels without having to make a second call:
- improved targeting on stores
- more efficient visit
- monitoring of the visit's impact
CPM France are proud to announce that one of our clients has accepted to test this data approach on its sales force team. It will be a good start and a good reference on the use of optimising data. We will keep you informed of the progress…
Véronique Motte
President CPM Group of Companies in France
2 minute read
