How to get extra sales people without additional fixed investment

Sales person play important role in developing the market and improving the sales performance. Each additional salesman will give extra sales volume, extra outlet covered and extra products availability.

Getting sales people need cost, just like other employee in a company, but sometimes we face difficulties in adding the salesman if we are try to open new market where the sales volume and profit from that market are still unsure, but we need to open the market since we need to have strong and sustainable growth for the business.

Assigning existing salesman to cover the market might be a good idea, but less focus from current salesman area and business will be the potential problem for this action especially if the new market range is far from the salesman current market or if the new market is new to the salesman.

The best option for this kind of situation will be assigning third party to cover new market. The advantages and disadvantages are as follow:

1. Advantages
Advantages we are not use fixed cost like salary, medical and other employee related fixed cost, and instead we use variable cost in term of sales incentive. The third party will get pay base on how many product they sell to the market.
Other advantage is we can sell directly to end user using the third party. Third parties usually have loyal customers who loved to buy from them; it can be come from long time relationship, attractive term of payment offer by the third party and range of product that third party have.

2. Disadvantages
Disadvantage of using third party is that we cannot manage the price given to the costumer, clear penetration rate monitoring and less account management from our product to the costumer.

Understanding both advantages and disadvantage will give you clear view of using the third party as additional salesman for your product.
If you are using this type of salesman, there are several criteria that have to be met in selecting the third party candidates:

1. The Big outlets for your related product
Before entering the new market, you may use initial research for the market like costumer type, route to market type and competitors.
In costumer type and route to market research find the highest channel in route to market which can be wholesaler, grocery or food supplier and find the main player. Please take note to main player which use your related product as their backbone in daily selling.

2. Use Active Outlets only
From the main player list, separate the active and passive outlets. Active outlets are outlets that use their own effort to come and sell the products for their costumer, usually they use vehicle like car or motorcycle or there are also outlet which actively call the costumer and send the product whenever they need it.
Passive outlets are outlets that wait for the costumer to come. Usually found in traditional market
Deleting the passive outlets player from the list since it will not help you much in penetration period.

3. Financially Strong
To minimize the risk in doing business for the new market, the third party financial has to be strong. Use the active main player list and add financial level column next to the name list.


4. Willing to sell your products
From the active outlet list, put on top the outlets that sell your related product as their daily selling back bone, this type of costumer will have more probability to accept selling your product. Also offer attractive reward scheme to ignite them since their most objective in business is profit.

5. Willing to cooperate with you in developing the market
The outlet chosen must be willing to work together with us by providing outlet information regarding product penetration and availability and Give more information on how to develop the market

After completing the steps above, you will find short list of candidates of third party. Use them and analyze them wisely to choose the right third party for your products.
After your sales in the new market are enough to implement fixed salesman you have option whether train your third party or deploy your very own salesman for better account management and market development.