Selling new product

Every company needs to improve the sales performance and experiencing growth. The importances are to maintain the company’s position in the market and ensure the life of the company itself.

One way to improve the sales performance is by introducing and selling new product in the market especially if found that the opportunity are exist and the existing product are mature and need some innovation and renovation.

Require strategy for sales person to smoothly introduce a brand to the market, failing this will result loss in company profit which used for production and promotion activity

There are several strategies that sales person could use in selling the new product in the market:

1. Consumer Promo
At early stage of launching, creating brand awareness to the market and especially end user is important. And if it happened the end user are consumer then you might want to launch the consumer promotion.
There are several types of consumer promotion like billboard, TV Commercial, ads on media or product sampling. But selecting the right consumer promo require market research on your end user and effective promotion related to them

2. Costumer Promo
While the first strategies are mostly done by marketing people, this second strategy is sales people responsibility.
Just like consumer promo, there are also several strategies related to costumer promo as follow:

• Display activities
  Main Objective is to make consumer aware of the product when their visiting their regular costumer.
  Place your product on its category shelf in costumer store might improve your awareness and since there are limitation in store space the reward scheme for display might give you best location on costumer store
• Tie In
  For small type of costumer, usually they only sell fast moving products to optimize the space, facing this type of costumer tie in promotion might be a good idea especially if your existing products are well known in the market.
  You can give your new product free as sample or tie the sales with existing product in one transaction requirement
• Free Products
  Experience is need to convince the outlet for selling your new products, while perhaps some outlets refuse to invest on your new product, giving free sample is a good option. The costumer will have two experience of selling the product and consume the product so that they can tell to their consumer about the experience is consuming your new product.
• Special transaction promo
  Since we don’t have the potential number of each costumer and usually costumer have their own cash flow to be managed and buying extra number of product rather than regular will disturb the cash flow, offering special promo is great option, promo like buy 5 get 1 or buy 3 get 1 will attract costumer to buy more of your new product.
  
  While both strategy and approach related is a tool, still the importance in selling any product is how we related the costumer need to you products.

Read More

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.

Read More