Strategic Sales Territory Management for Colgate & Palmolive

Justifying the need for establishing sales territories and recommendations for routing patterns for the sales team of Colgate & Palmolive

Sales territories in general involves group of customers or specific geographical area, which is allotted to specific salesperson. In the current highly competitive business environment it has become essential for the companies and retailers to establish sales territories (Sharma, 2016). The importance of establishing sales territories is even more for the FMCG companies such as Colgate-Palmolive Pty Ltd. Various reasons and arguments can be drawn to justify the importance of establishing sales territories for Colgate-Palmolive Pty Ltd.

In this regard, it can be argued that establishing sales territories are important for Colgate-Palmolive Pty Ltd because it has the potential to increase the market coverage. Besides, every sales persona is aware of the area that he is required to serve which also improves the customer services. The greater market coverage and improved customer service together can be argued to contribute higher sales of the company and greater customer satisfaction. For example establishing sales territories and assigning specific sales person would eventually increase the ability of Colgate-Palmolive to address the needs and preferences of the customers more effectively, which is difficult without establishing sales territories as there is significant confusion among the sales person regarding the customer group or area that they are required to serve which can limit their ability to render quality services (Sharma, 2016).

Another major reason can be attributed to salespeople themselves. In this regard, it can be argued that the establishing the sales territories leads to fixing job roles and responsibilities of the salesperson. Notably, every sales person of Colgate-Palmolive is aware of the role he/she is assigned and expected to perform. Moreover, it enables the sales manager to monitor and supervise the work of each sales person and evaluate workload on each sales person. If the sales manager finds the work load to a salesperson is high, the manager can divide it and reassigned equally among sales persons. Thus, it can be argued that the establishing sales territories have the potential to increase the motivation as well as enthusiasm of the sales team. In addition, the presence of highly motivated sales team further reduces the employee turnover and contributes their best towards the accomplishment of their sales goals and targets (Fatima, 2017).

Apart from above identified reason, another important factor which justifies the establishment of the sales territories is related with management and control of the sales force. Notably, the properly designed sales territories provide opportunities for the management in Colgate-Palmolive perform other marketing functions more efficiently. For example, it became easy for the management to perform analysis of the sales performance on the basis territory and acquire more accurate estimate and idea which is challenging to obtain if entire market is taken into consideration. The information obtained by the management in Colgate-Palmolive can further helped them to make other important decisions such as advertising, distribution and promotion to reap the benefits of increased sales and greater customer satisfaction (Babakus et al., 1996).

Routing involves the travel plan or patter followed by the salesperson for making customer calls in the sales territory assigned to the salesperson. It has been recommended to sales team of Colgate-Palmolive to first identify both existing and potential customers on the sales territory map. Next, it would be suitable for the sales team of the company to classify customers preferably based on high and low sales potential. Thereafter, it is important to decide the routing patterns. There are different types of routing patterns that are being use by the sales team. However, in the context of Colgate-Palmolive, it has been recommended to the sales team of the company to follow circular pattern. Accordingly, circular territory routing pattern has been suggested because in this type of routing pattern, the salesperson starts form his base and follows circular path making calls and finally end at office/home (Ingram et al., 2007). In addition, it has been noted that circular routing pattern is highly useful for the sales team of the companies that are involved sales of the fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) such as Colgate-Palmolive (Havaldar, 2011).

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References

Babakus, E. et al., 1996. Investigating the relationships among sales, management control, sales territory design, salesperson performance, and sales organization effectiveness. International Journal of Research in Marketing, 13(4), 345-363.

Fatima, Z., 2017. Impact of Sales Territory Design and Salesforce Performance on Sales Organization Effectiveness: A Review of Studies. Amity Global Business Review, 46-51.

Havaldar, 2011. Sales & Distribution Mgmt - Text & Cases. Tata McGraw-Hill Education.

Ingram, T. N. et al., 2007. Professional Selling: A Trust-Based Approach. Cengage Learning.

Sharma, F. C., 2016. Sales Management: Latest Edition. SBPD Publications.