SALES HIERARCHY OF UNILEVER

Sales outsourcing allows companies to attract and maintain a sales force without having to

make them full or part-time employees

OUT SOURCED SALES FORCE

The organization of the sales force at Unilever is “Combination Organization”.

The structure of most sales forces is combination of two or more of the types of specializations, such as combination of Product specialization and Customer Specialization, or combination of Customer specialization or Geography specialization. Unilever too uses a combination of “Product and Geographic specialization”.

ORGANIZATION OF SALES FORCE

• Strategic actions are taken by RSM

• Administrative actions are taken by NSM

Pakistan is divided in three geographic regions for the sales operations; these divisions are supervised by the General Sales Manager.

Central

South

North

DIVISIONS IN PAKISTAN

REGIONS IN PAKISTAN

Unilever has 7 regions in Pakistan on where they send a direct sales force. These seven regions include: Karachi and Hyderabad Lahore Islamabad Sukkur Multan Faisalabad Jhelum

In rest of the regions, Unilever sends its outsourced sales Team which is hired through their distributers.

Unilever defines territory as a customer base in which they operate. All the current and potential outlets that are counted in a geographical boundary represent a sale territory.

TERRITORY

Ideally sales territories at Unilever are structured in a way that facilitates planning and control of the selling efforts. A strong territory structure has helped Unilever in implementing selling discipline and demarcates the operational span for their distributors. Good territory management contributes to the development of:

Strong business partnerships Achievement of growth targets Better use of resources

Territory Management

BASIS FOR TERRITORY FORMATION IN UNILEVER

There are many elements that help and interact to determine the type and character of the territory, some of them are: Number and types of outlets Type of major channels Shopper base and profiles (Population Census) Geographical Spread

The Bases for territory formation followed in Unilever Pakistan is Sales Potential. Territories are divided according to the “Income groups”. For the skin Cleansing Products, the territories are formed according to the Income Groups and according to the turnover each Income Group brings in for the company.

The accounts are divided in three types of Income Groups:

Income Group A: Income group A, that bring in a business of more than Rs. 25000 in a month.

Income Group B: Income Group B, that bring in a business of more than Rs. 15000 in a month.

Income Group C: Income Group C, that bring in a business of below Rs. 15000 in a month.

TERRITORY BASES

FEATURES AND BENEFITS OF UNILEVER TERRITORY DESIGN

• Routing refers to establishing a sequence of locations a sales person visit

• Unilever Follows straight line pattern called Permanent Journey Plan.

• The sales person starts by visiting the customers at the outer perimeter of territory and then works back to home base

• Every DSR has to sell One BRAND/PRODUCT LINE each day

ROUTING

TERRITORY BREAKEVEN ANALYSIS

After allocating the resources they carry out the breakeven analysis for their territory. They estimate the minimum possible volume required to sustain each individual route. Elements that need to be calculated for the breakeven analysis are as follows:

Salary of all representatives. Fuel and maintenance cost for all vehicle deployed (driver, patrol,

parking and toll. Road tax, repairs, regular maintenance etc) Communicate gross margin available on all categories as per the

product mix estimated territory volume.

Gross Margin (3) - Cost (1+2) / # of Representatives = margin per person

If the Margin per person is around 50% of the gross revenues for the territory then they have a balanced route.