THE TASK
Client’s business in Zambia was facing challenges in the distribution of its offerings and the company sought Centum Learning’s assistance in an effort to smoothen out the system. Post an audit, the Centum team discovered that the system was facing challenges at multiple levels including:
- Cannibalization by the distributors in each other’s territories
- Lack of know-how and intent towards building an sales and distribution infrastructure
- Lack of focus on market coverage
- Ineffective Direct Sales Agent recruitment and management
- Wholesalers doing the dual job of Retailers as well.
- Ineffective and unimpressive branding
- Lack of periodic business reviews with distributors resulting in a lack of assessment on various parameters there by leading to sub optimal performance in the market.
THE SOLUTION
The Centum team decided to isolate one particular zone and target it for transforming it into a Center of Excellence following the Sales University architecture. The learning and implementation process would then be replicated on to the other zones and operational countries.
The Centum team then progressed to create a project plan for deployment and subsequently generate a comprehensive report. The project started with the compilation of zonal Sales & Distribution infrastructure information available at the head office to identify gaps. The available data was then analyzed to figure out the trade requirements.
A 30 day period then marked the implementation phase where 1 Zonal Business Manager, 2 Territory Sales Managers, 11 Sales Distribution Executives, 71 Direct Selling Agents from 16 clusters encompassing 103154 sq Kms were coached to implement various processes and activities to fulfil the requirements and to plug in the gaps.
THE RESULT
The effort put into revamping the Sales & Distribution bore fruit when the client’s share of gross adds (SOGA), a number which measures the percentage of connections added for an operator with relation to the total number of connections added in the market by all operators rose from 49% to 54% in one month. Other benefits included reduced stock-outs and churn, growth in recharge selling outlets and growth in SIM Selling Outlets.
