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FMCG Sales Forces: When Challenges Pile on Challenges

17/08/2026
14:31

reading time : 2 min

Lucie Monnot

Content Marketing Manager

Manufacturers of fast-moving consumer goods, or FMCG products, must adapt their sales forces not only to recent changes in large-scale retail, but also to an unfavorable economic environment. How can companies optimize field team coverage when inflation and international tensions are reshaping the market?

In mid-2021, everyone was hoping for a strong recovery from the COVID-19 crisis, driven by the return of household consumption and the “definitive” restoration of supply chains disrupted by the pandemic.

Nothing happened as expected. Today, the FMCG sector, including food, personal care and household products, has to deal with two realities it could have done without:

Rising energy and raw material costs, exacerbated by the war in Ukraine.
Inflation rates that are undermining household purchasing power.

In this difficult environment, negotiations between FMCG manufacturers and large-scale retailers have inevitably become tougher.

Manufacturers need to pass on the price increases they are experiencing, while retailers are trying to contain consumer prices without compromising their margins.

This situation is forcing manufacturers to intensify cost-reduction efforts at every level, and sales forces could bear the consequences in the short term.

Will FMCG sales forces shrink?

In the fourth quarter of 2021, 30% of the National Sales Directors of FMCG and self-service fresh product companies surveyed by B&B Market expected to expand their sales forces in 2022.

This already represented a slowdown compared with the previous 12 months, when 36% planned to expand their teams and maintaining team size was the dominant trend.

The current deterioration in economic conditions suggests that, over the next 12 months, staffing levels will either remain stable at best or sales forces will shrink at worst.

This likely development calls into question the organizational model adopted by FMCG manufacturers to adapt to the increase in the number of points of sale that has characterized large-scale retail over the past decade.

In addition to the traditional hypermarkets and supermarkets, where FMCG and self-service fresh products still generate more than 70% of revenue, several other channels have emerged.

Proximity channels

Proximity channels account for 10.8% of FMCG and self-service fresh product revenue. In 2021, 70% of National Sales Directors surveyed said that they covered this channel.

It is worth noting that 66% covered it using a dedicated sales force, often made up of work-study employees.

Drive-through and click-and-collect channels

Drive-through and click-and-collect channels received a significant boost from successive lockdowns, and their growth has continued.

In 2021, 80% of sales forces visited drive-through locations. Of these, 95% focused on Leclerc drive-through sites.

In 2022, 42% of National Sales Directors wanted to extend their coverage to drive-through locations operated by other retail chains.

Companies in the sector must also incorporate the recent emergence of quick-commerce channels in major cities into their strategies.

As hypermarkets lose ground in consumer preferences and retailers try to offset this decline by maintaining low prices and diversifying their channels, all FMCG sales forces are facing the same question with increasing urgency:

How can they visit an ever-growing number of stores with the same number of territory managers, or potentially fewer?

Doing more with less, the eternal challenge for sales forces

In the standoff with large-scale retail, the situation is not exactly the same for large FMCG groups and smaller companies.

Even after a reduction, the sales force of a large group will generally remain large enough to cover the entire country without excessively increasing territory managers’ portfolios.

Reducing the sales team from 300 to 250 employees while covering 4,000 or 5,000 hypermarkets and supermarkets is not insurmountable. It makes it possible to maintain a good visit frequency, despite the increased time spent carrying out in-store tasks.

According to our 2021 study, territory managers carry out the execution work in 50% of cases. In sales forces that include sales promoters, 42% of these employees carry out execution work exclusively. Of the remaining 58%, who combine execution and negotiation, 65% of their time is devoted to execution.
Since it is highly unlikely that stores will increase their staffing levels, this trend is unlikely to reverse any time soon. The weight of execution work and the associated scheduling constraints, including irregular hours and overnight stays, may affect sales force retention in groups already facing high employee turnover.

It is therefore more important than ever to design territories so that workloads are balanced, not only between sales representatives, but also in terms of the content of their roles. This helps maintain the attractiveness of the positions offered to them.

Doing more with less is much more difficult for SMEs with sales forces of only a few dozen employees.

Letting go of even a few sales representatives to get through a difficult period forces these companies to make even more radical decisions regarding geographical coverage and, consequently, the size and structure of sales portfolios.

Given the current environment, SMEs forced to reduce their sales forces will need to focus more than ever on the areas and channels where they already have a strong presence. This will allow them to consolidate their positions and protect revenue.

In this context, the “white area” strategy, meaning deliberately leaving certain areas uncovered, is often the best choice for small sales forces. However, companies must be able to determine rationally which areas can be “abandoned” without causing harm and optimize the territory structure according to the number of sales representatives, the number of stores to visit, their locations and the revenue generated by each one.

Whatever the size of your sales force, effective territory design is an essential starting point for covering a territory intelligently.

It allows sales representatives to achieve their objectives for:

Visit frequency.
Numeric distribution.
Share of shelf.
Promotional activity.
Revenue.

Supporting FMCG sales forces through this strategic process is at the heart of B&B Market’s expertise. It is also the purpose of Nomadia’s territory design software, which allows National and Regional Sales Directors to adapt their territory structure according to current priorities, constraints and staffing levels.

Maximizing the number of visits

As in every sector, the “useful and profitable” time of an FMCG sales force is the time sales representatives spend with their customers, namely store managers and department managers.

The more often they meet, the stronger the relationships become. They also have a greater chance of ensuring good product visibility, preventing stockouts, securing promotional placements and increasing the impact of promotional activities.

Unfortunately, sales representatives are constantly under pressure and struggle to organize their days in a way that maximizes time spent with their contacts and in stores, while also visiting as many stores as possible each day.

According to our study, in 2021 territory managers made an average of 4.9 visits per day for an average portfolio of 85 product references. One-third of sales forces were below this average, making between 3.5 and 4.5 visits per day. Another third made more than five visits per day.

All the National Sales Directors surveyed are focusing on shorter visits in order to increase the number of visits per day and per territory manager. The growing demand for execution tasks does not really support this approach.

In addition, the number of visits possible in a single day is directly related to the number of product references managed in each store. If territory managers have around ten products in a single category, their visits will naturally be shorter than if they have to manage 150 references across four categories.

In the first case, a typical hypermarket visit may last 30 minutes, compared with 90 minutes in the second. The daily visit objective can hardly be the same.

Giving sales representatives the means to be effective

To increase the number of daily visits made by sales representatives and enable them to cover their portfolios at the right frequency, their geographical territories must first be designed effectively.

They must also have the means to do the following.

Rationalize daily routes

Sales representatives need to rationalize their daily routes in order to minimize travel time between stores.

Covering fewer kilometers through more efficient routes means less fatigue and lower fuel consumption. Given current fuel prices, this is an important consideration when seeking to reduce costs overall.

It also means lower CO₂ emissions.

Nomadia route optimization solutions enable territory managers and sales promoters to create routes that take into account not only distance and travel time, but also the company’s strategic priorities and the individual objectives of sales representatives.

An optimized route may therefore exclude certain stores with lower revenue potential, even if they appear to be geographically well positioned for inclusion in the route.

Spend less time on administrative tasks

National Sales Directors surveyed in our study estimated that their sales representatives spend more than 1.5 hours per day on administrative work.

Sixty-four percent acknowledged that their sales forces do not have a dedicated time slot for these tasks.

This means that visit reports, appointment scheduling and route organization are not really considered working time.

The administrative burden on sales teams is mainly caused by a tools issue. The tools available to them are not always adapted to their profession and are often poorly suited to mobile working conditions.
To cover all the tasks they have to complete, including weekly planning, visit preparation, shelf audits, reporting and activity management, sales representatives move between several tools that have one major weakness: they are not integrated with one another.
The result is a loss of time, efficiency and motivation.

It is entirely possible to reduce the time sales representatives spend on administrative tasks by equipping them with a mobile business application that allows them to do everything through a single interface, on a tablet or smartphone, and directly in the store.
With our SOLVNet application, your sales forces can manage customer relationships every day, access all the information they need to prepare visits and routes, and use all the features required to avoid doing at home, in the evening or at weekends, tasks that could have been completed in the store.

Because the economic environment is difficult and cost control is more important than ever, FMCG manufacturers must be able to redeploy their sales forces optimally and give them every means of working effectively on a daily basis.

Whether you are dealing with territory design, sales prioritization, the practical organization of territory manager routes, in-store activity management or sales force CRM, our experts are available to advise and support you.

Contact us to schedule an appointment

B&B Market and Nomadia Group study

Study conducted between 13 September and 8 October 2021 among 71 National Sales Directors from the FMCG and self-service fresh product industry.

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