Hi Cosmin,
This is a typical Salesforce sizing exercise. There are several ways of looking at this; Happy to share with you one of the ways which I used in the FMCG segment (B2B salesforce sizing) for large multinationals.
Firstly and most importantly, we need to have a profitable operation, evidently…
If farmers hunt as well – which is optimum as often customers prefer dealing with the salesperson that initiated the interaction.
To ensure this, a cost to serve per customer segment need to be lower than the revenue generated by those customer segments. So:
Step 1: Segment customers into tiers (Gold, Silver, Bronze and Tin) – the threshold to divide those would be up to you. Typically, in CPG sector, Gold would be top 10% of customers, Silver, top 25%, Bronze 40%, and Tin bottom 50%. This is relative… Also, it is up to you to decide if its on revenue or profitability to segment those customers. Depends on the strategy involved.
Step 2: Allocate minimum number of visits needed to farm adequately each segment. I.e 3 times per week for Gold, 2x for Silver, 1x for Bronze and phone call follow up for Tins or non at all (example) – this depends on the industry involved and the activity the farmer would need to undertake when visiting. 3x per week might be an overkill in some sectors.
Step 3: Assuming adequate geographical split per farmer so not have overlapping salesforce farmers nor hunters. Assess how many visits each salesperson can do per day, while keeping 1 day of the week or 20% of his working hours for hunting. That is assuming farmers do hunting as well with an adequately rewarding compensation system.
Step 4: Design a step-sized compensation system rewarding salesforce for a minimum number of acquisition per months.
Another variable would be, what type of accounts are we talking about. is it a moder trade in retail? or could it also be large accounts in the fragmented retail trade?
This is a high level response which will need further elaboration depending on the industry and country. I hope this helps.
Best regards,
Amine Khoury
