Our client is a tobacco manufacturer headquartered in India. The products manufactured by our client are divided into three line of business - Cigarettes; Confectionary; Chews.
We amplified Sales Productivity by 67% through an automated Sales Process and a Real-time Performance App.
Back in 2018, their sales leadership realized that it was time when their sales team needed to be empowered with a system-based automated sales management process as well as a comprehensive sales performance tracking system. Faced with such challenges, they partnered with Polestar Solutions to build a comprehensive sales enablement platform that would empower them through – automated planning and forecasting process, real-time sales insights, system-based sales playbooks and seamless collaboration.
To us, it was strikingly axiomatic that our next sprint of sales" growth was much dependent on how successfully we were able to improve the sales productivity, efficiency and effectivenes”
- Vice President, Sales.Being one of the leading tobacco manufacturers, our client attributes much of its top-line growth to their Sales function. Dealing in fast-selling manufactured products, the client's sales organization engages a whopping large team of sellers and business and channel partners – which comprises a hierarchy of Sales Managers, Team Leads, 18K+ Sales Executives. 100K+ Wholesalers Distributors and innumerable Retailers. With growth in sales, the immensity also brought with it inherent challenges such as – keeping a tab on sales productivity, fostering collaboration and ensuring that the sales processes were followed consistentl.
Also according to Gartner’s research, across industries, close to 30-50% of sales rep’s time is spent in non-core activities that are less productive in nature. Although, towards the lower side of this figure, their sales team was not untouched with this factual inhibitor. Erratic sales quota achievement was another challenge the sales leadership had to meet head on. In a bid to elicit the ground-level realities, their sales management team interacted with our sales teams and identified the below major challenges:
Manual Sales Planning: Sales planning and forecasting process relied on spreadsheets, which was manual and prone to errors
Sub-optimal sales ramp-up time: Manual processes, offline playbooks and disparate systems for planning and performance data
Siloed Sales Data: Sales teams were spending high time coordinating with multiple teams and to pull reports and assess performances
Knowing early alerts or bad trends was not easy: Difficult for managers to keep in real-time tab on sub-optimal performances, regions
Polestar’s team internalized the challenges and seller’s needs and contemplated a comprehensive solution that addresses the below solution principles:
User-Centricity: to keep sellers’ needs user journeys at the centre while designing automated sales processes
Flexibility: to meet both current and future needs of the sales teams
Adaptability: to cater to changes in not only the sales team structure but also the sales processes- in response to market needs
Faster time to market – to deliver what sales teams needed in a shorter span of time, to reap early benefits
Modern experience and Mobile enabled – to deliver a product that’s lovable and meets sellers’ needs anywhere and anytime
Bolstered by these principles, the team at Polestar took a product-centric approach to deliver a much awaited solution.
Delivered a Sales Performance App that led 360 view on bottom-line numbers and reduction in manual errors
Sales productivity went up by 67% due to the automation of redundant sales processes
Finger on the business pulse helps sales leaders be proactive with real-time insights into their KPIs
30-35% reduction in the number of man-hours that was spent on consolidating and preparing reports previously
Streamlined processes lead to greater transparency in the sales planning and approval process
