Area Sales Manager (Punjab) - General Trade (FMCG)

Troovy · India

Area Sales Manager (ASM), Punjab – General Trade

Location: Punjab

Reporting to: Regional Sales Manager

Employment Type: Full-time 

Role Summary

Build and scale Troovy’s General Trade business across the assigned geography by developing distribution, expanding productive outlets and driving sustainable secondary sales. Lead the field-sales team as the business owner for the territory, with responsibility for execution, collections and repeat offtake.

Key Responsibilities

Territory Business Ownership

• Own primary sales, secondary sales, collections and overall growth for the assigned geography.
• Develop monthly, quarterly and annual territory plans aligned with business objectives.
• Identify white spaces, high-potential clusters and expansion opportunities.
• Manage territory budgets, trade investments and market-development spends.
• Build a predictable and sustainable sales pipeline across markets and distributors.

Sales and Distribution Planning

• Translate territory targets into distributor, team, beat and outlet-level plans.
• Forecast demand using sales trends, market potential, seasonality and planned activities.
• Coordinate stock allocation to ensure the availability of priority products and SKUs.
• Monitor primary-to-secondary conversion and prevent excess inventory or stock dumping.
• Improve distribution width, depth, service frequency and SKU availability.

Sales Team Leadership

• Lead ASEs, Sales Officers, PSRs and DBSMs across the assigned geography.
• Set clear daily, weekly and monthly objectives for every team member.
• Review performance through sales, coverage, productivity and repeat-outlet metrics.
• Conduct regular joint market visits, coaching sessions and performance reviews.
• Identify capability gaps and create individual improvement plans.
• Support recruitment, onboarding and training of new field-sales employees.
• Build a culture of ownership, discipline, transparency and execution.

Distributor Development

• Identify, evaluate, appoint and onboard distributors in priority markets.
• Establish clear distributor-level targets, coverage plans and service expectations.
• Monitor distributor ROI, working capital, inventory, ageing and stock rotation.
• Ensure adequate manpower, infrastructure and delivery capacity at the distributor level.
• Resolve distributor concerns related to pricing, schemes, claims, supply and collections.
• Improve distributor productivity and build long-term, commercially healthy partnerships.
• Identify underperforming distributors and implement corrective or replacement plans.

Outlet Development and Productivity

• Build and maintain an accurate universe of relevant retail outlets.
• Increase active, productive, repeat and high-value outlets across every beat.
• Ensure new outlet additions translate into billing, trials and repeat orders.
• Track inactive, non-moving and declining outlets and initiate recovery actions.
• Improve order frequency, average order value, average sales per outlet and SKU penetration.
• Develop high-potential outlets through improved assortment, visibility and servicing.
• Monitor outlet retention and minimise loss of productive stores.

Secondary Sales and Repeat Offtake

• Deliver sustainable secondary sales rather than relying only on primary billing.
• Review daily sales and outlet-level performance to identify execution gaps.
• Build structured follow-up cycles to convert trials into repeat purchases.
• Improve retail offtake through assortment, visibility, sampling and retailer engagement.
• Analyse sales performance by distributor, territory, employee, outlet and SKU.
• Implement corrective actions for low sales, weak repeat rates or declining productivity.

Collections and Commercial Discipline

• Ensure timely collections and adherence to approved credit terms.
• Monitor distributor outstanding, ageing and payment commitments.
• Coordinate with finance to resolve ledger, credit note, debit note and claim-related issues.
• Control market schemes, discounts and commercial spends within approved guidelines.
• Protect business quality by balancing sales growth with collections and stock movement.

Market Execution

• Ensure consistent merchandising, product visibility and POSM deployment.
• Plan and execute sampling, retailer engagement and local market activations.
• Track the placement, utilisation and condition of market assets.
• Ensure execution standards are maintained across priority outlets and clusters.
• Measure the effectiveness of activations and improve future deployment decisions.

Market Intelligence and Growth Insights

• Track competitor products, pricing, margins, schemes, launches and distribution.
• Capture structured feedback from retailers, distributors, consumers and the sales team.
• Identify local consumption trends, emerging categories and market barriers.
• Share actionable recommendations with leadership for product, pricing and GTM decisions.
• Use market intelligence to refine territory plans and resource allocation.

Cross-functional Coordination

• Work with operations to ensure stock availability, order processing and timely dispatch.
• Coordinate with logistics to improve distributor servicing and delivery turnaround time.
• Partner with finance on collections, outstanding balances, claims and reconciliations.
• Collaborate with marketing on visibility, launches, sampling and market-development plans.
• Escalate and resolve issues affecting sales, distribution or customer relationships.

Data, Reporting and Process Compliance

• Maintain accurate distributor, outlet, employee, beat and sales data.
• Ensure timely and correct usage of SFA, DMS and internal reporting systems.
• Review dashboards and reports to identify exceptions, risks and growth opportunities.
• Prevent fake orders, duplicate outlets and inaccurate market reporting.
• Submit regular business reviews covering sales, collections, stock, coverage and execution.
• Ensure all team members follow defined sales processes and reporting standards.

Troovy Sales Philosophy

Distribution → Placement → Trial → Repeat → Productivity → Scale

• Primary sales must translate into genuine secondary movement.
• Build productive and repeat-ordering outlets, not only outlet count.
• Use market feedback to improve products, pricing, schemes and distribution.
• Operate as the mini business owner for the assigned geography.

Candidate Profile

• Graduate with 5–8 years of FMCG or General Trade sales experience.
• Relevant experience in food, snacks, beverages or consumer products is preferred.
• Proven ability to develop distributors, territories and retail outlet networks.
• Experience leading and improving the performance of field-sales teams.
• Strong understanding of secondary sales, beat planning, collections and stock management.
• Comfortable with extensive field working and new market development.
• Strong analytical, communication, negotiation and reporting skills.
• Entrepreneurial mindset with the hunger to build a market, not only manage one.