You decide on your salesforce and commercial efforts for each distribution channel and each product:
Offline (traditional) channels (specialty stores and mass merchandisers): you must specify the size of your sales force (commercial team), in Full-Time-Equivalent (FTE), i.e. the equivalent of one person working full-time for one period) to allocate to each traditional channel and each product (brand). Commercial people may be reallocated at no cost across traditional distribution channels and/or across products. However, hiring or firing costs will be automatically charged to your department when the total size of the commercial team increases or decreases. They are calculated as a percentage of the FTE cost.
Your commercial team is responsible for increasing sales in traditional channels, obtaining and entering distributors’ product orders and for supporting distributors in their tasks. It is organized by channel to better meet the needs of the distributors, and by product (brand). The team includes multiple categories of people and resources depending on the channels: sales representatives, customer (distributor) support, merchandisers, etc. The main tasks conducted by the commercial team are to visit stores (distributors), to enroll them in trade programs, to take orders, to handle out of stock situations, to participate in trade shows and to help stores organize and conduct promotions.
The commercial team will decide on the best mix of tools depending on the channel and the target consumers. FTE costs include the salary and employee benefits of the person, as well as a sales budget that commercial people can use in their promotional activities or tools aimed at increasing sales, such as trade programs, catalogs, permanent or temporary point-of-sale (POS) materials, gifts, etc.
Online (digital) channels (pure online players and eStores): you must specify a commercial budget in thousands of dollars (K$) to allocate to each digital channel and each product (brand). Budget may be reallocated at no cost across digital channels and/or across products.
Your commercial budget is used to have your products appear on the homepage of online pure players (i.e. web-only merchants and retailers’ websites) and to develop and manage your company eStore (i.e. your company’s commercial website on which customers can buy your products).