Nine Sales Officers, Three Districts: Rebalancing a Stretched Snack Sales Force
Sneha is area sales manager for a packaged snacks company in Odisha. She has nine sales officers: two in Khordha, four in Cuttack and three in Puri. The monthly area target is 1,200 crates. Last month Khordha's two officers achieved 130% each, Cuttack's four achieved 70% each, and Puri's three achieved 95% each. Attrition in the team is 40% annually and one Cuttack officer has just resigned. The Cuttack distributor complains that the officers only push the two fast-moving SKUs and ignore the rest of the range. The company wants rural reach expanded through five new sub-dealers. Sneha has budget to hire two sales officers and must decide whether to use it for replacements, for Khordha, or for rural Puri. She also has to reset quotas, because the Cuttack team says its target is impossible.
1. Diagnose the performance and workload problem using the numbers given. Is the Cuttack target unfair, or is something else wrong?
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Weighted achievement is (2 x 130) + (4 x 70) + (3 x 95) = 260 + 280 + 285 = 825 crate-equivalents across nine officers, or 91.7% of the 1,200-crate target. The area is not collapsing; the problem is concentrated in Cuttack.
Cuttack has four officers, the most people, yet the lowest achievement at 70%. Khordha has two officers at 130%. That pattern does not prove the Cuttack target is impossible. It could mean Cuttack's territory is too small for four officers, that the target was set without checking outlet potential, that the resigned officer's beat was already weak, or that the team is chasing easy SKUs instead of building the full range. The distributor's complaint points to a mix problem: officers are hitting volume through two fast-moving SKUs and avoiding slower lines, which makes the target look unattainable when measured on the full portfolio.
Sneha should compare outlet counts, productive calls per day, strike rate and SKU penetration by territory before changing the target. A target cut without this diagnosis would reward the behaviour the distributor is complaining about. The Khordha pair may also be overworked at 130%, which is a retention risk given 40% attrition.
2. Recommend how Sneha should deploy the two new hires and redistribute territory. Show the reasoning, not just the decision.
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The first hire should replace the resigned Cuttack officer only after the Cuttack beat is redrawn. If four officers in Cuttack are producing 70% each, adding a fifth without changing the beat will make the workload thinner and the quota dispute worse. Sneha should split Cuttack into three beats with clear outlet lists, not four or five, and move one existing officer to the Khordha rural fringe where the two high performers are carrying too many outlets.
The second hire should go to rural Puri, because that is where the five new sub-dealers will be appointed and because Puri is already at 95% with only three officers. A new sub-dealer needs hand-holding, order collection and merchandising support; adding that work to existing officers will dilute their current performance.
A simple capacity check supports this. If a sales officer can make 25 productive calls a day for 24 days, that is 600 calls a month. At a 30% strike rate, that is 180 orders. If the average order is six crates, capacity is about 1,080 crates per officer, far above the 1,200-crate area target. The constraint is not headcount alone; it is beat design, outlet coverage and SKU mix. Therefore: replace one, redeploy one Cuttack officer to Khordha, hire one for rural Puri, and redraw beats before the next quota cycle.
3. Design a quota and incentive fix that addresses the distributor's complaint about fast-moving SKUs.
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The quota should not be a single volume number. Sneha should split it into a volume quota and a portfolio quota. For example, 70% of the target can be core volume across all SKUs, and 30% can be a must-stock list of four slower lines measured by outlet penetration, not just crates sold. Each officer's scorecard should show total crates, must-stock SKU penetration, productive calls and new outlets opened.
The incentive should follow the scorecard. If the current incentive pays only on total crates, rational officers will push the two fast movers. Sneha can introduce a threshold: no portfolio incentive unless must-stock penetration reaches, say, 60% of covered outlets. A smaller team-level bonus can reward the distributor's sub-dealer activation.
The quota-setting process should be bottom-up for the next cycle. Ask each officer for outlet counts and realistic potential by beat, compare with distributor sales data, and then set territory quotas. Cuttack's quota may be adjusted after the beat redraw, but the adjustment should be tied to a documented potential study, not to the team's complaint. Finally, Sneha should make joint calls with the lowest performer and the highest performer, because the gap between 70% and 130% in similar markets is often a selling-skills and routing issue, not a target issue.