Learning & Development

Global Sales Training Project – Reckitt Benckiser:

Reckitt Benckiser is currently equipping its middle and senior Sales managers in some of its major markets with the knowledge and tools to help them get the best out of their distributors. Pearson Consulting was chosen to develop and facilitate a comprehensive program to address this challenge. Reckitt Benckiser is a £6.5bn multinational business and one of the world’s largest Household, Health and Personal Care products companies. The company is currently present in 180 countries and, outside of Western Europe and North America, uses third party distributors in almost all of these markets. Whilst most distributors are fully committed partners of the company in the market or territory they represent, they generally have a different perspective on the business, driven by such things as finite contracts, so their outlook tends to be more short-term than that of the principal. In addition, the market dynamics in most semi-developed and emerging countries are changing rapidly which requires an ongoing focus on the Route to Market approach to ensure that sales effectiveness is being optimized. All of this costs time and money! This situation presents companies like Reckitt Benckiser with a series of challenges including:

• How to convince the distributor to invest in the business.
• How to get the same results from the distributor sales force as the company would be able to from its own fully-controlled sales operation.
• How to ensure that the distributor is focused on the right KPI's.

The chosen approach was based on our belief in and commitment to experiential learning since our experience has shown that people remember more by “doing” rather than just listening and that this approach allows them to take the learning back and to use it directly in their own markets or territories. The “Distributor Route to Market” program covers all key aspects of the process: entering a new market or re-evaluating an existing one, choosing the right distributor, creating a market and channel coverage plan, defining the appropriate Sales organization structure, evaluating the right margin/ROI for the distributor, managing the distributor relationship on a day-to-day basis, creating an improvement plan for under performing distributors and exiting a distributor contract whilst minimizing the threat of legal issues. The program is currently being rolled out across several Reckitt Benckiser  regions including East Asia, Latin America, Africa Middle East and Eastern Europe.