A Day in the Life of an FMCG Sales Manager

Products that fall into the FMCG category are the opposite of durable goods. They are those items that usually sell for a relatively low price and don’t stay on the shelf for very long. These include items like groceries, soft drinks, toiletry items, and other products that are purchased in large quantities.

Although the average profit made on an FMCG is somewhat small, these items do sell in large numbers. It is the quantity of items that make up the large scale profit in the FMCG market.

FMCG sales jobs are those that work directly with the customer and also include business to business sales. In other words, a sales manager could be a position that works within an FMCG company or corporation and sells products to other businesses, or they can work within the retail market, selecting, direct the staging of, and managing the fast moving consumer goods stocked by a particular store or chain of stores.

The business to business FMCG sales manager is a position with a higher degree of responsibility and usually a higher paying job as well. These managers typically spend their day on high level operations duties.

They may meet with other individuals working in FMCG sales jobs, like individual sales staff who call on other businesses. They may also spend a great deal of time meeting with managers from other areas of the business, such as those working in production, finance, marketing and creative services. This kind of FMCG sales manager is usually an officer of the company within smaller businesses and would be considered a member of mid-level management within a large organization.

FMCG sales managers who work in direct sales within the retail market have distinctly different job duties. These kinds of managers will often spend their day working with retail supervisors or directly with sales associates, depending on the size of the business in which they work.

If the sales manager is overseeing a series or chain of retail stores then he or she may manage store managers or store supervisors in an entire region. In this case the manager will spend a lot of time having conference calls and sales meetings with others in FMCG sales jobs throughout the region.

He or she will likely spend a big part of the day reviewing sales figures, making decisions regarding the products that are carried by the stores in the region, and meeting with other managers over topics of in-store marketing efforts, employee relations and other general operations.

The FMCG sales manager that works within an individual store will have significantly less responsibility. These jobs have the lowest level of compensation of all those which fall under the general job title as well.

Managers in these FMCG sales jobs spend their day organizing store staff, handling customer and employee issues, reviewing the performance of staff, and making purchasing and stocking decisions for the store.