Area Sales Executive

Role Overview

Britannia Industries Limited is hiring an Area Sales Executive for its General Trade sales function. This is a field-oriented territory role focused on improving secondary sales, widening distribution, strengthening distributor profitability, and ensuring strong in-market execution. The position reports to the Area Sales Manager and is based in Ratnagiri, Maharashtra, India. The source description also mentions a PAN India location context for the role.

About the Company

Britannia Industries Limited is among India’s most established and trusted food businesses, with a portfolio spanning biscuits, dairy, cakes, rusk, and related snacking products. Built over more than 130 years, the company has a wide urban and rural presence and operates in a highly competitive FMCG landscape. Sales teams are central to Britannia’s growth agenda, driving distribution, market share, and execution across a large number of outlets each month.

What the Role Is Meant to Achieve

The Area Sales Executive in General Trade is expected to manage the territory with strong market presence and execution focus. The role is designed to deliver secondary sales, expand outlet coverage, enhance productivity in the beat, and ensure disciplined commercial operations with distributors.

Key Responsibilities

• Achieve monthly, quarterly, and annual secondary sales targets in both value and volume terms.
• Improve beat-wise productivity through consistent and disciplined market working.
• Keep primary and secondary sales aligned and maintain a healthy distributor pipeline.
• Grow numeric and weighted distribution across the assigned territory.
• Spot outlets that are not yet being served and activate them through structured field efforts.
• Increase outlet productivity through range selling and visibility execution.
• Roll out new products in the market and ensure distribution targets are met within the specified timelines.
• Handle distributor operations across the territory.
• Maintain stock norms, manage claims settlement, implement schemes, and monitor execution quality.
• Track distributor ROI and support long-term profitable business performance.
• Enforce commercial discipline, including credit control, ageing control, and outstanding management.
• Strengthen General Trade presence in key markets through visibility standards and merchandising excellence.
• Monitor competitor pricing, schemes, and trade initiatives.
• Take tactical market actions to defend share in highly competitive pockets.
• Work closely with distributor sales teams through joint field coverage and on-the-job coaching.
• Conduct morning briefings and accompany field teams regularly.
• Track beat-plan adherence and use SFA data to run weekly performance reviews.
• Focus on improving daily productivity, lines sold, and outlet coverage.
• Study market intelligence, sales reports, dashboards, and MIS to assess performance.
• Identify shifts in competitor distribution, pricing, and promotional activity and respond with local tactical actions when needed.

Stakeholders

Internal: Sales Admin, Depot, Quality, and Finance teams.

External: Retailers, authorised wholesalers, and wholesalers’ salesmen/distributor teams.

Candidate Profile

The ideal candidate should bring strong frontline sales exposure, especially in General Trade. Experience in high-revenue, high-volume markets with multiple SKUs is important. The role also calls for comfort with sales applications, reporting systems, and data-led working methods.

Qualification

A full-time graduate degree in any discipline is required.

Experience

Applicants should have 2 to 6 years of frontline sales experience, with solid General Trade exposure.

Functional Skills

Success in this role depends on strong selling and negotiation ability, distributor and team management, business continuity handling, and regular use of sales systems and MIS tools. Working knowledge of MS Excel and comfort with data-driven decision-making are also important.

Why Britannia

Britannia promotes a culture of ownership, diverse thinking, approachable leadership, and adaptability. The company values continuous improvement, ethical conduct, doing what is right, and community sustainability. It also encourages learning, experimentation, and career growth for its employees.