COMBERA, one of the leading specialists in sales outsourcing and POS marketing in Munich, has been relying on RegioGraph and GfK data on market potential for years for sales territory- and regional planning related to sales forces and merchandising.

COMBERA GmbH is among the 15 highest grossing owner-managed agencies in Germany. With over 30 years of experience, COMBERA is also one of the leading full-service agents for POS marketing as well as the market leader in external sales force leasing. With a team of over 4,800 employees, COMBERA offers customers a comprehensive array of services that support their point-of-sale activities in almost all areas of sales and marketing.

Sales territory planning for the brand-name product industry
COMBERA starts a new round of sales planning for the brand-name product industry multiple times each week. This involves, for example, managing a temporary sales force of around five to over 50 employees at the headquarters of a German grocery store or a district management team of between 15-40 members who travel year-round.

The commissioning party expects a clear territorial division based on well defined guidelines. In addition to en-suring the territories are conveniently accessible by car, other factors to take into account include an evenly distributed workload with regard to visits per year, visit duration and an even distribution of VIP customers. RegioGraph is essential to carrying out planning measures of this sort. Also, sales territory planning and map analyses often must be completed within a very tight time frame.

Location rating and analysis of potential customers
COMBERA frequently provides consultancy for company operations that go beyond pure sales. For example, some clients wanted to know the degree of outlet density that would warrant deploying an external sales force. The task was therefore to evaluate a network of locations as a whole and then determine the individual locations for which it would be worth-while to recruit an external sales force.RegioGraph and corresponding data on potential for the customers in question proved absolutely indispensable: Purchasing power in the vicinity of the branch locations and socio-demographic profiles were key to the selecting of suitable individual locations. Regio-Graph makes it possible to effortlessly visualize these criteria within the corresponding catchment areas of the business outlets.This significantly increases the speed with which the respective outlets can be evaluated.

POS marketing: Impossible without geomarketing
COMBERA also carries out POS marketing campaigns on behalf of contracting clients. These clients are particularly demanding in the sense that they will only consider changes that promise concrete benefits. The related analyses, campaign planning measures and discussions with the clients rely heavily on geomarketing analyses carried out with RegioGraph, along with data on potential.

In the absence of this proof that POS marketing actions are efficient and worthwhile, the prospects of success for such campaigns would be low. Customers also prefer COMBERA because the company works with them to define realistic goals prior to implementing changes; software and market data are then often used to locate areas of untapped potential; finally, RegioGraph map analyses show the precise areas in which the response rate and return on investment were particularly favorable.

RegioGraph is thus an essential tool for enhancing the quality of the services provided by COMBERA.

Author

David Kimmig
Head of database marketing
COMBERA GmbH, Munich
David.Kimmig(at)combera.com
www.combera.com