How to get hired
The words you will hear in the interview
Primary sales is what your company bills to the distributor or dealer. Secondary sales is what the distributor sells on to retailers. A territory manager who pushes primary without secondary just fills the distributor's godown, and the next month's order dries up. Interviewers love asking which one you would chase in the last week of the quarter, and the right answer explains how you'd protect both.
Other terms to know cold: beat and outlet coverage, numeric and weighted distribution, lines per call, scheme and claim settlement, credit days and outstanding, DMS (the distributor management system), stock norms in days, and the distributor's ROI (return on the money he has locked in your stock and credit). If you can work out a distributor's monthly ROI on a napkin, you will stand out.
Four routes in
Sales officer from the market. Consumer goods, paints, cement, lubricants and electrical companies hire graduates as Sales Officer, Territory Sales Executive or Territory Sales In-charge (TSI) on a junior grade. You supervise distributor salesmen and cover a cluster of towns. One to two years of field sales helps; a two-wheeler and licence are standard.
Management trainee from campus. Larger consumer companies hire MBAs (and some engineers) as management trainees, rotate them through the market, and post them as Area Sales Manager within a year or two. This route is faster but tied to campus timelines.
Lending and insurance channels. Lenders hire Territory Managers to run gold-loan, personal-loan or vehicle-loan business through branches, dealers and DSAs; insurers do the same through bank partners. The vocabulary is different (disbursement, logins, file quality, delinquency) but the job is the same: get the partner network to produce.
Telecom and consumer-durable distribution. Telecom operators and electronics makers run distributor and retailer networks with Territory or Zonal Sales Managers measured on recharges, activations or sell-out.
What the rounds test
Expect a manager round built on your current territory. "How many distributors, what monthly primary, what was your growth, which distributor did you replace and why?" Bring a one-page summary of your patch with numbers. Many companies also give a case: a distributor whose outstanding has crossed his credit limit wants a new scheme stock; what do you do? Some ask for an Excel test on a sales sheet: build a distributor-wise achievement table with growth over last year.
What the work is like
You live by the monthly and quarterly closing. The first fortnight goes on market work and coverage; the last ten days on billing, collections and convincing distributors to take stock against schemes. You travel within your territory most days, with DA and TA for overnight stays outside headquarters. Godown audits, claim settlement and expiry or damage returns are part of the job, and so are the disputes that come with them. Distributors who deliver goods across state lines or in large consignments need e-way bills; you won't generate them, but you'll hear about them when a truck is stuck.
The ladder in consumer companies runs Sales Officer or TSI, Area Sales Manager, Regional Sales Manager, Zonal Sales Manager, then National or Head of Sales. Every step usually comes with a transfer. Accepting a move to a tougher territory, a new state or a smaller town is often what gets the next promotion, and refusing transfers slows careers.