Zomato for Business

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Marketing and sales strategy

Zomato does not invest much on B2B marketing and rather invests on B2C marketing to increase the visibility of their page. Being a startup and having first mover advantage they are the only company that provide such services to restaurants. Thus rather than the customers coming to them they prefer their sales force to contact restaurants and generate sales. So the company prefers on investing more on sales force rather than marketing its services. Whole business for Zomato depends on search engine optimization. Thus most of the effort is directed towards improving the ranking of Zomato web page. Zomato diverts its marketing attention to the website users and the customers of restaurants to increase the visibility of their page. More the footfall on Zomato webpage more will be the interest of restaurants to use their service.

Apart from this during early years of company they did their marketing with paper advertisements and they provided free listing of websites. They also generated awareness among users by organizing various food fests in major cities. Now Zomato uses restaurant space for posters to make the end customers aware.

The products are frequently customized to meet the needs of customers. Product modifications are implemented after assessing the feedback provided by the sales managers.

Since their expansion into various countries they have adopted the acquiring strategy.

Rather than spending on marketing, Zomato believes in keeping a strong sales force. They invest heavily on their sales team and keep enough sales managers for every territory. Zomato spends a good amount to train their sales people about the products and the sales strategy. Currently the sales force is responsible for making contact with new and existing restaurants in their area and selling an existing plan to them. The sales managers are given a list of restaurants in their area in every 15 days. The sales team has to contact the list and a new list is given to them every fortnight. Zomato spends a lot in research to generate fresh leads. Good incentive plans have also been devised to keep the sales staff happy.

Zomato spends very less amount on B2B marketing and more on B2C marketing. Thus ASM has very little role to play in promotions. Objective of ASM is to link the sales strategy in his territory with the upcoming marketing strategy of Zomato. The marketing team gives their plan for the quarter to the city sales head which are forwarded to the ASM during the planning process. The ASM’s align their sales managers with the promotion strategy. Sales managers are also directly in contact with the marketing department to know of the latest promotional offers by Zomato.

Assignment 2

Quarterly Sales Planning Process

In Zomato the sales planning is done quarterly and attended by the city sales head and all the area sales managers of the city. Decisions on following key areas are taken during the annual sales planning process of Zomato.

- Territory target planning- each area sales manager is reviewed on the performance of his territory in the previous quarter and the targets for the next 3 months are set. This also includes forecasting for the territory. Forecast depends on the territory growth in terms of new food joints coming up in the area.

- Increasing product/service category- every ASM discusses on the customer feedback and based on those any new services that can be provided to the customers are then reviewed.

- Identifying key accounts- segmenting the customers on the basis of revenue generated from them to identify the possible key accounts. This also includes identifying the risks and opportunities involved in making an account a key account.

- Budgeting- comparison of costs incurred in every territory to cut back on costs and improve efficiency.

- Communication- the existing communication plan between ASM’s, city heads and SM’s are reviewed. This includes discussion on any new technology to be adopted for better communication. Currently Zomato uses Google sheets and Google drives for communication, but they are planning on developing in-built software to improve the communication system between different levels.

- Identifying top performers - from every territory the best salesmen are identified and among them the prospective salesmen to be promoted in the hierarchy are determined. Any training if to be provided is discussed upon.

- Milestones- the SM’s and KAM’s are provided targets every 15 days. The decision on how much to increase the target every quarter is taken in these sales meetings.

- Resource allocation- resources allocated to every territory are reviewed and if required seeing the growth in the area new resources are added.

- The city head informs the ASM’s about the marketing teams plans and thus restructuring of sales program in line with marketing strategy if required is discussed.

- Reviewing the salary and commissions of sales managers.

STMO objectives and targets

Every area sales manager is given his sales targets on the basis of previous quarter sales in his territory and the forecast for sales in the next quarter. The ASM is responsible for developing the selling process to achieve the targets. Another objective for ASM is to divide the territory for each salesperson and divide the overall target into achievable and measurable milestones among the different sales managers under him. This is done in the quarterly sales planning process based on the performance of each sales manager. ASM in the sales meeting also decides on who will handle the key accounts that have been realized due to their previous tie-ups with Zomato. Mr. Pravir Kalra is ASM for north Delhi and has 11 SM’s under him. He distributes the restaurants to his sales person to minimize the travel time. The maximum SM’s have been allotted to Rohini and Pitampura.

Every ASM is also responsible for justifying the budget that was allotted to him in the previous Quarter. The amount spent by each SM and KAM under every ASM is noted and any outliers are brought to the notice of ASM. The ASM can be given a target to reduce the travel cost of sales managers in his territories if it is too ahead of the city average. This is an essential part of quarterly meetings. Since Zomato charges only a fixed amount for every slot, the profit can go down if the cost increases. Thus a major responsibility of the ASM is to keep the cost under check and thus improve