AboutEric Hofer Expertise Over 27 years experience, with 17 in international FMCG in back office operations and in field sales and data collection, including design, development and deployment of Handhelds, Marketing Equipment (Service, Tracking and Return on Investment), reporting and Vending management. Have participated on the launch of operations in new markets, and re-engineered the back office in several countries.
Experience Designed and led the development and deployment internal ERP system for Pepsi used in On-Premise/Vending in 13 markets.
Designed 2 handheld systems, the latest is now deployed in 4 markets internationally.
Re-engineered the back office functions (settlements, despatch, invoicing, credit control, etc) for over 20 snack, confectionary and beverage operators.
Developing software: Progress, VB, Access, C, Sybase, SA
Organizations Innovative-Selling Solutions
Publications BudapestSun
Education/Credentials State University of New York - BA Economics
NYU - Courant - Graduate work - Computing
Past/Present clients PepsiAmericas
PepsiCola International
PepsiCola Company
British Steel
British Telecom
Britvic (Pepsi's bottler in the UK)
AT&T
BellSouth
Mars Overseas Bottling
Pepsi France
Matutano (Frito-Lay Spain)
Frito-Lay
Pepsi Foods International
Chase Manhattan Bank
Kidder Peabody
National Power
SmithKline Beecham
Mars Overseas Bottling (Pepsi Azerbaijan)
A&P Bottling (Pepsi Serbia & Montenegro)
Iberia Bottlers (Pepsi Georgia)
Question I am just getting into beverage distribution after getting with a small energy drink company in CA to bring product to TX. I have a good sales background, account management, and a small warehouse space. My question is...is there a starting point I should began at before I get too deep? A book for instance? Some research online?
Sincerely,
Highly Motivated
Answer Hello Rod, the Highly Motivated!
Sounds like you've done some of the pre-requisite apprenticeship already.
There are several actions you can take to avoid too much risk (to early on).
Prepare a Business plan. Effectively you want to determine how much capital (and pain) you have to endure before you get to profitability. There are a couple of sites that provide business plans / models.
Test the market to determine if you have outlets for your product; whether people will be interested.
Determine how much "marketing" (or other people's) money you can get hold of to launch the product. Having already made the link up with the supplier, there might be funding here - and/or at least materials, approach and references off of which you can leverage.
Scope out staff to do the repetitive work (such as pre-selling, delivery and back office). To get going you need more than just your 1 set of hands as you cannot be everywhere simultaneously.
Back office systems and developing a selling organization are 2 issues you'll face from the get go. So you'll need to get some experience or knowledge here.
I don't know of the perfect "book" yet. But... I'm part of a team providing the coaching and systems (that runs over the internet with a very low cost barrier) and can be of help here if you're interested. (Write to jflynn_x_salessuite.net (substitute the _x_ for @)).
