It's Partners First for AOC

AOC has earned a reputation for selling user-friendly, technologically advanced displays. The company also aims to maintain leadership position in the monitors' space in the Indian market. AOC India has an excellent sales structure, headed by Saurabh Grover, to support the channel partners across the country. The main target of the national sales manager is to boost the sales of the products and guiding and motivating the team for principal success. Grover, director of monitor business, AOC India, takes all the responsibilities to look after the channel Strategy, which includes furnishing the sales targets, distribution system, and appointing new distributors. Under Grover, there are regional managers in all the four regions.

Under regional managers, the company has appointed area sales managers and in order to reach out to every nook and corner of the country, it has appointed sales executives. Regional sales managers'

primary responsibilities include, but are not limited to, planning AOC's sales campaigns, developing the skills of the sales team, smoothly implementing technological changes in monitor industry, consulting and collaborating with AOC's and distributor's sales executives and proactively reviewing the outcomes of the company's sales efforts.

Grover pointed out, "Another important role could be fixing and meeting up the targets in their territories and spreading the business in the core places of the region. Our regional managers also engage with tier II and III partners for the sales, as these are one of the underlined focuses of our business." "Business marketing is important for company's growth and stability. Marketing works on bringing the company brand image into the spotlight as well as acquiring new customers. At AOC, we are committed to keeping existing markets and aggressively expanding into new markets. This is achieved through regular and consistent communication of product updates and launches, use of promotional material such as brochures, cards, inserts that are made available to partners for use in their own communications," added Grover.

CHANNEL ECOSYSTEM

The company has established its presence all over India covering both established and emerging markets with fair penetration in C-class cities and is focused on an aggressive strategy to expand into the constantly growing market. At present AOC has a network of about 3500 dealers, SIs and resellers which it plans to increase to 4500 in this financial year. Since the monitor market is expected to primarily grow in B and C class cities, the company is investing heavily in these regions. It is also trying to expand its channel partners in every possible cities of India. "Participation in events and IT exhibitions ensures visibility to the masses. Online communication

via email, social media marketing; efficient use of internet marketing tools like website, Google ad words, videos on You-tube, is done to target the end consumer," said Grover. Grover further stated, "AOC has invested heavily in IT channel marketing with participation in 7 exhibitions across India.

We have also organized 4 AOC Premier League Cricket Tournaments for channel partners in different locations, a widespread channel ad campaign and invested massively in-shop and onshop branding with glowsign boards, shop displays, print collaterals, etc. Additionally, we plan to lay more focus on end consumer marketing since our position in the channel has remained strong consistently over the last few years."

CHANNEL PROGRAMS

AOC has the widest and most comprehensive range of monitors. In order to keep its partners updated about the product range, strategies and plan of action, the company conducts regular training, workshops, and get together especially for the staff of its channel partners. These training sessions revolve around product updates, product knowledge - latest features, pricing, schemes etc. "Since monitor is a touch and feel product, we as well as our partners prefer a ‘physical' training over ‘online'. However, we do have a toll free help line, where our partners can call for any assistance," asserted Grover.

The company's focus is encouraging partners to do AOC business. It has always been very keen on encouraging the channel fraternity with new schemes for every new season. It has introduced incentive based partner programs all over India on a quarterly basis. These programs help motivate the partners to sell more TVs and monitors. In 2012-13, it has plans to engage regional partners in different incentive based programs as per the sales volume and revenue. "Currently we are running a huge scheme -"Buy more and get a lot more" for our tier-3 partners. This is a point based scheme for 18.5-inch and above SKUs. Over and above the scheme, we have also planned a lot of lucky draws and surprise bumper gifts for our channel partners," said Grover. "We feel this scheme

will boost the sales of our higher end monitors, providing an extra profit to our channel partners.

Channel Partners can earn extra points with each sell which will not only lead to assured prizes but also lucky few will get the surprise gifts and can become winner of the lucky draw. This scheme is valid pan India. The channel partners with minimum 20 points to 200 points will be awarded with branded steam iron, mobile phone, microwave, washing machine and 24- inch LED or 26-inch LCD TV according to their slabs. There will also be surprise gift for the partners with excellent responses and all the registered partners will be eligible to participate in the lucky draw, which may lead them to win `10 lakhs," explained Grover.

Grover added, "We are quite upbeat about this yearly scheme. Besides creating a momentum among the partners, we wanted to push our brand visibility and are looking at the sale of 1 lakh 30 thousand units of monitors in this 2 months time. We are spending `11 lakh on the value of the weekly prizes, wherein overall, we have invested `1 crore on the entire scheme." He also added, "We have been the leader in the entry-level 15.6 inch monitor space, with having a significant 22% marketshare. But, we are yet to establish our brand in the 18.5 inches and above sizes, which is largely driven by biggies like Samsung, Dell and LG. Looking at the trend, the market is shifting from entry level to large screen monitors. Therefore, with the help of this scheme, we will gain a significant share."

FUTURE ROADMAP

This year the company aims to increase its customer base for televisions. The key focus area will be making AOC a household name and a recognized brand for monitor and TV in the Indian market. The company sells a wide variety of innovative LCD/LED monitor models in global market with unique features. This year, AOC will continue to develop new products, with more of its world-beating lightest, thinnest, and ecofriendly concept models. In order to create consumer interest and meet broader demand, it will introduce different products beside its traditional LCD monitor and TV ranges, including 3D displays, unique exterior designs and cloud screen models, providing a wider variety of choices than ever before.

"The market is difficult, and times are tough, but with team work, partner's support and focused efforts, we can sail through. At AOC, it's always ‘partners first'. We value and owe our strengths and our success to our team - our partners. At the same time, because of shrinking profitability of our partners, along with volume increase, we are also focusing to strategically increase our share of 18.5-inch and above SKU segment. The channel scheme has been specially designed, to approach this SKU shift.We plan to gradually take up our share of 20-inch segment and above to 20% by third quarter of this year," concluded Grover.