Field marketing agency CPM Ireland has launched an app that it says integrates physical and digital selling for wholesalers and suppliers.

Shopt allows suppliers to ask their retail and on-trade customers to carry out work which is normally carried out by a sales rep, and rewards them for their support via cash in their bank accounts.

Retailers earn cash rewards by stocking the products, expanding their brand range, answering surveys and acting on brand content.    

The majority of large brands maintain 40 to 60% field sales among convenience and on-trade retailers in Ireland, and struggle to talk to their entire customer base about brands and offers, according to CPM.

The company claims that Shopt can cut the cost of engagement by a sales rep to around one-tenth of a physical call.

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“If a rep does ten calls a day the average cost of each call is €30 to €50, but with Shopt it works out at about 60 cents, so essentially the app supports the physical rep in ways that we have never seen before in this country,” said CPM chief executive Lorraine Butler (pictured).

“This is an extremely exciting initiative for CPM which myself and the team have been working on for nearly two years. The feedback to date in Northern Ireland and Britain is really encouraging and we are very confident that is going to be the case throughout the Republic.

“CPM’s focus is to work with our clients to understand how we can do more sales with the same or less budget. A sure way to achieve this is to use technology such as Shopt as part of the sales process,” Butler added.

CPM was established in 1936 as Counter Products Marketing, with a business model of in-shop consumer marketing for FMCG brands. The business now claims to be the world’s leading ‘sales outsourcer’, operating in 35 countries, including Ireland since 1986.

Lorraine Butler joined as managing director in November 2015 having previously worked at the senior corporate sales level in eir.

“Any organisation looking for a best-in-class sales team should consider CPM,” she said. “We provide field, phone, digital and retail services, targeting new sales through acquisition, account management and promotion teams. We have flexible risk and reward commercial models based on return on investment for clients.”