Anjana Ghosh
As fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) and retail move towards 2026, a quiet but decisive shift is underway in how general trade (GT) execution is being approached. While people will always remain central to on-ground sales and distribution, traditional manpower-heavy models are increasingly showing their limits. Rising costs, fragmented retail formats, and faster shifts in demand are forcing organisations to rethink not only how many people they deploy, but how well execution is managed.
The next phase of FMCG growth will not be driven by adding more feet on the street. It will be driven by smarter workforce execution where human effort is supported by better structure, coordination, and intelligence.
FMCG and retail have always been people-intensive businesses. From sales representatives and merchandisers to promoters and supervisors, success in general trade has traditionally depended on disciplined coverage, beat adherence, and sustained presence across markets. Human effort continues to be the backbone of reach, visibility, and conversion.
The big challenges
The challenge today, however, lies not in deploying manpower, but in extracting consistent productivity from it. Feet-on-street teams are often low-paid, placed on third-party payrolls, and operate at the edges of the brand ecosystem. The work is repetitive, incentives are transactional, recognition is limited, and career visibility is low. Over time, this results in weak ownership, disengagement, and high attrition.
For sales leadership, this reality translates into an excessive focus on supervision, retraining, and enforcing basic discipline. Time that should be spent on market development, outlet productivity, and growth strategy gets consumed by people management. As a result, GT remains people-driven but structurally low on efficiency, and difficult to scale.
If GT increasingly demands leadership time just to keep the engine running, the solution lies in changing the execution model itself. Growth will not come from adding more supervisory layers, but from reducing the burden of day-to-day manpower management.
A clear shift is emerging towards execution-led models where brands collaborate, share field infrastructure, and work with specialised partners who take ownership of manpower planning, deployment, productivity, and performance management.
When recruitment, training, supervision, and attrition are handled within a structured execution framework, brand leadership is freed to focus on what truly drives growth: market expansion, portfolio strategy, and revenue acceleration. In this transition, what changes is not who is present in the market, but how responsibility is structured. Execution becomes a managed outcome rather than a daily leadership task.
Role of technology
Technology plays a critical role in enabling this shift but not as a control mechanism. The real value of business intelligence lies in its ability to simplify complexity and create clarity.
When route planning, outlet prioritisation, attendance, productivity, and performance feedback are integrated into a single framework, brands gain real-time visibility without increasing managerial overhead. Decisions become faster, interventions more targeted, and performance reviews more meaningful.
Importantly, technology does not replace people. It enables better deployment and utilisation of people, ensuring consistency on ground while allowing leadership to step away from micromanagement and back into growth.
Several structural shifts make 2026 a defining year for workforce execution in FMCG. First, consumer journeys are increasingly fragmented across general trade, modern trade, and emerging hybrid formats. Consistent execution across these touchpoints requires tighter coordination and faster redeployment of resources.
Second, margin pressures are intensifying. Inflation, logistics costs, and competitive intensity are forcing organisations to extract more value from existing resources rather than expanding headcount.
Third, workforce expectations are evolving. Field teams today expect clarity, transparency, and systems that make their work easier. Manual oversight and informal structures are becoming barriers to both productivity and retention.
Viewed through an execution lens, smarter workforce models become strategic enablers rather than operational necessities. They allow leadership intent to translate into consistent on-ground action, with greater predictability and control. Over time, the workforce shifts from being seen as a fixed cost to a flexible growth lever. Brands that can deploy people intelligently, respond faster to market signals, and optimise field effort will be better positioned to grow sustainably.
As FMCG organisations navigate 2026 and beyond, success will depend less on scale alone and more on collaborations. The future of general trade execution lies in models that combine human effort with shared workforce structures, agile deployment, and execution intelligence.
Brands that recognise and adopt this shift early will scale more efficiently — not by adding complexity, but by enabling their people to perform with greater clarity, consistency, and confidence.
The writer is managing director of Scale Sherpas.
Published – January 09, 2026 04:58 pm IST
