Sticky Learning Lunch 46: Increase Your Category Opportunities

Today's topic, Increase the Number of Category Opportunities Landed Part 3.

73% of your Category Opportunities Never Make it to Store.

You will learn: - Each of the 7 parts of the MBM Category Management Funnel. - How each part is essential to creating an effective Category Management approach. - Various tools and techniques to support each stage of the process.

You Can Read the Full Transcript Below:

Nathan Simmonds:

Welcome to Monday. Welcome to Sticky Learning Lunches. And welcome to the first day of the week. We are gonna be diving back into the category Management funnel with Andy Palmer and myself, Nathan Simmons. We're just gonna give it 30 seconds while we wait for the last people to arrive in the room. And then we are gonna crack on with part three of this funnel. Let's just give us a moment to make sure everyone's here. Let's get everyone set up for success right now.

Nathan Simmonds:

First of all, before we get into introductions and, and the recaps, mobile phones, let's make sure they're on flight mode. Let's zero out the distraction and get a hundred percent attention what it is we're doing right here in this investment in ourselves and the businesses that we love and work in. Secondly, making sure that we've got our hydration in place, making sure we're staying hydrated, keeping the brain lubricated and making sure that we're just looking after ourselves.

Nathan Simmonds:

Temperature space, we're going up here. Again, let's make sure we're looking after ourselves physically so we can increase what we're doing mentally. Third part to this then is fresh page, fresh thinking. We're gonna be covering some new ideas that potentially you haven't seen before that may be there to support you, invigorating what it is you do inside your business. And this page is gonna be those things that you want to remember.

Nathan Simmonds:

So whether it's things that Andy says, or questions that I ask, or questions or ideas that we share with each other in this group, that we wanna take a note of that so that we can go back and remind ourselves and remember what it is by rereading these ideas. That just helps take our thinking up another level and keeps that learning sticky, which is the whole idea of MBM Ready for this. Andy?

 

7 Simple Ways To Understand The Category Management Process

 

Andy Palmer:

Ready? Nathan?

Nathan Simmonds:

Good. So, welcome to today's Sticky Learning Lunch with me, Nathan Simmons, senior leadership coach and trainer for MBM. Also joined by Andy Palmer, expert in category management, who's gonna be delivering part three of today's session. We are the leadership development and soft skills provider to the grocery and manufacturing industry, MBM making business Matter, and it's all about making that learning stick. As I said earlier, Andy, day three, all yours. Where are we going to next?

Andy Palmer:

Thank you, Nathan. Roy, as you said, we're gonna go stage three, which is getting into the crux of understanding our supermarket or our channel or whatever route to market that we've got. So, brief recap on what we covered at the back end of last week came in at the top of the funnel talking about agreeing targets, where we looked at this stuff around here, way of purchase frequency of purchase penetration, selecting a target that you can focus all your efforts and resources and time into achieving.

Andy Palmer:

From there, we then came down into Thursday and we talked about understanding your shopper, exploded that apart and started talking about shopper preparers and eaters. Those three very distinct group with a nice overlap. And again, more better understanding how we can use things like pen portraits or purchases and hierarchies to get into the crux of what their motivations are, what their barriers are.

Andy Palmer:

Today we're continuing down, and stage three, we are looking at knowing your supermarket or knowing your channel depending upon the market you're in. So this, this one kind of on face values, pretty almost self-explanatory. The bit, I wanna just try and take thinking a little bit further, that actually if you've got if you've got an alignment of the recommendations that you want to make and you're not getting them over the line it's about making sure that you understand your, your supermarket as well as you can.

Andy Palmer:

That you are then making recommendations that are aligned with their thinking, and that's in line with the buyers KPIs to, to ensure that you're just setting yourself up for success. We've seen it so many times that we've seen suppliers going in and they're making recommendations that suit their business. Sometimes they suits the the customer shopper, the pair of the eater, but what they're not doing is fitting perfectly with that corporate requirement or that need that the buyer has and the buyer.

Andy Palmer:

When we're talking about the buyer, we're talking about the person sat in the retailer's head office making the decision responsible for these purchasing decisions. So all the recommendations we want to, we wanna make sure they're absolutely aligned with what their need. Now what in reality does that look like? It looks like you guys more better understanding their needs, so the needs of the buyer. And we can come at that from their personal point of view by understanding what their targets and their goals are for their categories that they own. And at the same time, more better understanding the corporate requirements.

Andy Palmer:

So we look at corporate social responsibility. We can look at the retailer's overall vision or overall strategy. That way when we're then coming down, we're making our recommendations to absolutely fit with what works for them. Soon as before where a supplier was trying to drive they're trying to drive spend into the category, they're trying to trade people up and move them up through various tiers trying to expand weight of purchase, weight of consumption, and all the recommendations were aligned to achieving that.

Andy Palmer:

That was their target. The challenge that they had was that the supermarket was trying to really push through a period of value for money. They were trying to almost kind of position themself in the market that they had good value for money and actually how they were trying to set up and manage their, their particular area was looking to achieve those things. So in one hand, we've got, let's drive value for money. In the other hand, we've got the supply trying to drive spend.

Andy Palmer:

And as you can imagine, there was a conflict as the suppliers were coming in or the supplier was coming in and making their presentations and their recommendations. It was, no, no, doesn't work, not gonna work for us right now. Maybe one for the future, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. You may have experienced these kind of, these pushbacks and these challenges.

Andy Palmer:

You can more, I guess more get yourself set nicely by making sure that you know what the buyer's requirements are, what the retailer's requirements are. Once you've got that, then you are, you are, you're making recommendations that just align perfectly with the with their category their category requirements. How can you do that? It's reasonably straightforward. This isn't a massive, complicated part of the funnel.

Andy Palmer:

You go that saying that you're gonna be attending conferences, whether that's one's run by the, the retailer or run by someone like the IGD who do some superb conferences each year to get really into the importance of that particular retailer strategy. You could do something very, very pragmatic and set up something like Google Alerts where every day or every week you could dictate this yourself. Every day or every week you would get an alert come through to your inbox giving you the most up-to-date relevant news that's coming outta them.

Andy Palmer:

So is they're issuing press releases and they're making statements in the in the media to the city or what have you. You can ensure you are at the absolute forefront of that. Likewise, in the UK we've got something called Cam City where we get key account management news. It's created from various different data sources. And again, you can have something like that delivered to your inbox. So you are absolutely at the forefront of knowing what's going on out there. Again, what's going on out there? It's down to you as well. Can you get out to store more often? Can you challenge your colleagues to become the eyes and the ears on the high street so you can see what's going on.

Andy Palmer:

See what's happening in other categories, and get a feel for the things that are moving for you to then say, actually that's gonna work with us. And then it's about those discussions with the buyer around, here's what we're suggesting, here's what we're suggesting it, here's the background data to back it up and we know it's aligned to your strategy. 'cause We're listening. Once you've got that, your credibility goes through the roof, the buyer knows you are there and you, you've aligned yourself nicely with their requirements. So Nathan, is that making sense so far? I'm just kind of appreciate scratching the surface as as ever with our half hour that we have.

Nathan Simmonds:

Yeah, for me it is making absolute sense. I guess the key thing to take it into, and I'm already coming up with some ideas and concepts in my head, but now have you got any examples of where this understanding has had a significant impact on a change when delivering to a supermarket?

Andy Palmer:

Yeah. something I'm get into. So yes is the, the short answer, the slightly longer answer is something I'm really looking forward to covering on Thursday when we get into understanding credibility, and it's those suppliers that are going in with that stuff in their head and able to articulate it,