As a business leader in the Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) industry, you know that revenue growth is essential for the success of your company. But with so many variables to consider, it can be difficult to know where to focus your efforts.
A winning revenue growth strategy requires a combination of effective internal processes, consumer insights, and market analysis. One of the key areas to focus on is your commercial team.
Your commercial team is responsible for driving sales, building relationships with key accounts or customers, and identifying new revenue opportunities. As such, they have a wealth of information and insights that can be crucial to your revenue growth strategy.
By asking the right questions, you can tap into this knowledge and gain a deeper understanding of your customers, your market, and your own internal processes.
Here are three key questions to ask your commercial team for a winning revenue growth strategy:
1. What are the biggest challenges we face in order to meet our current sales goals?
Your commercial team is on the front lines of your sales efforts, and they are likely to have a good understanding of the challenges you face. By asking them to identify the biggest challenges, you can gain valuable insights into the areas that need improvement. This could include issues with customer acquisition, or product pricing and promotions negotiation with retailers. By addressing these challenges with clarity, you can increase your team’s productivity, remove roadblocks and drive revenue growth.
2. What is our decision-making process around pricing and trade promotions?
Understanding the factors that influence your pricing, trade promotions, and demand planning decisions is crucial to driving revenue growth. By asking your commercial team to explain their decision-making process, you can gain a deeper understanding of the data and insights they are using to inform their decisions. This will help you identify areas where improvements can be made, and ensure that your team is making decisions based on accurate and up-to-date information.
Some of the most important factors that influence pricing, trade promotions, and demand planning decisions are data and insights. In today’s fast-paced and competitive CPG industry, it’s crucial to have access to accurate and up-to-date information in order to make informed decisions. However, this information can be difficult to gather and analyze manually. That’s where predictive, AI, and Machine Learning-based insights can come in.
Tools like Wise Athena provide businesses with the ability to analyze large amounts of data, identify patterns and trends, and make predictions about future demand. This can help businesses make more informed decisions around pricing, trade promotions, and demand planning. For example, by analyzing billions of SKUs in different channels, regions, promotions, and price combinations, Wise Athena can predict which products are likely to sell well in the future, and which products might struggle. This information can be used to inform your pricing decisions and adjust trade promotions accordingly.
3. What are our competitors doing differently?
To stay competitive in the CPG industry, it is important to keep an eye on what your competitors are doing. By asking your commercial team to keep tabs on your competitors, you can gain a better understanding of their strengths and weaknesses.
This information can help you identify areas where you can differentiate yourself and capitalize on your own strengths. For example, if a competitor is focusing on a particular product line, you may want to focus on a different area to set yourself apart.
Asking these three questions can help you gain valuable insights into your sales strategies, your customers, and your competition. By using this information to drive your revenue growth strategy, you can improve your sales productivity, increase customer satisfaction, and stay competitive in the CPG industry.
It is also important to note that the answers to these questions should be used as a starting point for a more in-depth analysis. Once you have a general understanding of the challenges you face and the opportunities available, it is important to conduct a thorough analysis of your sales process and competitor activity. This will enable you to develop a more detailed and actionable revenue growth strategy.
Related: Build an Even Stronger RGM Team through AI/ML
In conclusion, a winning revenue growth strategy in the CPG industry requires a combination of effective internal revenue growth processes, consumer insights, and market analysis.
By asking the right questions, you can tap into this knowledge and drive your revenue growth strategy. The three key questions outlined in this article are a great starting point, but it’s important to remember that they are just the beginning of the process. Use them to get the ball rolling at conducting a more in-depth analysis and develop a detailed and actionable revenue growth strategy.
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