Think About How Your Customer Buys. Not How Your Company Sells.
Summer is a slow time for candy sales. Looking for a way to pump up purchasing, Hershey’s studied how consumers use chocolate during the warm summer months. Their work led them to the popularity of s’mores, that unmistakable combination of marshmallows, chocolate, and graham crackers. Teaming up with Kraft, the two companies created summertime in-store displays that grouped the products together. The result: sales increased by 10 to 15 percent for the summer season, and that time of year is now bigger than Valentine’s Day for Hershey’s.
What is striking about the s’mores promotion, and what lessons does it hold for
general B2B selling?
7 Sales Insights from the FMCG Industry
Around the world, B2B sales forces are reinventing how they sell. In thinking about a different future, seven innovations from the FMCG industry are worth a closer look. Some highlights:
- Customer Segmenting: Most companies segment customers—it’s Marketing 101. But FMCG companies make distinctions between the customer, the shopper, and the consumer.
- Dedicated Customer Teams: Over the last decade, FMCG companies have become truly customer focused, restructuring their organizations. Today, most FMCG manufacturers have dedicated customer teams for large accounts.
- Joint Business Planning: Account planning is not an administrative exercise. Instead, it is done jointly (and typically semi-annually) with the manufacturer and the retailer together at the table.
Gain insight from FMCG companies. Learn the sales innovations that are driving results and explore how they can be applied to other industries.