Your first job with your buyer is to build a relationship as a trusted advisor. Only then will your ideas and proposals be credible. In a recent Advantage Survey of USA retail buyers in CPG, references to “objective information and advice” came only second to “good communication” in what behaviours make a best practice supplier.
We may not like to think about it, but as humans, we are all subject to a range of unconscious biases. These get in the way of our rational decision making so that we often end up with worse outcomes than we should. Clear, unambiguous, quantitative data, well explained can overcome these “gut feel” problems.
I spend my life in data. I love it. Give me a fact versus a guess any day of the week. I know I may be in a minority in that regard, but I think marketing should be a balanced synthesis of science and art. As a musician, I know and love art. Art is most likely where
We are taught it on our first day in sales training. That the customer only cares about WIFM: “What’s in it for me”. So, whatever we are proposing has to solve the buyer’s problem. Or meet the buyer ’s needs. But how much of what an account manager is provided by his or her business
The recent “Shopper Brain” Conference in Amsterdam saw the gathering of “neuro marketers” from around the world. Essentially these are the people in our Industry that are trying to uncover and then exploit the way consumers/shoppers brains respond to stimuli, rather than just focussing on the reactions of human beings’ 10% of conscious thinking. My first learning
It just wasn’t possible in the past. We all knew that as a guiding principle, cheaper things were not as good as more expensive things. A tradesperson offering a cheaper deal was probably not as competent or used inferior materials. A piece of hardware wouldn’t last as long if it were a lower price because
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Sometimes I think we in market research can get far too excited about our lovely data and the fascinating things it can tell you but don’t spend nearly enough time walking in our clients’ shoes thinking about improving sales. For sure, there can be a lengthy pathway between any data and the business outcome. And
Here at Shopper Intelligence we spend a lot of time talking about traffic and spend. Frankly, we see these two fundamental pillars of retail thinking as being at the heart of category management (which is why we measure them in supermarket categories for the first time) Much is being written about the pending death of
A presentation inspired me by Madhumita Chakraborty from Pepsico who explained their “One thought per chart” philosophy for insights into their business. I liked the idea that the presenter has to have the discipline to know (and stick to) what the single “take out” has to be from any ppt slide. At least that sets
