2 Ways to Quantify an Opportunity in Category Management is for Category Managers, Account Managers and Buyers to be able to quantify the opportunities that they have identified.
The long-standing challenge with identifying opportunities is that we want them to be exact. This is because a less than exact number does not offer the confidence that we want it to. Therein lies the dilemma. The person who has identified the opportunity wants it to be exact and because it is not, they struggle to sell the opportunity with confidence.
Here are 2 alternative ways to quantify an opportunity in Category Management:
1. PRO tool to identify a Category Management Opportunity
This tool enables you to share your thinking; P is for pessimistic, R is for Realistic and O is for Optimistic. Once you have identified your opportunity in the category management data, but are unsure of its absolute worth, use the ‘PRO’ tool. Share with your audience the opportunity and then share the numbers, for example:
- Pessimistic £2.1m
- Realistic £2.8m
- Optimistic £3.7m
The discussion can then take place around, ‘What needs to happen to achieve the optimistic value?’, or ‘What do we need to manage better to avoid the pessimistic value?’.
In summary, PRO is the tool and it can help you manage expectations and not get tied-up in the exact number.
2. The Kamino tool to Identify a Category Management Opportunity
This tool is about enabling you to share your thinking with your audience. This is so that they are bought into the fact that you have:
- A: Looked under every rock to find the answer.
- B: Communicated your findings well.
Then, from hereon in the opportunity exists. It’s a matter of judgement, based on the facts that we have, whether they ‘go for it’. Please watch this 2 minute film clip from Star Wars and then read on below this clip…
Yoda and the Younglings point out to Obi-Wan Kenobi. If all the forces and gravity are pulling at that space, then it is likely that the planet is located there. In the same way, imagine a slide or A3 page with the opportunity and, its value, in a circle at the centre. Around the circle is shown all the various data sources that you have investigated, with their figures. None of the figures can accurately estimate the opportunity. Though if all the sources substantiate that the opportunity at the centre ‘is an opportunity’, then it must be an opportunity.
In Summary
Use the Kamino tool to draw the opportunity at the centre of a page/slide. Then show the sources that substantiate the opportunity around the edge pointing towards the centre.
Our Category Management training is the perfect training solution for anyone that wishes to Ultimate Guide to Category Management, from where it all started, to the latest thinking, what the Kantar measures all really mean and how to identify opportunities in the category and make them happen. To find out more, get a quote, or book this course, click on the button below, and copy & paste these words into the form, ‘Category Management Academy’, and we’ll follow-up with you.
