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Sticky Learning Lunch 48: Increase Your Category Opportunities
Today’s topic, Increase the Number of Category Opportunities Landed Part 5.
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 day five. Is day five of the yeah, of the category management funnel. It is Wednesday. Welcome to today’s Sticky Learning with me, Nathan Simmons and Andy Palmer, resident expert on category management. As always, we’re just gonna give it about 30 seconds to wait for the last people to arrive in the room, and then we are gonna crack on. Good afternoon, Colin. Good afternoon, Fabian. Good afternoon again, Mikayla, good to see you.
Nathan Simmonds:
Thank you very much everyone for being here. Good afternoon, Gemma. Just joining the room. We are just gonna give it a few more seconds and then we are going to get on with today. But while we’re sway for those last people, on a scale of one to 10, one being terrible, 10 being phenomenal, how are you? How is your day? Let me know. Let’s see how people are feeling on this. Fine Wednesday with the Gloria Sunshine and ISS A 10. That’s good.
Nathan Simmonds:
We’ve got an eight coming in from Colin. Thanks very much. Right. I think it’s time to get this show started. Mr. Palmer, welcome to today’s Sticky Learning lunch with me, Nathan Simmons and Andy Palmer idea with these sessions is to help you be the best version of you in the work that you do. Coming from MBM making business matter, the provider of leadership development and soft skills to the grocery and manufacturing industry, and we couldn’t be more pinpoint and more niche when it comes to category management in this space, we are hitting day number five of the funnel.
Nathan Simmonds:
And this funnel lovingly known as the 73% funnel. Because the reason why is why it’s helping you to highlight why 73% of your opportunities, your category management opportunities, never make it to store. And we’ve been breaking this down for the last five day or four days, sorry, day five today. Andy, what are we covering today?
Andy Palmer:
Today, Nathan? Good afternoon. No, today we’re covering selling those opportunities. So building on everything we’ve done back end of last week, beginning of this week, got our targets. We understand our shopper, we’ve got a good handle on the channel that we’re, uh, presenting to, analyzed all our data and we pulled together our very succinct presentation. So today’s about making that stuff land with the buyer, the person, that office, that buyer.
Andy Palmer:
So we’ve got a few things to share with you today that hopefully increases or hopefully will increase your chances of success when you’ve got that opportunity to be out there pushing the recommendations that you are suggesting. So without further ado, um, I’m gonna share one thing straight away with you. Um, cool. About four years ago, the IGD ran a, an industry survey and part of this capability and partnership survey, it said that too often trust is the single biggest barrier to getting proposals into action.
Andy Palmer:
It comes back to trust. I’ve mentioned it a little bit, you know, the last few days we’ve certainly talked about credibility. So today I wanna really bring to life what trust is about for you then to consider. How trustworthy am I, how trustworthy is my team? Could this be one of the reasons why when not getting our recommendations across the line, were not as influential as we could be? So we’re gonna talk about trust. Um, in true blue left brain style, I’m gonna bring this to life, uh, using the medium of a formula.
Andy Palmer:
So bear with me as I lovingly create it up here and then hopefully explain it in a way that really resonates with you. So let’s talk about trust. Trust is what you need with the buyer. It’s what you need with colleagues that you work with. It’s what you need with your partners, your friends, your family.
Andy Palmer:
Because if you’re trustworthy, you are far more likely to get what you want when you want it in an appropriate way. So in order for you to have trust, there are three component parts to this. The first one, credibility. Credibility. Stick to the kind of world of category management at the moment. So credibility, this is going to come from the knowledge that you’ve got, the experience that you’ve got, the things that you say and do, and the way in which you communicate.
Andy Palmer:
Tthe understanding you’ve got of the category. So if you’ve got credibility, you are far, likely, far more likely to have a high level of trust. So first one’s credibility, making sense, thumbs up, Nathan. Good, two thumbs up, loving it, credibility. Second one, reliability. Reliability is about the commitments that you give and how you follow up on them.
Andy Palmer:
So if you say, yes, I’m gonna get you that report by five o’clock on Tuesday afternoon, and they don’t get it until 11 o’clock on Friday evening, they will see you as less reliable. So it’s about the commitments that you give, the deadlines that you commit to. Um, and it’s really about helping them to see that if you say and you are gonna commit to do something, that you are reliable enough to ensure that it absolutely happens. You’ve got credibility, reliability, and the third part, just gonna fit it in next to where my head’s gonna be, intimacy, appropriate intimacy.
Andy Palmer:
This is how well you know the person, how well the person knows you. So if you take those um, times at the appropriate moment to discuss something you may have in common that could be going, running or swimming or an interest in a certain sport or activity that you do, you have those connections, you have intimacy, appropriate intimacy, you get to know people, you consider those people in your world, either professionally or personally who you trust and those who you don’t trust, I can pretty much guarantee that you will typically put it back to one of these three factors as to whether you’ve got high trust or you’d like more trust.
Andy Palmer:
Making sense so far, Nathan? Readability, reliability and intimacy. Okay, there are numerators are below the line are something called self-orientation. Um, I’m gonna simply sum this up as ego. It’s how much you talk about yourself versus how much you’re prepared to listen to others. Um, so for example, if I came into these webinar and I was only talking about all the experience I’ve got, how great the company, uh, how great a company we are, how marvelous I’m, how nice my shirt is, and I talk about only about me, I could come across potentially as being rather egotistical.
Andy Palmer:
If I take time to interact with my audience, ask them how they are, how they’re feeling, what they’re up to, what’s on their mind at the moment, I can balance that ego off and make it less about me, more about them getting that balance. So no matter how good you are at the credibility, reliability, and intimacy part, um, that can be diluted if you have a big ego and your self-orientation is very, very, um, only about you.
Andy Palmer:
So for you, my challenge back today is to consider those four areas both for yourself initially. Um, I know rank them out of 10. Am I personally, am I a nine out 10 here, or four outta 10 here? A six out of 10 here, zero outta 10 here. Start to figure out where you could potentially increase your trust by dialing up or dialing down certain parts of this formula. Um, I said credibility is about, uh, the experience and the knowledge you’ve got.
Andy Palmer:
Reliability about commitments that you give to timescales and intimacy, how well, uh, that person knows you and how much you’re prepared to get to know them. Lemme pause for a second there, Nathan. Um, cum, is that working for you? It’s working for you. I’m hoping it’s working for our audience today.
Nathan Simmonds:
And do you know what, for me it’s working absolutely fine, but, and I’m gonna put this question out to everybody who’s here now, rate yourself one to 10, CRI. So in each of those areas, rate yourself on a one to 10 right now in the questions box so you can start to really bring this to life in your own eyes and make it visible. Okay, how credible are you? One terrible 10, phenomenal. How reliable, how, how much, what level of intimacy do you have with your main buyers?
Nathan Simmonds:
Think about one of the buyers you’re working with, one of the supermarkets and answer those questions now. And while you’re doing that, you know, it’s the way that we create sales is through know, like, and trust. So when someone knows you personally, your content, when they like what they’re seeing, you’re creating that trust. But then that trust, as you say, comes from that credibility, reliability and intimacy.
Nathan Simmonds:
And depending on where you are, scoring yourself in each of those three areas comes out of knowing your supermarket, understanding your shopper, and being able to turn that stuff into opportunities. It works in all three of those, you know, credibility, knowing your shop and knowing your supermarket reliability, turning that into opportunities that actually that hit the mark in those spaces. And having the intimacy with the people that you are connecting with to actually go and reflect on those things to make sure it’s working and and working to build each other up, including yourself and the the buyer them as well.
Andy Palmer:
Agree Nathan. And on that, um, point I made on uh, back on day one last week when we talked about the pie chart. Account managers taking care of slice of the pie category managers taking care of the whole pile, the whole category. One of the key parts for a category manager’s role is to be seen as independent for the category. They’re there to grow the category, not just their slice, where the buyer also the account managers are often just seen for the needs of their own business.
Andy Palmer:
Absolutely key. But if that category manager is there coming across as independent, I’m gonna grow this category no matter what and they’ve got trust, they’re on to an absolute win-win, um, it’s just their recommendations are gonna be far higher, far more likely taken on board. Uh, they’re can be listened too far more. Um, and they start to become the kind of the buyer’s best friend, their eyes and ears on the high street, so to speak.
Nathan Simmonds:
There you go. Sorry, I on mute. So then you mentioned, yeah, the previous sessions that we’ve also done, um, I’m just putting that into the chat box below now. There is a link there that will link you back to the previous session. Also, that link will take you to the future session. So if you haven’t registered for tomorrow’s, there is the opportunity to get into the for tomorrow’s session and also share that back with any other colleagues that may benefit from this. Thanks for reminding me to do that, Andy.
Andy Palmer:
No problem.
Nathan Simmonds:
Good. So what’s next then? What else is gonna help us to get more of these opportunities to the supermarket?
Andy Palmer:
Okay, so what we typically see that when people are selling or trying to influence or trying to get their uh, recommendations across the line, it comes back to typically one of three things. Either their presentation styles wrong, their relationships wrong or their contents wrong. Um, what I think that this starts to take care of some of the relationship pieces. The other bit we can look at is then the presentation style. Um, we talked about it yesterday.
Andy Palmer:
Um, it says suppliers going in with 120 slides with half an hour or so to bang through it all. They’ve lovely created it, millions and charts, tables of graphs, um, but the buyers switched off first. That’s too much to take in. What we’re looking then to do is to present in a way that resonates with the audience, whether that’s one person or multiple people, um, and in a way that’s just gonna work for them.
Andy Palmer:
So we typically build a presentation how we would like to receive a presentation, but yet we’ve all got very different, um, uh, very different styles and we’ve all got very different ways of thinking and communicating and making decisions. So why, I’m not gonna get into it too much now. I’m gonna introduce something called the HBDI, the Herman Brain Dominance Instrument Model. Now we’re gonna be covering this in a couple of weeks, if it’s of interest.
Andy Palmer:
Uh, there’s lots of the psychometric tests that there Riggs Belgium Insights, there’s a whole host. I’m gonna use this one today just because it’s quick and easy for you guys to understand and hopefully allows you to again, consider doing your presentations differently and maybe not in your default style, which is how you’d like to receive it. So we got a little bit blue Peter here, one I’ve prepared earlier.
Andy Palmer:
Okay, turn an overview on the Herman Brain Dominance instrument. It’s based, um, on the understanding of your brain effectively, you’ve got a left hand and a right hand quadrant and you’ve got upper and lower mode cerebral mode and the limbic mode at the bottom. It’s more of a metaphor than a true reflection of our brain. What it allows us to do is understand our preferences to each of these four quadrants of which we have them. Nathan yesterday mentioned that I was very, very blue. I deal with facts figures.
Andy Palmer:
I’m very analytical, very mathematical. Problem solving comes very naturally. So the blue quadrant’s about facts, whereas say the green quadrant, this is quite hard, but that’s right, the green quadrant is about form. So people with a high preference here, um, see stuff in a very chronological order. Super organized, um, and able to break things down into a structure and want to see the sequence of things.
Andy Palmer:
So we’ve got facts form come around into our red quadrant. This is about feelings. So people here with a high preference have a fantastic ability of communication, huge interpersonal skills, and they’ve got the finger on the pulse of a team so they know people are up or down feeling happy or sad. And that bothers and that matters to them. They’re the people that, um, we’ll ask how your weekend was as opposed to those people that are coming on a Monday morning and uh, just get stuck in.
Andy Palmer:
There’s our red people, our yellow people, um, yellow’s about future. They have brilliant ideas. People, um, holistic conceptual thinkers. Um, don’t necessarily live in the here and now, but it’s far more about the future. Most of, we’re gonna get into this in a lot more detail in a couple of weeks time, but if it’s takeaway today, we can use all of our brain.
Andy Palmer:
That’s the key bit. But we do have preferences to a certain, uh, area or group of areas. And to this point, so will your audience. So as I said, we would typically create a presentation in our own staff. So for me, typically I would create a presentation that’s full of too much detail. Too many facts, too many tables, maybe not utilize some of the other areas. You won’t always know who your audience is and you may well have a mixed room. So my suggestion is try and get a tick into each of these boxes to consider. Am I doing stuff in the blue box?
Andy Palmer:
Am I doing stuff in the green box? Am I doing stuff in the other box? I’m not doing stuff in the red box. What does that look like in reality? Break it down. This is about the what, what is this? What’s the problem here? They, people want precise facts in detail. This is about the how. So they’re gonna wanna see a presentation that naturally unfolds, doesn’t jump around, see much. And it’s a bit like a book. It’s got various chapters to start the middle at an end, in which case your presentation’s got to unfold like that.
Andy Palmer:
These guys also value things like punctuality structure. I’ve read people, they’re gonna need to feel enthusiastic about stuff. So if you are presenting and you think your audiences are red, bring it to life. Make sure you’re getting that eye contact. Make sure you’re getting that backwards and forwards. Communication. People really want to feel enthusiastic and to this point, they’re gonna wanna know the who, who’s involved in this, what’s the impact gonna be? We’re only talking about a new product and we’re only talking about the products and we’re not talking about the impact that product could have on our customers who are missing a big chunk of it.
Andy Palmer:
So we’ve got what, how, who? And then for the, the other people in the room. Why, what, what’s this about? These guys prefer concepts and metaphors and stories to bring things to life. It’s why when you attend our learning lunches, some things will resonate with you more than others because that just naturally kind of comes into where you are. So to that point, we may not know who our audience is all the time, but we can at least, uh, play the odds and get a tick in each of these boxes. Has my presentation got an appropriate level of facts and is answering the, the what?
Andy Palmer:
Um, does my presentation cover the how and unfolding a a sensible order that people can follow? Am I taking into account the who and ensuring the impact on people and I’m doing the people thing And so our yellows, why have I got enough imagery in there? Have I got enough concepts and, um, bringing this uh, to life with maybe a bit more kind of fun? Okay, appreciate, we’re going at pace here. Let me pause for a second. Nathan, you are my, um, uh, you’re my temperature check. Is that working for you? Hopefully it’s working for everyone else. It works
Nathan Simmonds:
For me. And
Nathan Simmonds:
It, it’s one of those things that takes practice when you’re doing a presentation or you’re working in an audience. It’s about, you know, doing that stuff. Know your supermarket. Are the people that you are presenting to in that supermarket, are they a lot of blue an analytical types? We, we work with certain clients where they are very dominant in this space. Um, then the other side, you might go in there with people that are very kind of results focused and they’re very future orientated but not looking at.
Nathan Simmonds:
So just getting a flavor, getting that intimacy level of understanding who your client is, who your audience is. The bit though that I always say is absolutely critical is understanding who you are and understanding who you bring to that presentation because you are blue. I’m kind of very yellow with a lot of red stuck in there as well.
Nathan Simmonds:
But when I go in there, okay, actually am I coming with too much future? Am I coming with too much emotion? Am I losing the analytical organized people So when I understand who I am and what I’m bringing, then I can understand what I’m dialing up and what I’m dialing down in order to hit as many of those um, those hot buttons as it were for each of those different groups. So my question to the audience, I’m gonna say to the audience, I’m gonna ask this question to the audience now is where do you think you fit on those four quadrants?
Nathan Simmonds:
And if you’ve done any other profiling or hb, where are you, what is your preference? What do you need to know to dial up and dial down in order to get your message across in the best possible way? And actually I’ll just, just saying that, do you know what, I’ve just got the HPDI profile, um, link there. You know what, if you haven’t had a profile done and it’s something you feel that you would benefit from, there is a link in the chat box for you. Um, you can go and have a look at that as well and we can arrange that for you.
Andy Palmer:
Absolutely. I think you summed it up nicely there, but also maybe without realizing it. So Ned Herman, who actually developed this model, um, decades and decades ago, said, by first understanding yourself you can learn to value and appreciate others. And I think he hits a nail on the head and exactly your point as well. Understand ourselves, we can then start to appreciate and understand others. Um, and it’s first about having that self-awareness and then start to be very mindful about, um, about our audience.
Nathan Simmonds:
Yeah, know thyself. I think that was Socrates a couple of thousand years beforehand. Um, clients come into question does like attract like, um, well Andy and I know this and I’m gonna jump in with this one ’cause I think it’s funny. And more often than not, especially in significant relationships, it tends not to be in the majority of my experiences. Um, we tend to get the polar opposites because that’s what we demand in order to actually grow as human beings is we need to have that reflection of ourselves in order to see ourselves a little bit more clearly, quite often. Um, what are your thoughts and
Andy Palmer:
Yeah, so a couple of thoughts on this. Um, one, we, we typically the like versus like tends to happen because people are on the same, let’s call it a wavelength. So blue people talking to blue people or red people talking to red people are just on the same wavelength. So communication tends to be quite free flowing ’cause you’re coming and looking out, um, on the world with a similar pair of eyes. So yes, conversations free flowing, it can sometimes be a little bit competitive.
Andy Palmer:
So blues can try and out blue each other or reds can try and out red each other. But to your point, um, Nathan as well, um, mentioned I’m blue, my wife super red, really red. So all of those kind of cliches of opposites attract and chalk and cheese come into play. Um, when we argue, one going off a tangent here, but when we argue, I’m arguing with fact and logic in a very calm, non-emotional way, but she’s coming from the red quadrant that’s very emotional.
Andy Palmer:
So she’s screaming and shouting at me, tears coming down her face frying pan in hand. So we absolutely go head to head when we do stuff like that ’cause we’re very, very different. And that is a slightly made up story. Frying pan’s, the only bit that’s not true. Um, so yes, obviously it’s a track, but flipping that, what sounds like quite a negative into a positive is we compliment each other perfectly. And if I play that out into my professional and other parts of my personal world, I can work out who I can work with and what I need to do. It’s just about me making effort to dial things up and dial things down.
Andy Palmer:
I’m super but yet I’m a trainer. I’ve gotta do the red stuff, I’ve gotta do the enthusiasm, the eye contact, the smiles, the eyes, the lot. I can do it, it just takes me a bit more effort, which means I can just be a little bit, little bit more tired at the end of the day, but it doesn’t become limiting. So I don’t hide behind my blue and say, sorry, I can’t do that stuff. I just need to make more effort, um, to to to start up. And we can all do that. It’s about self-awareness and then making differences. So like versus like, yes, and at the same time there’s that, um, flip side of the coin where we can then start to compliment and bring out the best in each other.
Nathan Simmonds:
Uh, I think that’s the vital part is yes, we do that to compliment each other. And when we look at ourselves in a corporate space, if we end up with too many of the same kind of thinking of, of color preference or whatever in one group, we can find actually that things slow down because like you say, people are trying to out blue each other or out yellow each other, but you haven’t got that enough of that variance in order to make certain things happen.
Nathan Simmonds:
Me being yellow, my significant other actually is in that green quadrant is about being organized, you know, she also has that red element. So that’s where we kind of meet. But if I’m always thinking yellow, I’m not thinking about the here and now with a little bit of grounded now I’m always gonna have my head in the clouds. So it’s absolutely vital in our corporate and our workspace is that we have that mixture, but as leaders, as trainers, as whatever is that we’re honoring those people in those colors and in those spaces and encouraging them to be that so that actually we can get the best of it out of the, out of the whole.
Andy Palmer:
Yeah, I cast my mind back 15, 20 years. A brilliant example here. Sainsbury’s as a retailer was very, very blue. So they were all about the detail, all about the here and now. And when they were interviewing people for positions at head office or wherever it would be Colin’s point like would attract like, so people will be doing interviews with people and going, did you like this person? Let’s get him in. And so they were perpetuating the problem and making more and more blue people so they started to lose their way and things started to slow down.
Andy Palmer:
And then if you think about the Justin King era, he came in Sainsbury’s direction completely changed. Now try something you’d say that was like, well that’s not at all Sainsbury’s, that’s quite creative and a bit out there. And he bought that yellow, he bought that different vision, that different way of thinking.
Andy Palmer:
And then the whole business kind of started to evolve around that. And when in a very, very different direction. So like, and attract lichen when for example, when you’re doing job interviews, maybe employ the person that makes you feel most uncomfortable, you think’s a little bit different, a little bit weird because they are gonna bring something very different to what maybe you have already within your business. Um, then weird, they may see us as weird and vice versa.
Andy Palmer:
And that’s the whole point around understanding the tolerances that we then need because we can do all this stuff, but yet we will still judge people and we can start to reduce that so much more by just understanding that, you know what, we’ll look at the world with very different highs at times
Nathan Simmonds:
And our ethics and our principles and morals can be aligned. You know, our purpose for whatever the business is and how we work can be absolutely aligned. How we go about it can absolutely be different. Uh, and you need that variety, you need that eclectic mix to actually win in business. And it’s when we get into those cognitive biases, often referred to as the horns and halos effect, when we go into an interview, oh, they’re just like me, they must be great.
Nathan Simmonds:
And I’ve fallen and foul to that and I thought, you know, this guy would be, you know, it’d be amazing. I’m gonna recruit him. Why? Because he thinks like I do. He approaches the world like I do. Um, I think I could work with him. I see some challenges. He hasn’t ended up working with me. He ended up working with another leader and that relationship just fell apart, fell apart within six weeks.
Nathan Simmonds:
And you know, there was huge clashes of personality, you know, but I was sitting there thinking, oh this person’s, you know, I could work with this person, but actually it’s not, you know, when you’re recruiting people, it’s not, it, you can’t be like that. You can’t go on that bias for yourself because you, you’re not gonna be in that job forever. They’re not gonna be working with you forever. So we need to get clear on, okay, are the morals and ethics aligned? What’s this person bringing and what’s their character like to learn to make that come to life?
Andy Palmer:
Absolutely. I’m mindful of time there, Nathan. Where, where are we at? How have we got
Nathan Simmonds:
24 minutes past? So look, we’ve covered the trust model. We’ve a little bit of under the HBDI concept as well of how we, you know, we get a little bit more self-aware with ourselves when we, when we come into that, open questions to the audience, what questions have you got for Andy right now? Um, and get those in. What else do we need to be thinking about before those questions come in, if any? And if you haven’t got any questions, just say no questions and that gives us a flag that we know we’ve hit the mark today.
Andy Palmer:
Yeah, I think for me it’s about, you know, we’re, we’re moving a lot through this funnel at fast pace. We’re skimming the surface on stuff and I’m hoping it’s leaving people hungry to, to want to know more. Um, maybe a little bit frustrated because they, they’re desperate for more in the moment, but to take away maybe the trust model, if that was new, what’s more, um, consider how they’re putting together their presentation. So that’s two things in half an hour could be quite powerful. Um, just know that there’s a, a myriad of other things that can be considered. And, and you know what we’re, we’d love to have those conversations with you,
Nathan Simmonds:
Uh, amazing. And we would, one of those things that, you know, we’ve covered some high level stuff in there so you know, there’s, there’s enough there to get your teeth into. There’s also enough there to go down a rabbit hole. Have a look. I’ve just shared the link for the MBM coaching cards as well. So you can find the category management coaching cards there. So if you’re working in category management, if you’ve got a team of people doing this or account managers that could use some of these skills.
Nathan Simmonds:
There is a pack there for the category management coaching cards. It’s five pound for that pack. Huge value for what you’re gonna get out of that. And that helps you to dig in some of the questions that we’ve covered here today as well. And it doesn’t look like we’ve got any questions coming, an interesting sample of a future session signed up.
Nathan Simmonds:
Thank you Colin. Appreciate it. No questions. Thanks. Good guys, good food for thought today. You are absolutely welcome. Look, if we can help you, if Andy can help you, if MBM can help you and you saw the maths yesterday, you know, if we can, you know, find those potential millions of pounds in category management opportunities that may be being missed. If we can do this for you, now is the time to have a conversation.
Nathan Simmonds:
Now is the time to get in contact with the MBM to get in contact with Andy and see where that conversation goes to support you either creating the opportunity or protecting the ones you’ve already got. Prime time to make that happen. Andy, thanks very much for today. Really appreciated what we covering tomorrow.
Andy Palmer:
So the way I’m looking at this kind of selling the opportunities is half of the problem. The other half of the problem is landing the opportunity. So that’s making sure that it hits the stores in a way that it becomes sustainable and therefore as long as we want it to. So tomorrow’s absolutely about landing those opportunities in store. Um, it starts to draw us to the end of this funnel where we’ve been successful in our presentations and ourselves. Uh, we’ve now gotta make sure those final few yards, uh, are equally as successful and we get it out there and sell it.
Nathan Simmonds:
Phenomenal. Look, thanks very much everyone for being here. Really appreciate the time, the engagement and your attention, uh, to this content. Andy, thanks very much for day and we’ll see everybody tomorrow. Thanks very much. Have a great day everyone.
