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Sticky Learning Lunch 48: Increase Your Category Opportunities
Today’s topic, Increase the Number of Category Opportunities Landed Part 7.
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:
Good afternoon, sticky learning lunches. Welcome to Monday. Really great to be here. Really great to see you even in the virtual. We’re just gonna give it a few more seconds while we’re waiting for the rest of the people to arrive in the room. Just gonna have a mouthful of drinks. Gonna make sure we’re getting ourselves set up for the day. A few more seconds. Good to see you, Colin. Thanks for being here. Darren, always a pleasure.
Nathan Simmonds:
Fabian, great to see you here again, Joe, lovely to see you. John, thank you very much for being here. First time attendee, I believe. Thanks very much for taking the time to invest in yourself in this session for today. Just as we’re waiting for those last people to arrive, let’s make sure we are setting ourselves up for success. So, first things first, before we even get into the introductions, let’s zero out the distraction, a hundred percent attention.
Nathan Simmonds:
Let’s get the little airplane lit up. So we haven’t got our WhatsApp, Twitter, our pings, buzzes, beeps or whatever, distracting us from what we’re spending our time doing here today. Making sure that you’ve got a fresh sheet as well. Fresh sheet, fresh thinking. So you wanna make sure you’ve got a nice clean page in your notebook. And at the top of this, you’re gonna write keepers and keepers are the things that you want to remember that you wanna remind yourself about.
Nathan Simmonds:
And when you reread that, it’s gonna reignite that thinking. So when you come back to this learning from today and from our previous sessions, that you can go back, go back into that thinking and create some new ideas that are gonna help you deliver a better result in your business. And as you’ve just seen me with my drink, making sure that you have hydration.
Nathan Simmonds:
Make sure you are hydrated. Keep your brain lubricated so you can make this learning stick. I think we’re good to go. Let’s dive into today’s session. Actually, before we do that, if you have not already registered for tomorrow’s session, I’m gonna put a link in the box at the bottom there in the chat box for everyone. If you have not registered for tomorrow’s session, now is the time to make sure you’ve got a copy of that link so you can get prepared for tomorrow.
Nathan Simmonds:
Tomorrow we’re looking at the first stage of evoc, the self-evaluation, part of the leadership model that is in the chat box. Now, if that’s gonna be beneficial for you, sign up for tomorrow’s session. It’s four part module of system. We’ll be running through Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Monday next week. If you know anyone else that would benefit from that, share that link with them as well.
Nathan Simmonds:
Get ’em involved. There’s gonna be some great content in there. I’m gonna be delivering the first stage of our leadership coaching model. It’s gonna really help you take your game to a whole new level, Andy. Ready? I’m ready. Good. So look, welcome to today’s sticky learning with me, Nathan Simmons, senior leadership coach and trainer for MBM Making Business Matter, the home of Sticky learning. And we are the soft skills and leadership development provider to the UK grocery and manufacturing industry.
Nathan Simmonds:
Idea of these learnings is to give you 20 minutes of micro learning to help you be the best version of you in the work that you do, whether that be from home or returning back to the office. Today we are covering part seven of the category management funnel, also lovingly known by MBM as the 73% funnel. ’cause what we, we have calculated is that 73% of your opportunities never make it to store. No, sorry, never make it to the store. And we want to help you improve that quite significantly. Andy, welcome to today.
Andy Palmer:
Thank you, Nathan. Good to here. Can’t believe we’re on day seven already,
Nathan Simmonds:
Day seven. And as you said before we hit go live on this, it’s gone super quickly. We’ve covered some really decent content, you know, not even at the depth that we know that we can go to. There have been some absolute nuggets though, for people watching.
Andy Palmer:
Absolutely. I thinking, uh, picking up on what you’ve just said there about someone, uh, attending stay that hasn’t attended the previous sessions, thank you for being here. Um, I’d also had some contact from people last week, send the missed sessions. So I’m thinking, right, I’ve got this right. That link that you’ve just put up, Nathan, will also allow people to view the sessions that we’ve run, those other previous six sessions that we’ve ran over our funnel. Um, if you haven’t picked up on those or you wanna watch those again or watch ’em for the first time, they’re, they’re gonna be in that link as well.
Nathan Simmonds:
Absolutely. Click through, go and have a look. Well worth it. What are coming today,
Andy Palmer:
Nathan, we are colleagues in the circle on our funnel. Um, so we previously talked about agreeing category targets, understanding the shopper, understanding our channel, turning data and analysis into insights and recommendations, selling those opportunities and landing those opportunities. We’re now gonna go all the way, all the way back round with evaluating, improve the key, key part to any project or anything that we ever do. Yeah, it’s so often overlooked because we’re on what we class as the PowerPoint treadmill that we just jump straight off one project or straight out of one presentation into another.
Andy Palmer:
So I’m gonna share just a one tool with you today, um, of how you can evaluate more effectively. Um, somebody can just take away and and do. So we’re gonna get into that in a moment. The other bit I’m gonna ask for right now is we’ve got some more time today to spend on questions, uh, challenging me, probing me appropriately, um, on category management, on any of the seven stages that we’ve, uh, gone through. So if people have got questions now, maybe, uh, start to consider them, get ’em in the chat box when we get to that in maybe 10, 15 minutes time.
Andy Palmer:
Um, Nathan can start sharing those and we can hopefully just bring this topic to life even more. Um, and at the same time answer some questions that you may have, um, again, take away and add continued value.
Nathan Simmonds:
Absolutely. So any questions that are coming up because we’re getting into that evaluation, evaluation stage. I get my words out today. Any questions that are coming up for you today from this funnel from previous or any other category management challenges that come up today to day to follow those questions in? I think so we can start looking at those.
Andy Palmer:
Absolutely. Now we’ve covered a heck of a lot and I’ve realized I’ve got a really busy whiteboard behind me. But that’s largely some of the things that we pulled out. There’s been loads of three letter, uh, things to hang our, uh, hack, hang our hats off. We’ll come back to those maybe in a little while. But today is really about evaluating and improving. And of course I’ve got maybe not by design, another three letter tool to share with you.
Andy Palmer:
So Nathan, I’ll ask you to slide down just a couple on, on the slides. Um, I wanna share this tool with you. That was perfect. Um, PMI typically, as I said, we’d move from project to project, presentation to presentation, maybe not taking that time to figure out what good, great, better, could have been worse, getting those kind of learnings. We are all about continuous improvement.
Andy Palmer:
We think this is a terrific tool that you can use in the moment for pretty much any situation. So for example, our category category management. Um, we could use this to evaluate, um, a cell when we’ve been in sort of see the buyer and we’re putting our recommendations. We could then do this quick evaluation afterwards, or we could do it right at the top and say, right, let’s, let’s have a quick look at our, uh, agreeing category targets. What was, what can we learn from that?
Andy Palmer:
So this tool works very, very simply, but yet super powerfully by saying what was positive? What was the things that were really good, we can take, make some notes on what was good, got the category, target came up with it really, really quickly. It’s tangible, it’s smart, and we can start to pull all those positive learnings out.
Andy Palmer:
We can look at then from a minus point of view, what was not so good? It took us a long time to get there. Actually. We had to, we had to kind of go round circles a few times next time, let’s not do that. Let’s, uh, start with our end in mind first and work backwards. And again, we’re listing all the things that weren’t so great that we want to do differently next time. The last part I for interesting, those things that you just didn’t see happening could be maybe down in the, uh, the sell part of the funnel when we’re presenting to the buyer and the buyer says, ah da, go, oh, that was really interesting.
Andy Palmer:
Didn’t see that coming as a curve. Didn’t see that coming as a question. Didn’t see that coming as an opportunity. Again, let’s capture that ’cause it’s worth being aware in future, something similar could come up. Yes, we can get into big evaluations, we can organize meetings, we can get a bunch of people in a room. We can create all sorts of 120 step, uh, review points. Sometimes just being really pragmatic and looking at under these three headings can be super powerful. And again, it’s not just, uh, limiting, it’s category management.
Andy Palmer:
It absolutely can be applied to, to anything you work on, personal or professional. Good way to keep that, uh, cycle of continuous improvement going. Lemme pause there, Nathan, as my, uh, as my, uh, litmus test. Is that working for you? Hopefully it’s working for our, uh, audience.
Nathan Simmonds:
Absolutely. I was just trying, uh, just, uh, working there with some potential technical issues, but we thought we couldn’t see you on someone else’s screen, so it’s fine. You are appearing on everyone’s screen. I was just doing that in the background as in for PMI, for me, this is a model that I learned with coaching. So even as you’re looking at this, at the end of the category management, when you look at this as going into the first stages of the leadership model that we’re gonna be looking at tomorrow, this is a super straightforward way of getting that self-reflection on a project,
Nathan Simmonds:
On a conversation, on a way that I interact as a human being in another relationship. So even doing this as a, like I say, from a pragmatic objective point of view, just listing those things out. What was positive? What was the negative, what was interesting about this? Okay, what am I learning from this? And using that stuff to create the next platform to move forward.
Andy Palmer:
Absolutely. And I think often we, we look at it as what was good and what was not so good. It’s that interesting part that just adds a nice third dimension, uh, to spot those things and capitalize on them because the chance are something similar could again happen in the future. Um, and it’s worth just taking a moment of reflections going, yeah, that was interesting. Let’s make sure we’re doing something about it or being aware of it for the future. Yeah, so those three things just work nicely, uh, but work nicely together for a balanced, uh, evaluation.
Nathan Simmonds:
Absolutely. Colin’s dropped in here as similar to the stop start, continue. Absolutely is. I think with the, the, the difference with the, the stop start and continue, it’s kind of, it is giving you clear actions. This is for me is probably the first stage where you do that overview of actually what was good, what was negative, what was interesting about the situation, what did I learn from this? Okay, based on that information. Then we go into those next questions. What do I stop? What do I start? What do I continue?
Andy Palmer:
Love, stop, start, continue. It’s always, um, a, a again, another one of these just really pragmatic ways of, of looking at a, a bunch of given situations and, and taking learnings appropriately forward. Yeah, it’s really good. Thanks Colin.
Nathan Simmonds:
Absolutely. Where are we going to next? Now we’ve looked at the PMI then Andrew. Okay.
Andy Palmer:
So that was the evaluation tool I wanted to share with you. Um, the next thing I thought would be useful to share today as well is our competency framework. So I’m gonna get in a slide down in a moment, or now if you wish, Nathan, um, because sometimes people say to us, so what, what’s great look like for category management, Andy? Um, so I wanna share this with you. I appreciate that as a super busy slide with loads and loads of words on it.
Andy Palmer:
Words. Let me give you the overview of it. Um, and it help you just to put that line lining the sound of where am I, where do I want to get to? And then setting those appropriate targets for improving your own individual category management. So we’ve got at the top in general, meaning seven essential qualities of category management. So say, if you’re reading all of that, they effectively follow our seven steps of the funnel.
Andy Palmer:
So stage one is absolutely about agreeing category targets and then they move down. So each essential quality is a funnel stage. Then we’ve got our five levels. So our five levels starting at the top level four, I’m doing all of them. I’m absolutely a solid category manager. I can only build on the skills that I’ve already got continuing down to level three. It’s me doing five out of the seven essential qualities.
Andy Palmer:
And then it continues down doing three of them, doing a couple of them or doing none of them at all. The point of having this very simple tool is to go actually, where am I? And people can assess themselves and or their teams and get a feel for where they are. Then really important bit they can have focus on what they need to improve. We need to be better at selling our opportunities.
Andy Palmer:
We need to be better at identifying the opportunities and they can start to then build their own individual team action plan to start moving them up through these different levels to really get to a place of, uh, awesomeness at that, uh, level four at the top. So I’ll pause there. Hope that’s a reasonable overview of that, uh, that model. Nathan, again, come to you. Uh, questions from you or thoughts from you on that? No,
Nathan Simmonds:
I think with the competency frameworks, especially with the ones we use at MBM, it just gives you that clarity as a leader, as a business and our head of a business department or whatever gives you that clarity. Where am my people? Where am I? And then from there, like you say, you know, it is two or three of these competencies, which ones are these, the seven points on this funnel? Are we succeeding in? Where do we need to improve in?
Nathan Simmonds:
And then actually is when you look at something like a very, you know, again, super straightforward tool. You look at the coaching cards and you can look at the questions that are in each of those stages. And actually, can I use an element of this to help improve my people directly by using some of those questions to get ’em to think in a, in a, a slightly more focused way at that point in the funnel?
Andy Palmer:
Absolutely. So we’re talking about our funnel with our seven steps. We’re talking about our category management, uh, competency framework with the our levels. I’ve got a pack of the cards here, we’ve mentioned them before. We’re gonna mention ’em again, big old deck. And the big old deck again is broken down into each of these, uh, stages of the funnel with appropriate questions to help unlock that particular area. Because we can’t be good at everything. That’s just not, uh, realistic. We can use those opportunities to better ourselves.
Andy Palmer:
But before we can do that, we need to figure out where we are. Um, and to your point there, Nathan, you know, we’ve got this as a competency framework or a scorecard, whatever terminology you wanna refer to as we’ve also got these pu of 20 other skills. So then again, if anyone’s interested in a copy of those, either visit the website or just do a search competency framework. You’ll find the download, offer some message in the chat box now and we’ll get ’em sent over to you.
Andy Palmer:
All the skills you can. Uh, so we help develop and a whole bunch of others on top of that from everything from presentation skills to leadership skills, all the way down to giving feedback or delegation. There’s a whole host of them in there. Um, just helping to get to a place of where am I, where do I wanna get to?
Nathan Simmonds:
Absolutely. I’ve already dropped the link in there for the coaching cards because you know, we talked about ’em and we think we talk about ’em nearly in every single, uh, sticky loan lunch. Why? Because they’re only five pound and it’s for what you get in there, the questions you get in there with the experience that have been, that has been focused into them is astronomical for the price. You’re ah, okay. So
Andy Palmer:
I think, sorry, go on Nathan.
Nathan Simmonds:
I was gonna say the competency framework is a great place to start ticking off and working through, you know, those gaps or those areas that we believe that we need to bridge inside our business. So huge. Yeah, absolutely.
Andy Palmer:
Next, uh, next step, let’s do something a little bit different that we haven’t done before on our other webinars. I’m gonna get Nathan to stick up a poll. I’m really keen to hear back from you on, uh, where you are with category management. Uh, this is private poll, so we’re not gonna share the results, certainly not, uh, from how Colin said this, and Darren said that we’d love to get a feel for where you are with category management. It helps us to understand where opportunities, uh, exist with people that, uh, are out there.
Andy Palmer:
Um, so if main things set that poll up, that’d be good. Give you a few seconds to, um, populate where we’re, and I’m gonna ask another poll another question right at the end to, um, get a feel for how much we’ve helped improve your category management knowledge. So if you wanna start considering that as well, uh, for now, let’s pop that poll up and uh, see where it takes us.
Nathan Simmonds:
Good. So that question’s coming up is how effective is your current approach to category management? One terrible five. Phenomenal. Go
Andy Palmer:
Sit me in as a one please. Nathan
Nathan Simmonds:
Colin’s already asked if he could have a copy of the competency framework. We can absolutely sort that out. If anyone else wishes to you, what I think anyone that’s watching this live at the moment, what we’ll do is we will send this out as a, an additional email to make sure you’ve got a copy of this competency framework. And if there’s any other competency frameworks that you feel you would like to have from us, whether that be leadership, coaching, feedback, delegation, whatever it is, let us know and we’ll give those to you. We’ve got a very even spread of individuals gonna close that off now. We’ve got a full range of everything, literally nice core section of 25% in 1, 2, 3, and four all sitting in there as well.
Andy Palmer:
Nice. Good stuff. Alright, good. Thank you for that, we appreciate that. Um, alright, so gonna spend a few minutes just recapping on each stage of the funnel. Then we’re gonna move into maybe, uh, 10 minutes or so of q and a, but hopefully if it gets unlocked through, uh, the explanation that I’m about to get into or some other questions that you’ve already thought about. So we go all the way back to day one. We did talk about agreeing category targets. That absolute critical stage to focus all of our time and all of our resource, resource on achieving.
Andy Palmer:
So this is about picking a single smart target. We suggested something around weight of purchase or frequency of purchase or penetration. Once you’ve got that target, it means everything that you then do thereafter is looking to achieve that first step of the funnel. Agreeing category targets. We then came down into better understanding the shopper in stage two. And here we bought that and expanded that to life with maybe bringing in that additional element of shopper preparer and eater and ensuring that we’re keeping these guys at the absolute heart of our decision.
Andy Palmer:
But also knowing it’s not just about the person or us as people pushing a trolley, carrying a basket, it’s also about the people all the way down the line from those preparing the meal all the way through to those consuming the meal and ensuring that we’ve got, uh, an iron, that they’re absolutely at the heart of our decisions. We then talked about understanding our channels and knowing that different retailers and different outlets very much have different strategies and approaches.
Andy Palmer:
And it’s about ensuring that we’ve absorbed appropriately the information from them so that when we’re making recommendations we’re aligned with maybe it’s their, uh, their CSR targets or their overall business strategy or understanding what’s important to them in the moment to ensure that we’re just out all on the same page.
Andy Palmer:
Then came down into what I think I referred to and was corrected as the sexy stuff. And this was about, uh, analyzing data, um, and identifying opportunities. As we’ve said, category management’s absolutely about making recommendations using data to back it up. It’s not about personal opinion or be it, we may start with hypothesis and we talked about the statements of, I believe and then going off and testing those statements from here.
Andy Palmer:
We got into, uh, we got into areas around um, uh, the category development index, overtrade and under trade, uh, and helping to unlock those opportunities, um, hypotheses and various different pieces of calculations that we can do to, to really bring that to life. Um, we also talked about the um, the way in which we can communicate those, uh, observations from the data, which we’ll talk about observations from the observations we then generate, uh, insight.
Andy Palmer:
It’s the why. So our insight based off our observation and then our recommendation based off the insight and allowing our audience to follow our train of thoughts all the way through from observation, insight, recommendation in what effects we could be a three column simple table. Then move down into selling our opportunities. I mean we’ve got right into the trust model. Hopefully you’ve taken that away and considered how trustworthy are yourself? How trustworthy are my colleagues? How trustworthy are my external, uh, partners?
Andy Palmer:
And again, looking to dial up and dial that stuff down to make our recommendations land more effective by building the trust that we need to have with the people that we’re uh, communicating with. Then talked about landing opportunities in store, the importance of knowing how store operations work, making connections in store making, considering those things that could blindside us before it’s too late. And then bringing us background to where we are today, our PMI tool to evaluate and improve. There’s a few minutes as our, uh, our summary. Nathan, let me pause for a sec.
Nathan Simmonds:
Great summary. Great, great summary, great rundown. We’ve covered some core tools. You know, like I say, as you said, know your customer inside and out. The three stages are what they look like. Know your supermarket and know what their wants and needs are so you can better get to those individuals and support them. And the idea is that you’re creating that know, like, and trust factor. So you’re not only taking a wider portion of the top pie, you’re actually, you know, increasing the depth of that pie and supporting everybody that’s working in that category at the same time. That’s the key part I think.
Andy Palmer:
Absolutely. And as category managers we’re there to grow the size of the pie, not just the slice of the pie. Stuff’s got a work in conduction and it’s about us being independent and growing that category sustainably. Um, I can’t emphasize that point enough, you know, and I think I’ve mentioned it pretty much every day over the last week, but yeah, absolutely.
Nathan Simmonds:
What do you think the, so if someone was interested in improving their category management, what are the three core challenges they would be experiencing that would then cause ’em to speak to you?
Andy Palmer:
So, and again, I’m gonna bring it back to here and I’m also gonna kinda reemphasize that point around what actually is category management because over the years it’s been wrapped up in jargon and terminology and this kind of dark art. And I’m gonna bring it down to some really simple facts. It’s about identifying opportunities, opportunities, selling opportunities and landing opportunities. And it’s typically those, one of those, if not a mixture of those three areas that we see, uh, people we work with struggle the most.
Andy Palmer:
Can I sell the opportunities? Can I make sure the opportunities land? Can I even identify opportunities? Uh, and that’s simple for me is what category management absolutely is. It’s business as usual and it’s about doing that stuff to grow those categories
Nathan Simmonds:
And having that conversation with you to go through this funnel in a much deeper way is gonna help ’em to do those three things.
Andy Palmer:
I think. So you know what we’ve skims the surface across each of these areas and category management in general. You know, we’ve only got limited time. We can talk about this stuff and we do in our training courses for, you know, three or four days at a time. It’s a big, big topic. What I’m hoping today is it’s uh, provided a little bit of thought provocation, it’s got some people asking some different questions of themselves or it’s made them hungry for more information.
Andy Palmer:
And of course we’re really open to having that conversation with you because we’ve got options, we’ve got options of how we can bring this particular topic to life. Um, whereas uh, we’ve kind of just touched on it, uh, be quite briefly over the last week or so.
Nathan Simmonds:
Good. Okay, look, I’m suddenly realized what the time is. It’s 23 minutes past right now. So what questions? Yeah, let’s, you know, we’ve talked enough, especially over the last, uh, seven episodes of delivering this content with Andy. What questions have you got for Andy about category management right now that we can, we can look at answering for you. And while those are coming in, we’ve already got the link in there for the coaching cards.
Nathan Simmonds:
They’re already there. We’ve got the link in there for the previous and the future sticky learnings as well. Andy’s contact details please. That is a super easy ask. Bear with me. I’m not sure I can copy it out there, but we can forward those on for sure. Let me just do a quick screen share right there.
Andy Palmer:
Yep.
Nathan Simmonds:
Which is gonna give you some of those. Uh, while those are quibbling down, if there’s any, any questions, any other questions coming in, that’ll be handy. I’ve also got a couple that were fielded in previously by email, so I’m gonna jump to those in just a minute. Bear with, so the other thing that’s just come in there is I’ve just been sent the link for the competency framework as well. So I’m gonna share that in the chat box for you.
Nathan Simmonds:
Now on there, if you follow the link for the current competency framework there, what we can do is you just click in there, put your details in there, your email address, we can send you a copy of that, of the relevant competency frameworks for you. You can have a look at that as well. Percentages of failure for each layer of the funnel. Ah, okay, that’s a really good question. Do you have the percentages available for where opportunities fail at every point in the funnel, Andy? We do.
Andy Palmer:
Absolutely. So we do, so we calculated this with, um, a really complex algorithm and reality is it’s based on the experience that we’ve got with working with clients over the last, uh, 15 or so years. So I think what I’m gonna do is I can put that out afterwards, can’t remember exactly what they are. Um, but we do have those and you can start see which particular point of the funnel. And I know we’ve mentioned some numbers in, in previous sessions there, it’s 8% here and it’s 3% here, but we’ve got those numbers gladly share those, badly share those.
Andy Palmer:
The other point to mention is, um, I know we’re gonna make the white paper available, uh, on this particular topic. If people haven’t received it, they’re gonna receive it. Uh, it’s uh, a white paper, a guide that follows the funnel and again, brings it to life with very similar and different tools that we covered. Each part also has the, uh, percentage, um, impact captured within there as well.
Nathan Simmonds:
Mm-Hmm. Okay, great. So we’ll get those shared out and make sure those are emailed out as well. Um, we’ll also I think yes, we will include the link. We’ve got the link there, sorry for the competency framework. We’ll also include the, uh, the category management framework in that email as well. So let’s have a look. Another question. This is the first one of your webinars I’ve attended you. I’m very appreciative of it. I’d just like to say thanks for you both for presenting some excellent information on here from an L and D perspective, but we’ll be taking away the PMI and stop start continuing models away with me. Absolute pleasure. You know, John, thank you very much for, for dropping that in. Look
Andy Palmer:
Brilliant.
Nathan Simmonds:
And so look, if you, if this is the first time you were attending John tomorrow, sign up for the future sessions. You’ve got the previous sessions we’re gonna, we’ve already dropped an absolute stack of value over the last eight weeks I think it is now. And that is gonna continue to come for at least the next four weeks as well. Um, Colin says, John, sign up. Colin’s been here every day. I mean, so I mean there’s some, there’s, there’s, there’s a small amount of banter going on here between the delegates, what’s going on?
Nathan Simmonds:
So terrific. So, uh, there’s also, uh, let’s have a look. Darren says iHeart Colin, there’s also some bro love going on. This is getting really weird. Um, and it’s not even half one. So we’ve got, they’ve got, you mentioned RAP the other day’s. Another question that came in, uh, Ken and and touched on promotions. Have you got an example of the R and va?
Andy Palmer:
Sure. Okay. Yeah. So wrap, where are we over here We go range relative promotions. Typically we find that 80% of categories growth gets back to those areas. I gave the example when we talked about promotions of how we could structure a promotional plan. Someone come up with an example of how we can improve range and availability. Um, okay, lemme see if I can bring both of those together with one example actually, uh, long time ago I was analyzing data. This is true story.
Andy Palmer:
I was analyzing data to one, understand how I could improve um, availability. And what we’re trying to do is not just go into the bar and say, oh, if we drive availability higher we can improve sales because they go, yeah, good one well done. Availability’s got to have a trade off with wastage. So we don’t wanna push availability too high and drive wastage.
Andy Palmer:
Poor quality stock is being reduced clear in store. So the two has got to work together. Any recommendation we make has got to have a negative impact on waste and a positive impact on sales. So I was analyzing a sales by store by week over a particular product, figured out that broadly 70% of the wastage was coming from about 20% of the stores. I’d analyzed this to a point where I felt comfortable that I could calculate the opportunity size.
Andy Palmer:
I went to see my buyer and I said, I’d like to reduce distribution on my lines please. And the buyer at the time who’s now a actually a buyer for wall this in Australia, um, fell off, you see. And he said, Andy, I have never ever had a supplier come in and suggest an increased distribution. You are gonna reduce your sales with me if I reduce your, uh, your your your distribution.
Andy Palmer:
Why would you wanna do that? And I said, well actually I think I’m gonna increase my sales. And he said, oh go, okay, now it’s getting interesting. Tell me more. I’ve calculated where the wastage has come from. My recommendation is to strip out the stores that can’t sell this particular product, maybe replace it with a smaller product, separate opportunity, but let’s, let’s get this product out of the stores that clearly can’t sell it. Once we’ve done that, I know your in stock order, your stock ordering systems will start ordering more for all of the other stores because the algorithm that calculate store, uh, store orders takes into account wastage.
Andy Palmer:
We restrict the wastage potential out. We can push sales of this particular product, uh, across the rest of the estate in the stores that we know we can sell it. So I was making a range recommendation that would drive sales and reduce wastage and at the same time playing around with my availability opportunity. That was just absolutely huge. Decrease the stores on the stores that couldn’t sell. It meant we could increase the sales on the stores that could sell it. There you go. How about that one?
Nathan Simmonds:
Nice. And again, comes back to that analytics and that’s side of it. You know, you are then doing the, the buyer of favor and actually reducing their costs but then at the same time filling that gap that you’ve created by seeing there’s another opportunity here to go over expand the depth of that slice as it were in a different way.
Andy Palmer:
Absolutely. This was a win for us as a supplier. It was a win for them as a retailer because uh, they’re reducing their stock loss, increasing his bottom line and it was a win for the shoppers ’cause they were gonna get better quality product that wasn’t, uh, maybe always been reduced to clear or it was a fresh product. So it wasn’t starting to deteriorate. It’s just one of those win-win win opportunities.
Nathan Simmonds:
Nice splendid look. Conscious of time. We’ve just hit 1 31. Andy, any other questions coming in from anybody else? Please let us know if you’ve got any right now. I’m conscious of time and I’m gonna be respectful of the time. Andy, how would you like to close up the last seven days then and today included?
Andy Palmer:
I close it up with that last poll that we’ve got Nathan. ’cause I think it’s a great way to hear back from our audience that are benefiting between themselves, um, on what they’ve got and what they can now do differently as a result of category management. So that would be my, uh, true measure of, uh, success. And if we can shut that second poll up, that’d be terrific.
Nathan Simmonds:
So how this poll, how has this webinar giving you some new content and new concepts to push your category management skills up another level? So one being terrible, 10 uh, five being phenomenal, that poll is now open.
Andy Palmer:
Excellent. As people are talking through that, no, I’m really keen to have those conversations with people around how what can work with you to improve your category management. We’ve got options. We can encourage you to maybe take any learning that we’ve built. We could work with you on a one-to-one basis or if you’ve got groups and teams of people, we could come and do some category training with you. Whether that’s a very basic level, what we will class as our masterclass or our more in depth course as I mentioned earlier, goes over four days.
Andy Palmer:
Those conversation has gotta be appropriate and when the time’s right for you. But we do have lots of different options to bring this particular skill to life. And whether that’s we’re doing that virtual similar to what we’re doing now or when the time’s right getting back face-to-face room full of people building on their skill set that they’ve already got. Making ’em even better category managers or introducing them further to category management.
Nathan Simmonds:
Uh, as you hit the nail on the head before and during this conversation, we have a layer that meets everybody’s perspective and need at that point in time when it comes to category management. And one of the key things that needs to happen is if people are uncertain about the category management is to have a conversation with Andy about where you are in that funnel or where your gaps are.
Nathan Simmonds:
And if it’s appropriate though that you just have the white paper or a deck of coaching cards, then that’s the right route. But actually if there is a possibility to help your business grow in, you know, exponential ways, then that’s also something we need to talk about so that we can help you do that. And Andy has got the experience, expertise to do that.
Andy Palmer:
Absolutely. And again, everything starts with what’s the objective and I’ll be quite challenging back to you say, yeah, we can come and do some training, but what do you want as a result of the training? We’ve gotta be held accountable and you’ve got a clarity on what you need. Starts with a conversation, see where it goes.
Nathan Simmonds:
Amazing. That poll came in. We closed that one down. We’ve got 75% people, uh, on a five for taking stuff away from the last seven sessions including that. And only 25% are on a four. So I think we’re in the top, the upper, the upper higher or upper percentiles there. So I’m quite comfortable with what we delivered. Andy, thanks very much for this. Of the seven days. Really appreciated. Oh, Andy’s gone quiet on me. Andy, say goodbye. You know you wanna
Andy Palmer:
Yeah, I was doing deep reflection. Thanks for more important. Thank you Nathan. But actually thank you to everyone for being there for their thoughts, their questions. Um, take the stuff away, small confidence steps to to, to building on that knowledge that maybe already exists or new knowledge. Um, yeah. And challenges reach out to us. We’d love to have those conversations when the time’s. Right.
Nathan Simmonds:
Agreed. Very nice. Right Andy, thanks very much for today. Deeply appreciated and I look forward to seeing you all tomorrow. If again, if you have not registered for tomorrow, now is the time to click that link. So we see you tomorrow at one o’clock for the first stage of the leadership model. Thanks again, Andrew.
Andy Palmer:
Meet to you soon. Take care.
