Selling through customer business development: P & G

Résumé du document

In the 80's, manufacturers began to spend money to better understand consumers, and P&G more than anyone. However, they never really asked, if these needs were the same in retailers. It was the period when P&G decided, to change the sales department into a more strategic department named Customer Business Development. The objective was to indicate that they wanted to work more strategically with retailers than before. If they wanted to make the difference on the point-of-purchase, instead of trying to sell the maximum, they had rather to work differently with retailers. They wanted to show that Procter wasn't only the shampoo seller, but could be also, a partner which can help them to optimize sales.

They relied on Trade Marketing theories that were popular in the 90's. Trade Marketing was defined as "a methodical procedure carried out jointly by suppliers and retailers, whose objective is to better serve customers' needs and expectations, increase profitability and competitive position, while taking into account each other's constraints and specificity" (Randall, G. 1994: 115).

Extraits

[...] Surveys have shown that the majority of choices are made in front of the shelf. According to a Deloitte study (2007) of all decisions are made on the shop floor, and Nielsen states that 68% of all shoppers are brand switchers (2006). Therefore, by capitalize on insights into consumer shopping habits and behaviour, P&G better understand shopper's needs as well as consumer ones. In this way, Procter's products have more chances than any other competitor to end into shopper's basket, and they can also provide mass of information to retailers in order to improve the shopping experience. [...]

[...] Applicants must be innovative, dynamic and responsible. The objective is that future employees have to be able to stand back and imaginative when they set a project. Thanks to that kind of human resources P&G has been elected most innovative company” in 2007. Learning, training, self confidence, and leadership are important aspects to the firm: an employee that has access to knowledge and business competencies is more efficient in his job. That's why, several seminaries, on line and classroom courses are proposed to each employee since his entrance in the company. [...]

[...] P&G brands have some competitors, but there is very few 79$ billion global companies into the FMCG world. Therefore, P&G uses its global power to be more efficient into their relationships with retailers. If we take the example of P&G in France, it is more than 50 brands that have consumers' recognition, and thus that weigh into negociations with retailers: Moreover, P&G pioneered the CBD structure. They achieved to improve it year after year to be perfectly operational. Therefore, the size of the organisation and its brands portfolio allows to avoid structural costs that other companies would have by implementing such a structure. [...]

[...] With their Career Path Model, employees can work for life for Procter. Every 3 or 4 years, they have the possibility to change their position and have different roles, at the same or at higher levels. The CBD structure is certainly the ideal structure to reach highest positions into the firm as their website presents it: higher levels you could become the leader one of our top worldwide customer teams or the CBD Head of one of our largest countries or regions. [...]

[...] They relied on Trade Marketing theories that were popular in the 90's. Trade Marketing was defined as methodical procedure carried out jointly by suppliers and retailers, whose objective is to better serve customers' needs and expectations, increase profitability and competitive position, while taking into account each other's constraints and specificity” (Randall, G. 1994: 115). Therefore, P&G's sales force can be described as a partner from the retailer's point of view, because of the shared benefits generated by this collaboration: “Consumers are on the top and marketers and retailers work together to create the optimal shopper experience and the elusive win-win-win” (Sommer, D. [...]