Winning in consumer packaged goods through data and analytics

McKinsey & Co 2016 survey of North American companies highlights best practices in customer and channel management.

Consumer-packaged-goods (CPG) companies today are dealing with a host of challenges—including political and economic uncertainty, value-conscious consumers with fast-changing needs, and intensified cost pressure due to retailer consolidation and the rise of hard discounters. Against this backdrop, growth has been particularly elusive for the largest CPG players: over the past four years, large food-and-beverage manufacturers—which account for about half of total category sales—have remained stagnant, growing only 0.3 percent on average per year. By contrast, midsize companies have expanded sales by 3.8 percent and small companies by 10.2 percent.1

But irrespective of size, certain best practices set the most successful CPG companies apart from their competitors. Our latest survey of North American CPG companies, developed in partnership with the Grocery Manufacturers Association and Nielsen, brings to light the customer- and channel-management practices of “winners”—companies that outperform their peers in the categories in which they compete.

Five imperatives for growth

As once-average performers have upped their game, it’s become harder for CPG companies to differentiate themselves. The survey results bear this out: the gap between winners and others in sales strategy, for instance, has narrowed significantly—from a difference in sales-growth performance of 5.4 percentage points in 2014 to a mere 1.1 percentage points in 2016. Yet even this small gap can be worth tens of millions of dollars in sales and is meaningful in today’s slow-growth market. We have identified five imperatives for CPG companies seeking to break away from the pack.

[For rest of article, read HERE]

What sales companies need to get right for digital success

To realize the full value potential of digital, successful sales organizations reorganize top to bottom, front end to back end. Here’s their road map.

“We’ve got to go digital.” Every sales leader has heard some variation of that statement. But what is digital, actually? And of all the digital things to do out there, what matters most for driving sales growth?

To help answer this question, we conducted a survey of more than 1,000 US and European sales executives, as well as interviewing dozens of sales executives and doing research for the book Sales Growth: Five Proven Strategies from the World’s Sales Leaders. In our first article from this data set, we looked at the five areas where sales leaders outperform their peers (see “The sales secrets of high-growth companies”).

For this article, we looked at the how organizationally sales leaders drive performance. Our analysis revealed that fast-growing companies1successfully connect seemingly opposite approaches:

• Front to back: Create a dynamic experience for customers, and use digital tools and data to power operations. It’s common for companies to overemphasize one or the other, but the greatest success lies in a marriage of both.
• Top to bottom: Successful sales organizations also overhaul the way things are done, from sales leadership all the way through front line sales reps.

While this structure might sound like a “do everything” approach, its value is in providing a simple way to think through the connections needed throughout the organization to get the most from digital capabilities, from automating processes to delivering experiences across all channels to using analytics to enable the sales force.

Of course, this is all much easier said than done. In our survey, a majority of sales executives said that their companies are increasing their investments in digital sales tools and capabilities for the near term. Yet less than 40 percent believe they are even moderately effective at it and a mere 17 percent rate their capabilities as “outstanding.”

[For rest of article read HERE]

This is the CEO guide to customer service.

Companies that create exceptional customer experiences can set themselves apart from their competitors.

What do my customers want? The savviest executives are asking this question more frequently than ever, and rightly so. Leading companies understand that they are in the customer-experience business, and they understand that how an organization delivers for customers is beginning to be as important as what it delivers.

This CEO guide taps the expertise of McKinsey and other experts to explore the fundamentals of customer interaction, as well as the steps necessary to redesign the business in a more customer-centric fashion and to organize it for optimal business outcomes. For a quick look at how to improve the customer experience, see the summary infographic.

[For rest of article, read HERE ...]

A PR exercise that went so wrong

I have always admire Singapore Airlines for it's sound public relations policies with its customers as well as the public.  But this time, it went so wrong and someone is left with a red face.

SINGAPORE Airlines has been criticised for making a big deal about Singapore’s first-ever Olympic gold medal winner ... but relegating him to the back of their photos on social media.

Swimmer Joseph Schooling, 21, beat Michael Phelps to win gold in the men’s 100m butterfly in Rio but that wasn’t enough for him to nab prime position in a photo plastered all over Singapore Airlines’ social media.

In a post on the airline’s Facebook page, the swimmer can be seen standing at the back of the photo, with the airline’s staff in front of him.

Singapore Airlines has since deleted the much-criticised post, which attracted hundreds of angry comments from Schooling’s fans.

[For rest of news article, read HERE ....]