Highlights from the RetEx Roundtable: Top 8 Takeaways & Lessons Learned

Retail industry experts from around North America gathered for three days in Santa Monica (April 26th), Chicago (May 17th), and New York (May 24th) at Repsly’s inaugural Retail Execution Roundtable. It was an intimate and refreshing setting as leaders from Kraft Heinz, SPAR, UpClear, and Repsly took center stage to discuss best practices and practical advice to attack today’s CPG challenges in promotions and in-store strategies.

The free traveling roadshow style event allowed us to leverage some of the brightest minds we’ve had the privilege to work alongside in our 11 years changing the way the CPG teams get work done in the field. 

Why We’re Here

We surveyed many of the attendees as to why it was important to them to be there at the event and we received some thoughtful responses:

• We’re here today so that we can continue to learn from peers in the industry on the best practices for field management.
• I’m here in order to learn more about turning data into something that can positively impact our Profits and Losses.
• I’m here to understand the cost of a visit and the return on investment in my field team.
• We’re here to learn how we can use data to work with retailers to provide a better shopping experience for our customers.
• I’m here to learn how to make more effective use of our finite resources.

If you didn’t have the opportunity to join us this year, we’re eager to see you in 2023! In the meantime, read on for the top 8 takeaways from our speakers.

Thoughts from Peter Hall of Kraft Heinz.

1. Field sales managers need a fundamental understanding of what's happening in the field in real-time in order to defend their team and budget.  Your retail execution platform should allow you to measure your team's impact and cost-justify additional hires, preserve your direct team, etc. 
   

2. “You can't just throw people at a problem.” - Peter Hall, President of Kraft Heinz Ingredients and U.S Away from Home. You have to maximize your investment in your current team and empower them with tech to do the job efficiently.
   

3. How do you know two people going into separate stores with the same 7 tasks aren't performing them completely differently and achieving different outcomes? You don't. They have too much "bandwidth" to introduce individual style, and subjectivity.  You must standardize and have everyone performing these tasks the same way.
   

4. Promotional compliance is always measured on Day 1 as a source of truth.  If a retailer is only 85 percent compliant and you can show them through data from your retail execution platform, you can make the case that you should only be paying 85 percent until resolved. Shine a light on habitual offenders. Your retail execution platform is AMMO for these negotiations, whereas in the past you have NO leverage without the facts in real-time.

5. RetEx model is trending towards "hyperlocalization".  Rep lives in a territory and understands the nuances of their micro-market and covers a specific set of stores.  Your retail execution platform can help you organize your territories in this model and get very granular.

6. You must narrow your priorities to what matters most. Use the data surfaced by your retail execution platform to hone in on what's most important, so as to not overwhelm reps in-store with a 38 slide deck on what a promotion, etc. is designed to accomplish.
   
   

   

   
   Other thoughts from UpClear, Clear Box, and SPAR.

7. Trade Promo Spending is 15-20 percent of gross revenue for most big brands. How are you ensuring the programs responsible for 1/5th of your revenue are being executed according to plan from Day 1?

8. For every 1 percent of stores not compliant with promos, you lose 1.24% of annual sales value.  If fixed in under 5 days from launch you can avoid this detrimental loss. How are you ensuring compliance in this short window of time?

A big thank you to all the attendees, speakers, and sponsors who made the three days in Santa Monica, Chicago, and New York an incredible and unforgettable experience. Be sure to stay on the lookout for news on upcoming events as well as the 2023 Retail Execution Roundtables.