Certius’ brief was to establish a skilled and effective trade marketing team, which would be capable of creating and executing winning go to market strategies and plans for the business. These, in turn, would need to deliver a competitive advantage for Ramak brands in the market every day.
In order to create a trade marketing team that was fit for purpose, Certius first needed to establish current capabilities and perform a skills gap analysis. Certius conducted an in depth review of the market needs, and compared these to Ramak’s sales capabilities and trade marketing practices. These were then contrasted against best FMCG practice in order to identify critical areas when it comes to winning in store with customers.
As part of our analysis, we conducted interviews with Ramak’s salesforce, sales, marketing and top management teams, in addition to customers. We also conducted extensive fieldwork and market visits with Ramak’s sales team, assessing how sales and initiative planning was currently being done. Using our research, Certius then designed a trade marketing capability system specific to the needs of Ramak and the market. This programme covered key trade marketing concepts including category strategy and segmentation, SKU analysis and classification, market coverage planning, point of purchase vision and merchandising, pricing and promotions, development of customer value propositions, and concept selling. In addition to this, Certius outlined the optimal organisational structure for the new trade marketing department and provided job descriptions for all functions. We were also involved in the team selection process, interviewing internal and external candidates.
Finally, we designed a training and coaching roadmap to build and sustain the required competencies over time. We built on this by conducting a series of training workshops with the newly formed trade marketing team.
