The fragmentation of the grocery retail landscape across multiple channels is placing a strain on food and non-food FMCG suppliers to recruit account management professionals capable of creating and sustaining strategic rather than purely transactional relationships with retailers.
That is being brought about by an increasingly competitive retail sector in which time poor buying staff at multiples are expecting and demanding more from their suppliers.
Aside from the top tier suppliers, it is alarming the number of companies that don’t recognise the way in which these relationships are changing.
Today, if your account managers are unable to talk about the strategic aspects of category strategy, then your company’s relationship with its retailers will only ever be transactional and your prospects only as good as your price and promotion. If you want to be taken seriously and have a strategic relationship, then your account managers need to know and understand about insight and changing consumer and shopper dynamics across all retail platforms and be able to articulate it within a joint business planning process.
But too many suppliers have account management staff without the breadth of skills required in modern FMCG retailing.
Ideally retailers want to cut down on their number of suppliers and only focus on those who can innovate and inform. They would like a narrower not a broader supplier base. So suppliers need a more sophisticated type of account manager who can help them secure a competitive advantage Those that have account managers who are simply operating with a 20th century mindset in a 21st industry sector are going to be left behind.
John Nevens is director of Bridgethorne, a specialist in customer and category management and shopper marketing. This is a personal blog and views expressed are his own.
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