Winning Over Retail Buyers with Insights
Uncovering sales opportunities within sales and retail data sets can be a difficult task for CPG brands, especially those with limited resources. Many categories are shrinking and buyers are being much more cautious with keeping non-essential items on their shelves. This is where utilizing the technology and tools available becomes even more essential. Buyers want to be delivered presentations and stories backed by a brand’s insights.
CPGs face no shortage of data available, and oftentimes the biggest issue is the exact opposite. Through a combination of syndicated data and data from retail portals, panels, etc., brands are able to fill in some of the coverage gaps and create a more holistic view of their performance. But these data sets rarely have the same categorization, product descriptions, or time periods, which requires additional manual effort and time to synthesize these sets into one unified format. Even with multiple analysts, delivering actionable insights to sales teams can be a massive undertaking.
With the volume of data constantly increasing, solving this issue will be necessary for companies that plan to remain leaders across key accounts.
Employ the Tools to Glean Retail Data Insights
One of the biggest challenges facing CPG analysts and sales teams is the initial task of compiling all of the data in a way that can even be analyzed. The process of harmonizing data sets from various vendors and retail portals can be a very time consuming process. Without leveraging technology to help streamline this process a major challenge is finding the time to recognize trends and identify insights from retail data.
Through machine learning and artificial intelligence, CPG brands are able to automate the process to harmonize data and streamline the time needed to derive insights. Not only will the data be harmonized and cleansed, but AI and ML can guide any user through the process and display insights based on CPG best practices and experience. From automating sales decks to guiding users through category review meetings or sales calls, AI can help brands prepare to deliver exactly what retail buyers want.
Download Bedrock’s free eBook, What Retail Buyers Want, for additional tips on approaching buyers and how to prepare.
Turn Retail Data Insights Into Compelling Sales Stories
A sales pitch isn’t just presenting your data and numbers, at least it shouldn’t be. That type of presentation can be difficult to retain and can often come off as monotonous. What buyers are looking for is a compelling story, backed by retail data insights, that gives them the answer to the question, “what’s in it for me and how does your product impact my business?”
The best way a CPG can win over their buyers and get on shelves is to create and share a narrative detailing why YOUR product is the best choice against all others. The data is essential for crafting these data-driven storylines. Data serves as the main character, introduces new scenes or delivers the unexpected twist.
Through the data, there are so many stories that can be told, so it is important to identify what you are trying to achieve and the key insights to highlight that compliment that goal. Are you trying to displace a competitor? Or show the growth of the product to gain more shelf space or branch into new channels? Or is it time to launch a new product?
Like any great story, there has to be some planning involved. That’s where a Storyboard gets its chance to shine. The story needs to flow smoothly and progress in a fluid sequence. This also gives you the chance to create visualizations and easily digestible formats for your data.
Regardless of the story that you want to tell with your data, you need to make it worth your buyer’s time and leave them with something they will remember. Decisions are rarely made while everyone is still sitting in the room, so the impression your story leaves will be crucial.
The Bedrock Platform
The Bedrock platform is the all-in-one tool to help CPGs fully utilize their data. Through AI and ML Bedrock is able to take on much of the heavy-lifting currently facing analyst, sales and marketing teams. CPGs can import and harmonize data from syndicated and retail portal sources with ease.
Bedrock turns raw data into captivating visualizations, guides users through the process of creating compelling data-driven stories and exports them into your own branded sales decks.
With the unveiling of Bedrock Insights, users can now host and generate original sales content to leverage when approaching retail buyers. The technology curates data by presenting it via engaging content (decks, videos and more) to help bridge the gap between your complex retail sales data sets and the narratives retail buyers expect.
Ready to see how Bedrock can help your brand fully utilize your data and prepare your teams for their next sales presentation? Book a demo today!
