Despite modest growth in organic sales in Latin America and Asia, Stanley Black & Decker (SBD) observed distressed macro conditions in the Middle East, North Africa, and North America that began to contract the top line.
Additionally, the currency fluctuations caused by geopolitical and social conflicts slowed down the earnings growth and forced SBD to forge new solutions to overcome these obstacles.
SBD sought to improve its commercial excellence to increase its modern and traditional channel sales in emerging markets.
SBD asked SFG to improve the design and delivery of commercial best practices that maximize profitable revenue, improve pricing, improve sales force effectiveness, enhance product mix, develop customer selection and focus, and strengthen distributor management.
Over 18 months, SFG implemented the Commercial Excellence Program for Emerging Markets in Latin America, United Arab Emirates, and India.
Over this period, SFG trained approximately 200 salespeople, and they grew SBD's business by $57.5 million as a direct result of the skills that SFG imparted.
Participants in the Commercial Excellence Program had this to say:
“Thank you for delivering a world class training. Feedback from the team expressed that despite an intensive 8-hour program each day, they came out of the workshop feeling refreshed.”
“Balancing value and price, being customer centric, and relating value to our customers needs is a skill worth learning.”
“I have heard nothing but good things about the course in India. Thanks for always delivering above expectations.” - SBD Executive
Hershey has almost always enjoyed consistently strong growth, holding or increasing market share in all its businesses lifted by people's love of chocolate, which has held steady in both good and bad times. The company had become so efficient at supply chain management, production, and distribution that it had consistently added new variations in products, pricing, and packaging that captured ever-greater real estate on store shelves for more than a decade.
But despite all these positive indicators, Hershey's senior management had a growing sense that something wasn't right. Many of Hershey's recent strategic initiatives, especially its shift to focus on pack types rather than on brands and product proliferation, had not produced the desired results. Moreover, by creating a significant number of new SKUs based on pack types and flavor extensions, Hershey's approach was beginning to run counter to many retail customers' stated desire to simplify the shelf by reducing product complexity.
Hershey's team decided to investigate what was going wrong and identify and assess the fundamental forces impacting the confection category in the new marketplace. The team would then determine the implications for Hershey and how the company could drive profitable growth in a changing marketplace.
In 2010, Hershey launched the next generation of category management to intensify its collaboration with retail partners and grow confectionery sales. Hershey designed the Insights Driven Performance (IDP) program to deliver significant sales results by sharing with customers the "new truth" about how to grow the best confectionery category. By sharing the knowledge behind years of in-depth studies on the consumer, Hershey could help answer the fundamental questions about category consumers – the who, why, what, where, when, and how of consumption, shopping, and purchasing behaviors.
This solution required that Hershey gain the ability to effectively convey to their customers the insights and the resulting performance they would derive.
At this point, Hershey turned to SFG to help design the vehicle for conveying insights to the customers in a manner that connected both intellectually and personally with them.
In designing the "Translating the Solution (TTS)" program, SFG created a framework to construct a concise, compelling, customer-centric story that gets to "yes" in a memorable way. It allowed Hershey to:
Craft powerful openings that hold the Key Decision Maker's (KDM) attention.
Create an agenda focused on the KDM's pain points.Build a compelling business case to address the KDM's concerns.
Plan effective transitions to enhance the delivery flow.
Add appropriate Wow factors to make the story impactful and memorable.
Deliver a compelling conclusion with a specific call to action.
TTS has given Hershey the ability to turn complex and elaborate business initiatives into understandable and straightforward concepts that everyone can embrace. Hershey's sales teams can effectively convey the strategies and tactics that they want their customers to adopt and the reasons why Hershey believes they will produce lasting success.
Participants in the TTS program had this to say:
“Adrian and David were fantastic facilitators! The team was candid and shared some of their video feedback received after the training, all of which was very constructive. It pushed them to think on their feet and become uncomfortable, which is what will get them to grow. Many thanks!!”
“Knowing how to expand and contract is so important because the time given always varies and we need to be ready for anything. That’s the key.”
“Great training and I think the SALES teams (CSE’s, Team Leads) would really benefit from doing this training, but so would anyone else that deals with customers.”
Costa Farms was becoming one of the largest horticultural growers in the world. It had begun supplying most of its plant collections to the big retailers across North America, such as Walmart, Lowes, and Home Depot.
Along with this success came some notable challenges. As Costa Farms negotiated terms and conditions with these large, experienced retailers, the retailers were asking Costa Farms to help improve the overall profitability of their garden centers despite shrinking the size of the garden centers themselves. The retailers were emphasizing price velocity, inventory turns, GMROI and other metrics. Costa Farms felt the need to understand in more depth their clients’ critical success factors. By knowing these factors, Costa Farms felt they would be able to make a stronger statement of value that aligned well with their customers’ goals and objectives.
Costa Farms turned to SFG to design a customized program for its entire sales force to help them understand their client’s key performance indicators and how to drive them in the right direction.
SFG turned these concepts into an engaging board game format and designed a series of simulated exercises to help the sales force understand these complex and elaborate business metrics into understandable and straightforward concepts that everyone could embrace. SFG also helped the sales force craft powerful and compelling value propositions for the clients based on the key performance indicators.
As a direct result of SFG's program, Costa Farms constructed value propositions that addressed the client's concerns for velocity and profit while expanding Costa Farms' inventory of suitable collections that accomplished those goals.
Participants in the economic simulation had this to say:
“The Instructors engaged in the development of presentations, provided useful insight on the structure of arguments, and gave one on one presentation critiques. The experience was very valuable.”
“They helped me in understanding my positives and negatives and got me into the right way to present. They also encouraged me in all aspects.”
“Much better format. Very interactive, better than any other seminar I have attended!”
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