P&G: Its Not Sales, Its Customer Business Development

For decades, Procter & Gamble has been at the top of almost every experts A-list of outstanding marketing companies. The experts point to P&Gs stable of top selling consumer brands, or that, year in and year out, P&G is the worlds largest advertiser. Consumers seem to agree. Youll find at least one of P&Gs blockbuster brands in 99 percent of all American households; in many homes, youll find a dozen or more familiar P&G products. But P&G is also highly respected for something elseits top-notch, customer-focused sales force.

P&Gs sales force has long been an American icon for selling at its very best. When it comes to selecting, training, and managing salespeople, P&G sets the gold standard. The company employs a massive sales force of more than 5,000 salespeople worldwide. At P&G, however, they rarely call it sales. Instead, its Customer Business Development (CBD). And P&G sales reps arent salespeople; theyre CBD managers or CBD account executives. All this might seem like just so much corp-speak, but at P&G the distinction goes to the very core of how selling works.

P&G understands that if its customers dont do well, neither will the company. To grow its own business, therefore, P&G must first grow the business of the retailers that sell its brands to final consumers. And at P&G, the primary responsibility for helping customers grow falls to the sales force. Rather than just selling to its retail and wholesale customers, CBD managers partner strategically with customers to help develop their business in P&Gs product categories. We depend on them as much as they depend on us, says one CBD manager. By partnering with each other, P&G and its customers create win-win relationships that help both to prosper.

Most P&G customers are huge and complex businessessuch as Walgreens, Walmart, or Dollar Generalwith thousands of stores and billions of dollars in revenues. Working with and selling to such customers can be a very complex undertaking, more than any single salesperson or sales team could accomplish. Instead, P&G assigns a full CBD team to every large customer account. Each CBD team contains not only salespeople but also a full complement of specialists in every aspect of selling P&Gs consumer brands at the retail level.

CBD teams vary in size depending on the customer. For example, P&Gs largest customer, Walmart, which accounts for an amazing 20 percent of the companys sales, commands a 350-person CBD team. By contrast, the P&G Dollar General team consists of about 30 people. Regardless of size, every CBD team constitutes a complete, multifunctional customer-service unit. Each team includes a CBD manager and several CBD account executives (each responsible for a specific P&G product category), supported by specialists in marketing strategy, product development, operations, information systems, logistics, finance, and human resources.

To deal effectively with large accounts, P&G salespeople must be smart, well trained, and strategically grounded. They deal daily with high-level retail category buyers who may purchase hundreds of millions of dollars worth of P&G and competing brands annually. It takes a lot more than a friendly smile and a firm handshake to interact with such buyers. Yet, individual P&G salespeople cant know everything, and thanks to the CBD sales structure, they dont have to. Instead, as members of a full CBD team, P&G salespeople have at hand all the resources they need to resolve even the most challenging customer problems. I have everything I need right here, says a household care account executive. If my customer needs help from us with in-store promotions, I can go right down the hall and talk with someone on my team in marketing about doing some kind of promotional deal. Its that simple.

Customer Business Development involves partnering with customers to jointly identify strategies that create shopper value and satisfaction and drive profitable sales at the store level. When it comes to profitably moving Tide, Pampers, Gillette, or other P&G brands off store shelves and into consumers shopping carts, P&G reps and their teams often know more than the retail buyers they advise. In fact, P&Gs retail partners often rely on CBD teams to help them manage not only the P&G brands on their shelves but also entire product categories, including competing brands.

Wait a minute. Does it make sense to let P&G advise on the stocking and placement of competitors brands as well as its own? Would a P&G CBD rep ever tell a retail buyer to stock fewer P&G products and more of a competing brand? Believe it or not, it happens all the time. The CBD teams primary goal is to help the customer win in each product category. Sometimes, analysis shows that the best solution for the customer is more of the other guys product. For P&G, thats okay. It knows that creating the best situation for the retailer ultimately pulls in more customer traffic, which in turn will likely lead to increased sales for other P&G products in the same category. Because most of P&Gs brands are market share leaders, it stands to benefit more from the increased traffic than competitors do. Again, whats good for the customer is good for P&Gits a win-win situation.

Honest and open dealings also help to build long-term customer relationships. P&G salespeople become trusted advisors to their retailer-partners, a status they work hard to maintain. It took me four years to build the trust I now have with my buyer, says a veteran CBD account executive. If I talk her into buying P&G products that she cant sell or out of stocking competing brands that she should be selling, I could lose that trust in a heartbeat.

Finally, collaboration is usually a two way streetP&G gives and customers give back in return. Well help customers run a set of commercials or do some merchandising events, but theres usually a returnon-investment, explains another CBD manager. Maybe its helping us with distribution of a new product or increasing space for fabric care. Were very willing if the effort creates value for us as well as for the customer and the final consumer.

According to P&G, Customer Business Development is selling and a whole lot more. Its a P&Gspecific approach [that lets us] grow business by working as a strategic partner with our accounts, focusing on mutually beneficial business building opportunities. All customers want to improve their business; its [our] role to help them identify the biggest opportunities.

Thus, P&G salespeople arent the stereotypical glad-handers that some people have come to expect when they think of selling. In fact, they arent even called salespeople. They are customer business development managerstalented, well-educated, well trained sales professionals who do all they can to help customers succeed. They know that good selling involves working with customers to solve their problems for mutual gain. They know that if customers succeed, they succeed.

Q2.Assume that the company has decided to launch a detergent brand in the rural areas of Pakistan. Briefly explain the major stages of New Product Development that company has to follow for launching the new product. (09 Marks)