You wouldn’t fly a plane blindfolded because you can’t see where you’re going – whether it’s looking out the window or at the instrument panel. The same holds true for effectively managing your trade spending. If you don’t have both a TPM solution and syndicated consumer data you are really flying blind. Yet, amazingly, many – with some estimates as high as 40% – small CPG companies do not spend the now relatively small amount of dollars on securing solutions to see where 10-30%+ of their topline revenue is going.
Why? Inertia. Getting something started is hard. It requires a new mindset. A desire to change when using either old faithful, Excel, or that TPM solution from years ago, is just easy. It doesn’t cost anything at this stage and everyone knows how to use it. Change requires convincing management or ownership to spend money just to track what you have already been doing with some limited success. It requires getting different groups of naysayer’s to buy in, contribute, use it and support it. It requires courage and commitment to get to the bottom of things.
Yet, while people are willing to give retailers 10-30% of their topline sales, representing millions of dollars, and hope for the best, smaller CPG manufacturers are often hesitant, sometimes loathe, to dole out 10’s of thousands of dollars to track it and make it as effective at driving ROI as possible.
Those that do take the leap and engage a new TPM solution, however, find the water is more than just fine. It’s refreshing. It’s enlightening. It’s even relaxing. They finally can see what they are doing and importantly where they are going. So now the journey is that much more rewarding, and effective. You should try it. Take off that blindfold. You’ll never go back.
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