Marketing & Sales Management

It is often said that growing revenue in China requires more sales effort than marketing effort as the country is so vast and diverse that single marketing approach might not yield desirable results. And if the sales force organization is mis-aligned and the sales force are not properly motivated with right incentive, the best Marketing campaign could mean money down the tube.

Based on our years of Sales leadership experience, we are concerned that most GMs or CEOs have little clues how sales were arrived at and their quality or sustainability. The GMs or CEOs rely too heavily on the Sales Directors who in turn rely too heavily on the Regional Sales Managers and Account Managers.

The Regional Sales Managers in turn rely too heavily on several key distributors or hypermarket accounts to deliver their targets. The result is that the real stories often get untold but with many fabricated stories tailor-made to the ears of the CEOs and then upward to their headquarters ultimately.

This happens time after time in well managed companies as well. It is no surprise that often leadership team receives poor quality of revenue information by customers, channels, markets or packs resulting in poorly prepared budget on volume, revenue and margin. The CEOs will run the risk of praising the Marketing and Sales Directors who might actually be the mediocre performers and conversely let go the great performers who might have been the right managers because the CEOs are comparing actual to the wrong budget and prior year data.

At Regent United, our root capabilities are Sales and Marketing Strategies, some of our executive Directors have performed the role as VP sales, VP Marketing or Marketing and Sales Directors in leading FMCG companies and business units so we can walk the talk. We are well placed to advise you on the marketing and sales issues with focus on how our clients can generate more revenue profitably.

1. Marketing & Sales Strategies

Marketing and sales strategies vary from company to company even in the same sector as financial resources, competencies, marketing spend, level of acceptable financial risk tend to be different. And even for the same company in its various stages of growth associated with various life cycles of the portfolio and the investment strategies, the marketing and sales strategies are different or the intensity of the activation can be varied.

Often marketing and sales strategies need to be planned out to deliver certain growth targets including volume, revenue, profit, market share, distribution etc. The advantage of Regent United is that all marketing and sales issues carry significant financial implications, e.g. working capital of account receivable, inventory turnover, or credit risks etc. We are always taking a holistic approach to resolve a localized or functional issue to ensure our clients get the best balanced advice on revenue and profit growth.

Our typical marketing and sales strategies work center on:

Full sector analysis on macro and micro issues our 10-LenTM analysis
Sizing up major risks and opportunities that must be addressed
Expected growth of the sector and the expected revenue share
Arrive at the innovative segmentation that can be executed
Identification of unmet needs with our in-house market research capability
Incremental to big bets or game changing strategies
Map out the optimal portfolio including full review and recommendation on new addition, line extension andretirement of brands/products
Arrive at the right Brand, Portfolio, Packs, Price, Channel, Customers, shoppers and consumers to the extent applicable
The marketing and promotional strategies

2. Marketing & Sales Diagnostic

Often marketing and sales strategies need to be planned out to deliver national growth targets including volume, revenue, profit, market share, distribution by regions and cities. The advantage of Regent United is that our executive consultants have managed many times in various settings and markets. Here are some of the typical marketing and sales issues that we have helped clients:

Uncover Consumer Insights - market segmentation, consumers & shoppers characteristics, key drivers on Purchases,
satisfactions Assessment andinsights from various media
Brand Equity Assessment - Portfolio Evaluation to identify profit contribution, Brand performance by Channel, Pricing
Integrity, Brand preference, recognition and satisfactions
Competitors & Sectors Analysis - current and expected market size by volume, revenue, categories, channels, regions,
cities, consumers segment, and occasions with our in-house market research tools, competitors analysis with
benchmarking to targeted players

3. Branding and Brands Revitalization