Services

Sales and Marketing benchmarks and analytics are available in the following areas:

1.Company, Sales and Marketing structure and organisation effectiveness benchmarking
Metrics such as incremental growth and costs are evaluated alongside headcount, levels of busyness, cost of people, and management layers. Ratios are used so that companies of different sizes and complexity can compare “apples with apples”.

2. Investment effectiveness: money, data, people, time/focus, merchandising materials
Metrics include: trial, activation, consumer advocacy, sales and speed-to-market, for the resources that are planned and spent in each plan period. Ways of working evaluated: strategic, cross-functional planning, channel, portfolio planning.

3. Portfolio and brand strategy/function and activities
Metrics of new products vs line extensions vs existing brands, channel-specific products, and competitive intensity are benchmarked against direct and indirect competitors. Ways of working: brand, customer, ATL/BTL/social media planning, cross-functional project management.

4. Channel distribution strategy, channel marketing, and category activation functions and activities
Metrics include: cost-to-serve, capability of different channels to build share, availability/visibility, incremental growth from different customer types. Ways of working: field sales/channel management.

5. Big data, analytics, consumer and shopper insights functions and activities
Metrics include: spend levels, and growth from insights, budgets. Ways of working: strategic planning, process for determining insights, and turning insights into strategies.

6. Key customer and small customer engagement and strategy performance benchmarking
Metrics include: the drivers of customer satisfaction/engagement, trading terms, spend and effectiveness. Ways of working evaluated: managing large organised customers and small independents or local convenience stores.

7. Field sales force efficiency and value-add; third party effectiveness
Metrics include: cost of salespeople, call frequency, headcount, days between calls, objectives per call, and activities per call. Ways of working evaluated: use of technology vs use of paper, and effectiveness of training and coaching. 

8. Digital and Social media integration, planning, execution and measurement.

Metrics include all standard measures, such as engagement and share rations, earned media value and reach…but focus is put on evaluating and measuring how these integrate with brand and sales objectives.

Options to use B4P’s benchmarking services:

1. Customised research – identifying and quantifying issues

Clients control what is researched and the companies they are benchmarked against when they hire B4P to provide specific data, analysis and insight. The client gets information, data, models and ratios that remain confidential and private to the client. Typical projects are:

  • Determining whether the client is correctly resourced versus its direct and indirect competitors
  • Determining whether the client is using its resources efficiently and effectively
  • Determining whether processes are best-in-class, well designed and being used correctly by the Sales and Marketing functions
  • Typical problems addressed: constrained resources, insufficient opportunities to grow; poor customer engagement. For above-market studies: non-aligned end-markets in a region (e.g. Asia Pacific)

B4P provides existing metrics, benchmarks and data from previous research, and gathers new data where required for your market or category.

2. Omnibus benchmarking studies

Clients can take advantage of benchmarking studies that are run by B4P on particular pre-set topics in their market every 18-24 months with a broad sample of typical companies. Recent studies include:

  • Leveraging resources in a cluster or region of countries such as Asia Pacific or Oceania
  • Trading terms effectiveness and return on investment
  • Social and digital media spend levels and returns; how companies are integrating new media to achieve trial
  • Sales force efficiency, right sizing and correctly structuring to service highly organised customers versus independent customers – Reps vs Merchandisers
  • Best practice route-to-market channel design
  • Use of technology in sales force effectiveness – tablets vs laptops vs paper-based systems – and their return on investment
  • Use of third parties, brokers and agents, costs and value-adding management techniques
  • Use and cost of combination strategies to service different channels such as Pharmacy, Mass and Department Stores vs Grocery
  • Customer engagement vs customer satisfaction – increasing share by improving how customer satisfaction is measured
3. Best-practice sharing and communities of practice – keeping clients in the loop

All clients gain access to invitation-only networks and closed LinkedIn groups to learn solutions to share and evolve best practice in all of the six work streams in Sales and Marketing, and in the area of organisation structure effectiveness. Clients receive white papers, client-only blogs, updates on best practice, tools, strategy and planning templates, client-only workshops, evaluation tools for third parties, best-practice job and role descriptions, and checklists.

4. Ad hoc Sales and Marketing consulting – quick solutions to common problems

Clients use B4P for:

  • Facilitating workshops from a half-day to three days
  • Stakeholder engagement in multiple markets to deliver recommendations and train managers in best practice
  • Alignment of sessions, pre- and post-merger or ad hoc
  • Research and help with implementing recommendations that are based on research
  • Keynote speeches on what good looks like in FMCG
  • Expert-witness work

WANT TO KNOW MORE?

You can read our blog which is jam packed with very useful articles or head to the faq page, where (most of) your questions will be answered.

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