Get Started with Promotion Integration
Learning Objectives
After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:
- Explain the differences in promotions across trade promotion management and retail execution.
- Describe the benefits of promotion integration.
- List the activities related to promotion planning and execution.
- Identify the key value drivers and mechanics for promotion integration.
- Explain the advantages of integrated promotions for key account managers, sales managers, and sales reps.
Before You Start
Before you start this module, consider completing the following recommended content.
Promotions in Trade Promotion Management and Retail Execution
In the Consumer Goods (CG) industry, manufacturers make the product and sell it to retailers, either directly or through wholesalers and distributors.
To boost the sale of a product and enhance its long-term value, manufacturers often launch growth and marketing activities called promotions. Promotions are usually done for specific customers or products and are different for each country or region. The different strategies CG manufacturers adopt in a promotion are known as tactics. Tactics include attractive displays, discounts, and special deals. Although tactics may increase sales, they also incur costs.
Salesforce Consumer Goods Cloud helps manufacturers plan and execute promotions for their customers. There are two types of promotions in CG Cloud: Retail Execution (RE) promotions or consumer promotions and Trade Promotion Management (TPM) promotions or trade promotions.
RE empowers sales managers to drive business growth and deliver on their brand promise to the end consumers. It helps them monitor and optimize the daily activities—such as store audits and product surveys—of their field sales reps.
TPM is the process of planning, budgeting, presenting, and executing the promotion programs that CG manufacturers and retailers create. The programs target consumers who visit retail stores, either online or in person.
RE promotions offer benefits such as cost savings to consumers when they purchase products from retail stores. TPM promotions help manufacturers sell more products to specific retailers. With TPM promotions, manufacturers can:
- Introduce new products and increase their chance of success.
- Increase brand recognition.
- Boost sales figures and achieve sales targets.
But the benefits aren’t just for manufacturers. Retailers get more sales, earn more money, gather more incentives from manufacturers, and pass on the savings to consumers. Check out the differences between RE promotions and TPM promotions.
RE promotions |
TPM promotions |
|---|---|
Sales managers in a manufacturing company must provide promotion information at the stock-keeping unit (SKU) level for RE processes such as orders and surveys. |
Key account managers (KAM) in a manufacturing company can plan trade promotions at any level in the product hierarchy, such as price group, SKU, or sub-brand. |
Sales managers from the field organization set up consumer promotions with marketing materials and activities for all accounts across all categories. |
KAMs can plan promotions for only their accounts and categories. They don’t plan promotion-related field activities such as compliance checks. |
Only executable promotions are relevant for RE. |
Certain TPM promotions such as brand programs, umbrella promotions, and shell promotions are not relevant for RE. |
Tactics, or promotion strategies, are not required for RE promotions. |
TPM promotions use multiple tactics. A promotion in TPM is just a timeframe in which to embed tactics. |
The key to the right promotion is determining what consumers want. Through a managed package, CG Cloud offers a platform to integrate TPM and RE promotions. With TPM and RE promotion integration, KAMs can plan promotions in TPM and transfer and run promotions through Retail Execution.
In this module, learn about integrating TPM and RE promotions, planning promotions in TPM, transferring promotions from TPM to RE, and executing promotions through RE.
Explore Promotion Integration
Let’s take an example. Alpine Group is a leading manufacturer of nutrition and beverage products in the USA. Gustavo De Luca, a seasoned KAM at Alpine Group, manages the retail account Northern Trail Outfitters (NTO), a nationwide chain in the USA. Gustavo creates, reviews, and runs trade promotions at NTO stores.
He works closely with Chantelle Johnson, a field sales rep, who conducts store audits and surveys for NTO stores in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Recently, Alpine Group integrated the promotion process for TPM and RE in CG Cloud. Thanks to the seamless integration, promotions for retailers are automatically set up in CG Cloud. Carol Lee, a hardworking sales manager at Alpine Group, uses the RE capabilities to add activities and sales folders to the integrated promotions for field reps.
TPM promotions are optimized for volume and financial planning, with products at a planning level. RE promotions and authorization lists drive field sales processes, such as store audits and orders that require products at the SKU level. TPM and RE promotions and product assortments share the same objects in a Salesforce org but use different record types.
The promotion integration between RE and TPM eliminates redundancies, improves efficiencies, and allows real-time feedback for the promotion planning and execution processes. Promotion planners avoid double maintenance and it improves their efficiency.
Plan and Execute Promotions in TPM and RE
KAMs and sales managers perform many activities to plan and execute TPM and RE promotions in CG Cloud. Let’s check them out.
TPM and RE activities shape the integrated promotion framework and recursively influence each other.
In an integrated promotion framework, the KAM sets up promotions in TPM, which sales reps can execute in the field.
Sales managers perform the following retail execution activities.
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Monitoring: Analyze promotion compliance based on live execution feedback.
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Activity Planning: Assign field sales activities and sales folders.
Sales reps complete the following tasks.
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Store audits and surveys: Execute promotional compliance checks.
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Order Management: Take promotional orders for listed products.
Key Value Drivers and Mechanics
Key value drivers are the factors that increase the worth of a promotion integration solution. And key mechanics are the working parts of this solution. Let’s check them out.
Moving on, let’s explore the benefits that integrated promotions offer to KAMs, sales managers, and sales reps.
Analyze Better
Integrated promotions enable Gustavo to:
- Analyze store participation for planned promotions.
- Analyze compliance for KAM promotions, for example, the availability of a display at the expected location, within the in-store period, and at the promoted price.
- Analyze competitor situations for promotions, price, or secondary placements.
Review and Plan Faster
Using integrated promotions helps Carol with promotion review and activity planning.
Promotion Review
- Review planned and confirmed promotions from KAMs.
- Create sales folders with multimedia material.
- Assign sales folders to KAM promotions.
Activity Planning
- Assign activities to selected promotions for sales reps and merchandisers.
Perform Sales Activities with Ease
For Chantelle, integrated promotions have made order capture, promotion review, and store audits and surveys easier.
Order Capture
- Order promoted products based on KAM promotions.
- Order only listed products, which the KAM and the buyer have agreed upon.
Promotion Review
- Use planned promotions for visit planning with preset activities.
- Review planned and confirmed promotions during a visit.
Store Audits and Surveys
- Execute promotional compliance checks for KAM promotions.
Journey Begins
In this unit, you learned about TPM and RE promotions, promotion integration and its benefits, activities related to the planning and execution of promotions, and the key value drivers and mechanics of promotion integration.
In the next unit, explore the promotion transfer process, the considerations for promotion transfer, and the mapping of accounts and products for promotion transfer.