Canadian Retailers Valentines Day 2012
Saturday, February 11th, 2012Valentine’s Day is one of the biggest gift-giving holidays of the year. The National Retail Federation’s (NRF) 2012 Valentine’s Day Study revealed that the average person will spend US$126.03 this year. This is the highest level in the last 10 years. The survey also revealed that in the United States consumers will spend $4.1 billion [...]
Extreme Couponing: Why Sales & Marketing Need To Better Coordinate Discounts
Friday, April 22nd, 2011American specialty cable channel TLC started reruns this week of “Extreme Couponing” which highlights the lifestyle and couponing tactics of shoppers who dedicate huge amounts of time and resources to using supermarket coupons to deliver huge savings (up to 98%) for their family. It is intriguing television, but for those of us in the CPG [...]
A Sign of The Times – November 1st
Monday, November 1st, 2010Halloween’s Over and Christmas is Coming! The cycle never ends.
Airport Retail – Virgin Territory for CPG
Sunday, September 26th, 2010As you might imagine, I spend a lot of time at airports. With clients on three continents I have racked up 100,000 miles already this year and that translates to hours sitting in lounges, standing in security line-ups and waiting for baggage. Many of you know exactly what I am talking about thanks to your [...]
Amazon – A Threat to Canadian CPG Retailers?
Sunday, July 11th, 2010Several weeks ago our newsletter carried a story about how Canadian Heritage has finally allowed Amazon to build its own warehouse / fulfillment centre in Canada. Due to what some would argue are protectionist strategies to support Canadian booksellers – Amazon orders are currently managed and fulfilled by a Canada Post warehouse. Up until this [...]
Core Competencies of a Great Key Account Manager
Wednesday, June 16th, 2010The role of a Key Account Manager will vary from company to company and from customer to customer. However, in our experience working with Key Account Managers around the world we have identified eight core competencies that all KAMs must develop in order to be successful in their role. All Key Account Management Training developed [...]
Is Your Sales Group Working Like a Professional Team?
Thursday, May 13th, 2010Do you get the impression that your sales people are working as a group of individuals vs. one unified team? Do you see best practices scattered around your sales group but not being widely used across the organization? In order to win, the best teams in sports or business have a playbook that captures the [...]
Retailers Among Canada’s Most Reputable Companies
Friday, May 7th, 2010Canadian Business and the Reputation Institute have released their annual list of the 50 Most Reputable Companies in Canada and retailers did very well with 12 of 50 spots on the list and 9 in the top 20. The Jean Coutu Group did particularly well, reaching the number two spot sandwiched in between Tim Horton’s [...]
2010 Starts Off In Growth Mode for Retail Sector
Friday, March 26th, 2010Last week saw the retail sales results released by Statistics Canada and for the most part the news way quite good. Retail sales (excluding Automotive) were up 3.5% vs. January 2009 – a good start to the year. Seen through this lens, the results should mean a very good start to the sales year for [...]
7-11 Boss Goes Undercover
Monday, February 22nd, 2010The third episode of CBS’s new Sunday night reality TV show “Undercover Boss” went inside the day-to-day operations of 7-11 through the eyes of President & CEO Joe DePinto. Mr. DePinto went undercover in his own organization in an effort to understand the reality of what his employees experience in their 6,500 stores, commissaries, bakeries [...]
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