Welch’s Ignites Sales Planning for Record Results
16%+ increase in promotional ROI (without sacrificing volume or spending over budget).
Trade Promotion Optimization customer since 2017
Headquarters: Concord, Massachusetts
Owned by: National Grape Cooperative Association since 1956
Known for: Grape juices, jams, jellies
“Blacksmith TPO had a clear focus on optimization and a demonstrated ability to integrate best in class thinking into the full trade investment cycle, which resulted not only in improved results for Welch’s, but for our customers as well.”
4 Key CPG Trade Challenges
Poor Performance
Poor PerformancePromotional ROI was not driving the business results that Welch’s executives expected to sustain growth projections. IMPACT: Loss of revenue. Loss of confidence.
Budget Adherence
Due to limited ROI visibility, incremental spending was often allocated to cover volume gaps.
IMPACT: Overspending and underdelivering.
Non-repeatable Practices
Manual management of evaluation, communication, and planning approval process was administered via multiple internal spreadsheets.
IMPACT: Lost time. Lost understanding. Lost opportunity.
Siloed Planning Processes
Difficulty applying consistent sales planning guardrails as approval workflows.
IMPACT: High risk of repeating poor performing promotions and unnecessarily deep discounting.
The Results from TPO
Double Digit ROI
Trade investment ROI increased 16%+, while Welch’s achieved volume objectives and stayed within budgeted spending.
Through post-event analysis, Welch’s identified and replaced underperforming promotional tactics.
Centralized & Collaborative Planning
The sales and sales planning teams worked together to identify ineffective trade spend and create profitable promotions.
Repeatable & Automated Processes
Manual spreadsheet planning and analysis was replaced with Blacksmith TPO’s post-event analytics and predictive optimized planning solution. The sales and sales planning teams were able to reallocate time to trade investment strategy and retailer collaboration.
Centralizing Sales Planning & Promotion Analysis
Knowing what you need to do and having the capabilities to do it are often different things.
The sales planning team at Welch’s knew that to see revenue and profit growth from their significant trade investment they needed to centralize sales planning and promotion analysis processes.
Welch’s turned to the Blacksmith TPO solution.
Together, Welch’s and Blacksmith set the organizational perspective on promotion effectiveness. TPO helped the Welch’s sales team apply optimization intelligence to build more profitable plans.
The team was quickly trained as power users. They also worked with the Blacksmith TPO professional services team to institute best-in-class processes and guardrails to improve their planning workflow in line with driving revenue and profitability.
For the first time ever, a sales person could see – with the touch of a button – the effectiveness and profitability of the previous year’s promotion.
The team has the ability to model alternate promotional tactics that will optimize revenue and profitability with just a few clicks.
“Our sales people in the field were doing some great things with our retail partners. We needed a way to capture and emulate these wins, eliminate the promotions that weren’t delivering, and centralize the approval process to make the most of our investment.”
–Laurie Ross, Sr. Director, Global Sales Planning
Setting & Achieving Goals
Optimization shifted Welch’s approach to trade planning. Once viewed as necessary spend is now a strategic opportunity to invest in the future.
In order for Welch’s to improve the outcome, the organization regularly and easily evaluates promotion performance and identifies alternatives that are better aligned with corporate objectives.
Setting the tone for fact-based dialogue between the sales team and sales planning teams included outlining 4 key directives that led to their double digit ROI achievement:
Understanding
Guide every planning decision with historical and predictive data to understand promotional outcomes.
Protection
Use guardrails to protect trade investment from ineffective promotional tactics and overspending.
Innovation
Apply guidelines and predictive modeling to replace underperforming promotions with alternative spend to increase ROI.
Partnership
Share new promotional KPIs with retail partners for mutual success and collaboration.
Upon selection, it took less than 10 weeks to roll out Blacksmith TPO and train the Welch’s team and sales brokers. Learn more about Welch’s TPO implementation process 👇
