What happens during account planning? In short it’s a collaborative process when everyone, from the team at Omnium, heads of sales, account management, and customer marketing go over weeks and years of data to drive and execute the strategy for each account (retail store).

When one store can have 2500 locations, the strategy of a single SKU can make a big impact, it’s about a $1.3M sales opportunity.

Turn Strategy into action

Prior to an account planning session, it’s easy to talk about what would be nice to do in terms of promotions and prices, but it’s not until the account planning actually happens that action can actually be taken. Otherwise you’re just guessing and gambling big dollars away.

Hone in on each account to see what you can, and should run.

Timing is everything

Typically account planning will look at a year of promotions in advance, this could be your fiscal year, the calendar year or even the customer’s fiscal year. It’s critical to line up your promotions with high seasonality points. If the most shoppers are in the category during Thanksgiving, run your promotions then.

More seasonal than you think

Many products have opposite seasonality, and will come in strong, but finish the year weak. For instance, health products and foods to get healthier typically they do well at the start of the year because people want to undo the unhealthy habits at the start of the year.

You want to avoid running promotions when nobody is buying in your category.

Hedge Your Risks

Spending $100,000 on an event can be expensive, work with your retailers to come up with variable rate or blended rates. This mitigates your risk if you run a promotion but environmental factors make it harder to sell.

The best tool you have

Historical data is the best friend you have. Looking backwards at how products and promotions have run, will be the best tool for predicting the future.