Reading Lists

Do You Know SALY?

February 17, 2020 - Reading Lists

Years ago one of the finest Sales professionals I have worked with told me ‘we all need to be alert for Sally at this time of year’.  It was getting toward the point on the CPG calendar when line reviews, promo planning, and new item presentations show up on your schedule.  In this instance, the subject at hand was promo planning.  I had no idea who Sally was- so I asked ‘where does this person work?’  The answer was ‘everywhere’.  Sally wasn’t a person- it was an affliction: Same As Last Year (SALY).  As we spoke further, the mist was starting to clear and I understood the lesson coming my way .

Turns out, we are all subject to the tyranny of SALY if we are not careful.  People, being human, will often take the easiest and quickest path possible to completing any task that calls for thinking and effort.  If we are not careful, we enter a promo planning meeting and our buyer says that they have to grandfather last year’s performance “plus a few percent”.  If you aren’t careful, the promo planning meeting has already been framed- the default is last year’s plan.  If you were fortunate enough to have a killer plan last year- perhaps this baseline is beneficial to you.  If you are a pro, and if your senior management is paying attention, you are going to have to beat last year’s plan whether your account challenges you or not.

But what if the plan wasn’t optimal?  What if you don’t get that end cap this year?  Or you don’t have a hot new item?  What are you going to do to offset the pipeline volume you had last year that isn’t in the plan this year?  How to defend against the competitive new item you saw at an industry conference? What if your buyer is kind of lazy and doesn’t want to slug through a new plan?  What if you are lazy and don’t want to develop and present a new plan? You have to enter your meeting with SALY prepared to build the best plan possible- not to accept starting with last year’s plan and then “tweaking”.  If you accept SALY, the “plus a few percent” mentioned above will come right out of your margin either via a demand for list price reductions or enhanced “commitment” to merchandising support.  Both options are losers for your firm.  SALY doesn’t care: their mission is accomplished.

So how do you approach this meeting?  By being as prepared as possible with facts.  If you enter the meeting ill prepared, or simply expecting to execute last year’s plan- you will lose.  Any number of reasons can rear their head: buyer leaves the desk and a new buyer has no affinity toward you or your firm, competitor has a hot new product, competitor gets an injection of capital to invest in a brand, or most likely- someone is willing to out work you.  You need to show that you have come to the table to work.  You know what the optimal price points are, you know the distribution you really need and why, you are prepared to ask for support for a promotional plan that makes sense for your company, the account, and the consumer.  Lifts aren’t “sort of about here”- the lifts are projected to be here and here’s the rationale why.  As a final point, you demonstrate you understand what is important to the account and what they are tasked with delivering to their management.

If you enter these meetings prepared with very specific facts and a clear, logical proposed plan- it is no guarantee that you will get what you want.  But your odds of success will increase as the message will be clear that your buyer can count on you to be prepared with facts and to hold a logical discussion about the business.  You will separate yourself from those firms that walk in ill prepared- or those that are bringing the same plan everywhere, but changing the logo on the deck. 

SALY doesn’t work here any longer.