Strategic Consultative Selling Model for Morning Foods Ldt

Background

Zoulika Lamamra is head buyer for cereals and cereal related products at Morrisco Markets, one of Britain’s top supermarket chains. Morrisco has 14% share of the UK grocery market with a mixture of in town and out of town stores fairly evenly spread across the country. Like most retail grocery buyers, Zoulika Lamamra is tough on her suppliers. She has to be, as competition among the big multiples is Fierce and the ability to price low and retain a fair margin is key to sustained financial success.
The breakfast cereal market is highly competitive, fragmented and yet dominated by a number of “power brand”, such as Kellogg’s Corn Flakes, Weetabix and Shreddies, all of which spend large budgets on advertising and promotions. Zoulika Lamamra favours deep price cutting promotional activity in this market and she knows that it shifts stocks fast. The cereal manufacturers tend to resist this form of promotion as much as they can, preferring to “add value” to their products rather than reduce price, which they feel tends to undermine premium brand integrity.
You are a key account manager at Morning Foods Ldt, a large manufacturer of breakfast cereals with one or two heavily supported “power Brands” in its portfolio, such as Powergrains, a protein rich crunch cereal enjoying 8% of the cereal market, and Slymbites, a tasty, low fat cereal targeted at young women, ready sweetened with aspartame, a no-calorie sugar substitute, enjoying 5% of the market. With distinct product differentiators, these two brands hold premium price positions and the company favours added value “themed” promotions. Each brand is heavily supported with TV advertising. Riding on the back of the success of the two brands, each of them has been recently brand extended to cereal bars, competing with Jordans and other brands.
The brand team at Morning Food want to run promotions on the top brands, offering free cereals bars in pack as a means of generating trial for each brand extensions.

Given the importance of these brands, the company is trying to use this as a lever to gain separate distribution for the bars. It seems to be working with most of the supermarket chains, but Morrisco is proving difficult to persuade- they don’t like to be dictated to and they don’t want another as yet unproven cereal bar on their shelves.
Zoulika Lamamra at Morrisco is insisting on some form of deep price orientated promotion.
You have managed to organise a meeting with Morrisco’s head buyer of cereals and cereals related products. It will be your first meeting with Zoulika Lamamra and your objectives are as follow:
Must have:
Added value promotions agreed for both brands- Powergrains in Sales Period February/March, Slymbites in sales period April/May
Trial of the cereal bar variants of each brand

Stocking of cereal bar brand variants adjacent to Jordans, etc….
To successfully complete this task you are required to develop a relationship strategy, a product strategy, customer strategy and a presentation strategy.
The sales pitch will last 20 minutes and you are in charge of developing and using any sales support materials. The interaction will be recorded for monitoring and learning purposes.
You will be assessed on your professionalism, ability to apply the strategic consultative selling model, your communication skills and overall engagement with the activity.