A $25MM pet food retailer transforming sales strategy towards an omnichannel environment

A $25MM US-based pet food retailer had experienced steady sales over its focused retail locations in the North-Eastern part of the country for the past decade plus, however, during the recent years its sales had slumped. The leading drivers for the sales decline had been analyzed and remedied, and the situation normalized. A new CEO was brought in, and she started to drive through necessary changes to return the company back to growth. The new C-suite team had identified that the company lacked presence in omnichannel retailing and was hence in need of a new sales strategy. HKH Management Consulting was tasked to develop an in-depth marketing strategy capable of driving renewed growth for the business. Our team of 3 partners approached the assignment using a 5-phase model incorporating internal and external analyses, sales strategy, sales plan and tools for implementation.

In the internal analysis the entire sales history was analyzed in detail at various granular levels combined with investigating the strengths and weaknesses of the business. In the external analysis our team used various tools to get understanding on market forces impacting the business and its profitability as well as building understanding to the target market and its growth rates. A thorough competitive landscape was mapped and analyzed to highlight potential “white spaces” that could benefit the clients new value proposition and to get an understanding of the competitive forces across omnichannel value propositions that the client would face. These provided the baseline for various opportunities and threats that the company had to deal with.

The detailed sales strategy included, defining out of vision and mission, the sales strategic objectives with detailed KPI’s and targets for each of these objectives. Product lineups and associated pricing and promotion strategies were recommended as well as sales funnel process, cycle, and the required head counts and budgets needed. The sales plan phase included both the high and detailed level plan of actions across the sales funnel process and cycle. The implementation toolkit included comprehensive dashboards for managing and reviewing the performance and for making needed adjustments based on new available data.

Case outcomes

The recommended strategy allowed the client to see that the journey towards omnichannel retail was more challenging than what the C-suite had anticipated in the beginning. The client realized that they simply did not possess the needed core competencies internally and that the entire organizational design had to be restructured. Hence, taking time before the client could fully start moving along the new defined strategy as new organizational design supporting the move towards omnichannel coupled with new competencies and series of reskilling were required as a prerequisite. HKH Management Consulting was tasked to advice the client with these in a subsequent assignment.

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