The Process
Cognosco – The right route to market
This way or that way?
Don’t rush the way forward, fastest is not always best. So the start is the brief and making it SMART – Specific re your expectations and goals; Measurable – stockists or sales or both?; Achievable – can our joint resources do this; Realistic – Let’s be honest about previous successes and failures, what lessons have been learnt. Time dead-lined – see what we’ve achieved by when.
A road or B road?
Research and planning is key. Who are the competitors? Which wholesalers sell in your category? Who do we approach first? Talk to end users, identify best channels from our knowledge and identify alternative routes to market. Discuss/disagree/agree how to move forward. Who plans the best road map and who drives the business – your team, Cognosco’s resource or a combination of both?
Heading in the right direction…
Review initial research findings .Draw conclusions and maybe change the route. When do we expect to arrive at our end goal, so maybe change objectives. This may include some trial and error – smaller channels and easier to measure results. Not a blind alley, but let’s see where this takes us and what we learn.
Are we there yet?
Expectations are key, we’ll make them realistic and keep you posted on progress. Feedback to you is a vital part of our relationship. En route we may indeed change where we want to arrive. For example we listed Moving Mountains Foods with Bidfood, Brake Bros, Elite, Hensons, Woods, Blakemore, Savona and Marstons after just a year and then later into Sainsburys and Waitrose.
However sometimes our targeting just doesn’t pay off, and we change direction. The challenge continues, but that’s the nature of a journey isn’t it?