Get Prepared to Face Retailers Flexing Their Negotiation Muscles

BRIAN AJHAR

Over the weekend, the Wall Street Journal reported that Walmart is flexing its negotiation muscle again and refusing to accept cost increases from vendors, tightening over inventory, changing assortment plans and requesting incremental funding to adapt to the rapidly changing environment.  Walmart Is Flexing Its Muscle Again – WSJ.  We expect to see this behavior from retailers across the channel, which is likely to exacerbate profitability challenges for unprepared brands.  Here are 7 steps you can take now to get ready and to respond:

  • Benchmark Annual Terms: Prepare for terms negotiations with insight into whether your annual terms are high or low vs your peer’s set.
  • Up your Negotiation Game: Equip commercial teams to handle tougher negotiations by investing in Negotiation Training followed by both retailer and practitioner coaching throughout the negotiation process.  Simpactful has partnered with Wilson Negotiation Group to offer similar training used by Walmart buyers.
  • Reduce Chargeback Waste: Simpactful loss recovery team can help you benchmark fines and fees and implement plans to challenge them or to address root cause issues.
  • Maximize Sales of Products in Distribution: Audit On-Shelf Availability to uncover potential issues at the shelf that are suppressing sales unnecessarily and quickly implement fixes leveraging resources with deep Retailer operational know-how.
  • Step up Your Sales & Operations Planning, Execution, and Agility: Monitor forecast bias as part of a disciplined sales forecasting process and consider a 3rd party assessment of supply chain agility opportunities.
  • Do More with Less Marketing Investment: Maximize Marketing through effective strategies, big communication ideas, insightful targeting strategies, surprisingly obvious content that is designed to win in high and low consumer engagement modalities, and plans that maximize ROI across reach and performance objectives using the best suite of tools available.
  • Foster Effective Joint Business Plans: Drive Retailer engagement in joint value-creation plans that demonstrate commitment to partner on product, experience, or process innovation initiatives that will win with Omni shoppers, reduce pricing, improve margins, and/or optimize operational efficiency.

2023 is going to be a tough negotiation season, but we can help you prepare for what’s to come.  To learn more about Simpactful’s capabilities and how we can help you, contact the team today at contact@simpactful.com
or 925-234-6384.

Visit www.simpactful.com