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FABER CONSULT SERVICES

"Hands-On" Management Consulting with Focus on Sales and Marketing

Faber Consult advises senior management with all topics related to assessing and upskilling your sales and marketing organization and future-proof the selling approach. The final objective is always to ensure sustainability in revenue and profit flow.

1. Customer Management & Key Account Excellence

2. Creating High-Performance Sales Teams

3. Pricing & Trade Terms as Revenue Driver (RGM)

4. Export & Distributor Management

5. Negotiation Training and Advisory / Concerted Negotiations - Int. Buying Groups

6. Sales Leadership Interim Management

7. Expert FMCG Advisor

1. Customer Management & Key Account Excellence

Analysis & Gap Reporting

  • We assess your sales organization, people and processes and show gaps and areas for improvement. We take a closer look at the customer / channel structure, business performance and forecasting tools & management, promotional effectiveness measurement and open opportunities to be exploited (i.e. discount channel presence) and advise on enhancement opportunities.
  • Our target is to deliver a tangible and executable action plan based on data- and fact-based analysis and personal interviews in the organization.
  • The analysis and gap reporting module represents an affordable but essential first step to give you uncensored feedback about the risks and opportunities in your organization. In a second step, we will jointly discuss possible consulting needs.

Structuring sales processes & development of key account management / structure

  • Based on a specific gap analysis, we provide tangible recommendations on how to enhance and streamline existing sales processes. We will also have a look at your sales / key account structure and their interaction with internal adjacent departments (finance, controlling, supply chain, customer service) as well as customers.
  • A module of professional key account management is also part of the repertoire to build a high-performance sales organization leading to high-level JBP (Joint Business Planning) with key customers.

Building and sustaining a profitable discount channel business

  • The discount channel with international players like Lidl & Aldi (Nord and Süd), but also local players like Mercadona (Spain) or Biedronka (Poland) has gained significant market share across Europe in the past decade. Our founder, Johannes Faber was pivotal in building and negotiating the discount business in Lidl across all countries in Europe for Unilever, determining assortment, pricing and profitability based on leadership of sales teams across markets. Similarly in Diageo, he was centrally responsible for leading and developing the discount business into a sustainable and profitable venture for premium spirit products. In Krombacher, he has worked intensely with the leading Spanish retailer Mercadona to enhance the product positioning and create mutual value as premium import brand in a highly competitive beer market.
  • In short – the discount channel is an essential one to play in to be competitive in the marketplace. Faber Consult will support you developing a discount strategy which enables profitable and sustainable business – avoiding conflicts with other trade channels - and rigorous implementation based on consistent and professional price negotiation and written contract agreements.

2. Creating High-Performance Sales Teams

Structured performance management & sales auditing

  • Sustainable performance is a function of the definition of targets, the steps and processes to reach those and last but not least to execute plans brilliantly. A data-based performance management and monitoring is essential to ensure sales teams will not only look at individual KPIs (i.e. volume) but rather at a complete set of tangible targets like: volume, value, profit, customer contribution, market share, distribution. Faber Consult can help your organization to review and enhance those processes and benchmark your sales teams performance and efficiency against the pre-defined targets. Building the right variable incentive scheme (particularly for your sales organization) is also part of this project scope. We can also help your organization advance by building professional performance management, sales performance and customer contribution measurement systems.

Individual coaching & upskilling

  • At Faber Consult, it is our aim to make your organization better. Sales teams, however are usually diverse in terms of age, experience, skills and capabilities. While general techniques i.e. negotiation preparation or assessment of promotional efficiency should be valid for the whole organization, and should be role-modelled managers, the need to specifically coach individuals is key. This could be individuals who need a development plan to catch-up and reach a certain management level or top-talents which require individual coaching to qualify them for the next major career steps. We will jointly create a personal development plan based on our skill assessment and do an “on-the-job” coaching to unleash the full potential of your human resources.

3. Pricing & Trade Terms as revenue driver - Revenue Growth Management (RGM)

Structured pricing and performance-based trade-term systems

  • Stringent pricing is the key variable for a sustained profitable business. In the current macro-economical environment with inflation spiking and the national consolidation of retail customers as well as the internationalization via buying alliances defensibility of pricing and trade-terms is a key success factor. We help your organization to create a consistent and counterpart-based trade-term-system to remain successful and profitable in the marketplace.

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– Strategic Sales Performance Consulting –

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4. Export & Distributor Management

Identification of export markets including prioritization, definition of route-to-market and distributor selection & management

  • Many brands have reached an optimal distribution in their home country. However, markets and consumer needs are increasingly becoming international which offers an opportunity to grow your business without cannibalizing the home market. The selection of high potential export markets, the finding and contracting of the right distribution partner in a country, a consistent trade-term system, the right level of marketing, listing- and trade investment and the clear definition of success in terms of route-to-market KPIs (channels, customers, qualitative and quantitative distribution) are essential in exploiting the opportunities and create a sustainable and profitable business. Based on our experience, we can help you assess and prioritize the markets, find the right distributors and define the toolset to manage the latter effectively to reach the pre-set targets.

5. Negotiation Training and Advisory / Concerted Negotiations - Int. buying groups

Negotiation preparation and "hands-on“ training

  • Our founder at Faber Consult has delivered > 30 negotiation and key account trainings as part of the global sales leadership academy in Diageo – from board level to key account managers. While many consultancies do train negotiation theory, at Faber Consult we specialize in not only providing the knowledge and tools for successful customer negotiations, but also work on solving specific, individual challenges at hand with customers. (by country / market / channel / category / personal relationship). Having individually been P&L responsible for customers in all channels from discounters, cash&carrys, online retailers, cooperatives and hypermarkets, our founder has extensive experience in challenges and solutions to those. A tailored solution and reality-based training is key to our advisory approach.

Advisory on International concerted negotiations with global customers / buying groups

  • Buying alliances such as Coopernic / Eurelec, Agecore, Everest/Epic etc. are on the rise and are becoming increasingly attractive for retailers to join while at the same time posing a clear and imminent danger to consumer goods companies that are unprepared. Not only international conditions are added to the set of locally negotiated trade terms, but buying alliances are increasingly leveraging their negotiation power by using AI-based price comparison software to detect pricing outliers in the assortment of internationally operating companies by country and implementing concerted negotiations (i.e. one deal for all members or no deal) and imposing draconic sanctions like delisting major parts of the assortments. Not only international corporations are impacted by this, but also mid-sized businesses as well as owner-led companies. Our founder has been in charge managing the international buying groups P&L for >6 years at the world`s leading spirits company – building sustainable business and protecting the company from major fall-outs. Faber Consult can advise on structuring a defensible set of prices and trade-terms, organizational design and structured and prepared negotiations to enable organizations to best face the challenge of negotiating with international buying groups. Our approach is based on analysis, internal alignment and team-building, hands-on negotiation training and war-gaming.

6. Sales Leadership Interim Management

Interim-management commercial leadership

  • Based on the extensive management experience of our founder, Faber Consult is ready to jump in and lead your sales team as commercial leader while supporting the recruitment of the right sales talent to take over in the longer-run.

Interim-management sales & key account lead / annual negotiation

  • We are able to manage your commercial / sales teams through a certain period and execute i.e. annual negotiations with leading regional, national or international retailers on behalf of your company as an intermediate (external) manager. This will be possible for a transitional period – managing the full P&L and creating highly-performing sales teams.

7. Advisor As FMCG Industry Expert

  • Based on our broad international and industry experience, Faber Consult can act as industry expert supporting and facilitating acquisitions, market studies, due diligence or general enquiries.
    The target customers are international Private Equity companies involved in FMCG-related M&A seeking industry expertise.

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Johannes P. Faber

– Management Consultant –
© 2024 Faber Consult

IMPRESSUM

Faber Consult

Fontenay-Allee 3, 20354 Hamburg, Germany

Geschäftsführer:
Johannes P. Faber

VAT ID: DE360642832