HSMAI Europe » Sales

Perfumers Breathe in Sales Data

HSMAI Newsdesk — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 14:06:49 +0000

Long after most other consumer goods companies were getting detailed reports on how their products were selling, giant perfume makers like Estée Lauder, l’Oréal and Coty operated mostly by intuition.

While they might know that orders from a retailer were down, they could not track what was selling and what was not. They did not know who was buying what perfume.

Read more at the NYT

Sales Effort On Steroids

HSMAI Newsdesk — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 13:59:35 +0000

Selling isn’t the province of one department. Here’s how to get the entire company stumping for the cause.

Gifted salespeople — those silver-tongued closers who can peddle saltwater to castaways — are the lifeblood of many a small company, though finding and keeping them can be a real challenge. Here’s a thought: What if, with a little training and persistence, all staffers — regardless of task or tenure — could contribute to the sales effort?

Read more at Forbes.com

Will Your Product Sell?

HSMAI Newsdesk — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 13:44:44 +0000

In Context Solutions wants to revolutionize how packaged goods companies test their marketing strategies.

Consumer packaged goods companies like ConAgra and SuperValu spend several hundred million dollars each year on “virtual” market research. Rather than pay, say, 500 people to go to a mall in order to track their shopping habits, virtual market research allows companies to test how their products perform in a virtual store in cyberspace. Chicago-based In Context Solutions, founded by Bob Gillespie in December 2008, writes the software that creates the store and crunches the data on shoppers’ behavior.

Read more at Forbes.com