Yes and no. It is a warehouse team’s job to store your products and the shop’s job to sell your products. But that is not enough. You need to encourage, monitor and reward people right through the chain to push your products ahead of your competitors’. That is why you need a full professional system that monitors and manages every step of the way, incentivising the over-achievers and motivating the others to reach that level. This way, you control and predict stock movement and get detailed reports on how your product/service is doing in the market. The front-liners provide the data and the business analyst organises it for you, so you know, at one glance, what you should not be doing and what you should be doing more of.

Sure, the retailer will have sales teams. But they will be selling all products, including your competitors. What you need are sales people whose job is to sell your products alone. Through your agency you can then train them, motivate them and ensure they reach their sales targets, keeping your brand right on top – no matter what you sell.

You need a loyalty program to retain clients and customers in an overcrowded market. These clients, in turn, become informal but very valuable advertisers for your product and services, drawing in more and more people. When experts tailor-make a loyalty solutions package for your company, you get an instant edge over your competitors.

Because then you will simply attract the bargain-hunter. You need to build up a client base for whom you are top of mind, and who uses your services and buys your products all through the year. This makes not just short-term business sense but long-term economic sense. Because then you have a database and you can innovate and invent ways in which the database responds to you more and more. Result: more sales that translate into more profits.

Sure they are good and sure your clients should be rushing in. But they won’t be, because your competitors’ products and services are not bad either. You need to create an accurate, systematic database of your clients/customers and you need to manage that, through regular updates etc. Because, once you have done that, you can target programs that benefit them straightaway, including Direct Marketing.