Getting routes

to market right
Designing
profitable go-to-
market models in
consumer goods
Contacts About the authors

Beirut Mexico City Carlos Navarro is a

Strategy& partner based
Gabriel Chahine Carlos Navarro in Mexico City, and
Partner Partner part of the firm’s North
+961-1-985-655 +52-55-9178-4209 America consumer,
gabriel.chahine carlos.navarro media, and digital
@strategyand.pwc.com @strategyand.pwc.com practice. He focuses on
commercial, marketing,
Cleveland Juan Valero and distribution strategy
Partner for multinational
Les Moeller +52-55-9178-4218 and local consumer
Senior Partner juan.valero companies.
+1-216-696-1767 @strategyand.pwc.com
leslie.moeller Juan Valero is a
@strategyand.pwc.com Strategy& partner based
in Mexico City, and
Akshat Dubey part of the firm’s North
Principal America consumer,
+1-216-925-4038 media, and digital
akshat.dubey practice. He specializes
@strategyand.pwc.com in supporting consumer
packaged goods
London and agro-industrial
companies.
John Potter
Partner Akshat Dubey is a
+44-20-7393-3736 Strategy& principal
john.potter based in Cleveland. He
@strategyand.pwc.com specializes in helping
consumer, media, and
Richard Rawlinson digital clients advance
Partner their growth, go-to-
+44-20-7393-3415 market, and sales
richard.rawlinson strategies.
@strategyand.pwc.com

This report was originally published by Booz & Company in 2010.

2 Strategy&
Executive summary

The routes to market that consumer packaged goods (CPG)

companies use to sell and service their trade accounts determine
their sales volume, their ability to deliver the proper levels of customer
service in a cost-effective manner, and their success at securing scarce
retail shelf space for their products. Nevertheless, few CPG companies
have a comprehensive conceptual platform for optimizing their routes
to market.

Such a platform must enable companies to design go-to-market (GTM)

models that are characterized by four qualities: They have a strong
customer focus. They are aligned with the company’s strategic goals
and value offerings, and supported by its operational capabilities. They
balance customer needs, revenue growth, and cost-to-serve. And finally,
they are flexible enough to be adapted in response to changing strategic
goals and competitive threats.

This report describes a proven platform for creating such models. It

enables managers to identify and analyze the key activities and tasks
required to best serve their customer segments. It also provides a means
for choosing among and testing a variety of design alternatives in the
quest for the most effective and efficient routes to market.

Strategy& 3
Getting routes to market right

In an intensely competitive consumer goods sector, optimized go-to-

market (GTM) models — the designs for the routes to market that
companies use to sell and deliver their products and to service their
trade accounts — are essential. They enable profitable growth, service
excellence, and consumer engagement at the point of sale. But the more
diverse a company’s customer base and product portfolio, and the more
competitive its markets, the more challenging it is to design effective
and efficient GTM models.

A leading consumer goods company faced this challenge in a major

Latin American market. Over decades of successful growth, the
company’s trade customer base had expanded to hundreds of thousands
of outlets ranging from big-box retailers to street vendors. In the past
decade alone, the company’s brand portfolio expanded four times, while
its number of SKUs more than tripled. Furthermore, competition for
retail shelf space continually intensified, driven not only by a growing
set of direct competitors and other consumer products companies, but
also by nontraditional players, such as providers of mobile phone service
and financial services. Yet the company was still selling and servicing
most of its customer base using a pre-sales & direct store distribution
(DSD) model, in which sales and delivery personnel visited each
account at least once per week.

The company had mastered this model very efficiently, but there were
two inherent problems in applying the same model across a diverse
customer base. First, to maintain a reasonable cost-to-serve across a
large customer base, the field sales and service staff could not devote too
much time to any single customer and therefore found it difficult to sell
and service the company’s growing product portfolio. Second, the model
was needlessly expensive and time-consuming for certain customer
segments, such as smaller independent retailers and other lower-volume
vendors with more straightforward needs. It was also often unwelcome
because it distracted already time-pressed store owners from running
their businesses.

In other words, because virtually all of the company’s trade accounts

were being managed via the same route to market, no matter what their

4 Strategy&
actual sales and service needs, some accounts were underdeveloped
and underserved, while others received more attention than they
needed or wanted. As a result, the sales potential of existing accounts
was not being fully captured, cost-to-serve was higher than necessary,
and resources that could have been deployed to establish, maintain,
and develop new accounts were not available.

Many companies in the CPG sector are in a similar position. Geographic

expansion, growth in customer base and product lines, and the dictates
of competition and cost reduction have created an urgent need for them
to reevaluate and redesign their GTM models. Companies that are
successful in this endeavor can rightsize their sales and service forces
and better allocate their talent. They can bolster product presence and
customer experience at the point of sale, and they can devote greater
effort to strategic and high-profit SKUs. They also can reduce their
overall cost-to-serve. In short, they can cut costs and grow stronger.

While analyzing and designing GTM models can be very rewarding,

it is a quite complex task. Multiple stakeholders are involved, and the
experiences of thousands of customers can be affected; a wide range
of variables — including the strategic goals of the company and its
operational capabilities — must be taken into consideration; and the
investment in time and resources can be substantial. What is needed,
therefore, is a consistent and comprehensive platform for rethinking
GTM models across the customer base in order to more efficiently
deploy resources and provide better coverage of increasingly complex
product portfolios. Such a platform must be capable of producing a
clear vision of desired route-to-market outcomes, a comprehensive
understanding of the roles and functions of the employees staffing the
routes, and a systematic approach to GTM model analysis, design,
implementation, and management. A well-structured conceptual
platform offers CPG companies several key benefits:

• It provides a process for analyzing and constructing routes to market

that properly balances effective execution with cost-to-serve.

• It ensures a comprehensive and aligned understanding of the

elements contained in GTM models.

• It facilitates the sharing of best practices related to sales, customer

service, and GTM model designs across the system.

• It encompasses the tools and methodologies to model the effects of

different GTM design alternatives on the revenue potential, cost-to-
serve, and customer satisfaction.

• It is a vehicle for the continuous improvement and systematic

updating of GTM models and processes.

Strategy& 5
The four pillars of a
powerful GTM platform

To gain those benefits, an effective GTM platform must be built on four

pillars. The pillars represent the qualities of effective, efficient routes
to market, as well as the design principles by which GTM models are
constructed. We describe them as market-driven, coherent, balanced,
and flexible.

Market-driven: Too many companies design GTM models in an inside-

out manner. That is, their design efforts are so focused on internal
considerations, such as ease of implementation, existing sales and
delivery processes, and cost-to-serve, that the needs and desires of trade
customers and consumers receive short shrift. The most effective and
efficient GTM models are designed from the market back, ensuring that
they are properly aligned with customer and consumer needs. Toward
this end, the structure of a GTM model should have a foundation of
quantitative and qualitative characteristics of customer segments,
including growth potential, the stated and unstated needs of customers
in a segment, geographic footprint and location, sales volume, and
profitability. This process has a secondary benefit: It forces GTM model
designers to properly identify and define their companies’ customer
segments.

Coherent: In addition to external alignment with customers, effective

GTM models must be properly aligned and integrated with the
company’s overall customer service framework. It is often helpful to
visualize this framework as a pyramid in which decision and design
parameters flow down from the top, and support flows up from the
bottom (see Exhibit 1, next page). From the peak of the pyramid,
strategic goals flow downward, giving shape to customer value
offerings. Value offerings, in turn, cascade downward, suggesting
specific GTM models, which can then be designed to support delivery
of a specific value proposition for each customer segment. And finally,
GTM models help define the company’s operating models, dictating
elements required to enable and support the GTM models. The resulting
coherence within the customer service framework ensures that GTM
models support the achievement of corporate goals, as well as receive
the support they need to operate successfully.

6 Strategy&
Exhibit 1
A comprehensive customer service framework

Market
Strategic goals
share/
product mix

Marketing Terms &

Value offerings support conditions

Growth Sustaining Value-adding

Go-to-market models
activities activities activities

Operating models Infrastructure/

Processes Organization IT systems
assets

Source: Strategy&

Strategy& 7
Balanced: An effective platform must enable identification and balancing
of competing priorities in the design and operation of GTM models.
There are three sets of priorities that must be considered: customer
needs and preferences, which determine satisfaction and affect growth
potential; revenue growth, which determines market share and volume;
and total cost-to-serve, which determines the economic feasibility
and profitability of serving both individual customers and customer
segments. In analyzing their GTM alternatives, managers must be able
to balance the consequences of design alternatives and decisions on all
three priorities, determine the proper trade-offs among the priorities,
and build an optimal GTM model accordingly.

Flexible: Finally, because CPG companies must manage an increasingly

diverse customer base with differentiated GTM models, a high-quality
design platform must include a method for understanding GTM routes
in functional terms, a full palette of design alternatives for constructing
them, and a method for determining which alternatives are best suited
to individual customers and customer segments. Managers need
flexibility in terms of GTM model design, and once a design is chosen
and implemented, they also need a means of improving it or adapting
existing models as conditions change.

8 Strategy&
A functional perspective
on go-to-market models

In order to build market-driven, coherent, balanced, and flexible routes

to market, most CPG companies need to adopt a new perspective on
GTM model design and management. Too often, model managers
approach their work in a piecemeal fashion and without a holistic
view of the routes to market they are building. They define design
parameters, specify model choices, and manage GTM models from
a limited analytical perspective, such as sales or delivery. Invariably,
the result is a less-than-optimal route to market.

The design and operation of an effective GTM model depends on a more

holistic analytic view (see Exhibit 2, next page). This view should be
based on the model’s main activities and the functional steps — or
tasks — required to execute those activities. Using such an approach Typically, a
to analyze GTM routes ensures that managers will consider all of the CPG company’s
activities that are necessary in the execution of the sales and service routes to market
value chain for each of its customer segments, and provides a sound
foundation for constructing profitable routes to market. encompass three
major activity
Typically, a CPG company’s routes to market encompass three major types: Growing
activity types:
activities;
• Growing activities are the work of establishing and expanding sustaining
customer accounts. activities; and
• Sustaining activities are the work of servicing and maintaining value-adding
customer accounts. activities.
• Value-adding activities are the work of brand building and enhancing
the customer experience at the point of sale.

The degree to which each of these activity types is needed will vary
widely by customer segment. For example, in customer segments with
low levels of penetration, growing activities would be emphasized in
order to win new accounts. In segments where a company has a robust
customer base, sustaining activities would be emphasized in order to
maintain high levels of customer satisfaction and retention. In

Strategy& 9
Exhibit 2
A holistic view of routes to market

Growing Adding value

Customer
Merchandising
acquisition
Route to market
Customer Quality
development assurance

Sustaining

Order entry Distribution Collections

Source: Strategy&

segments where consumer market share is low, value-adding activities

would be emphasized in order to enhance the point-of-sale experience
and build share.

In effective GTM model design, these three major types of activities

need to be broken down to an additional level for a clear understanding
of the tasks involved in each of them and the ways to best execute these
tasks. It is the tasks executed in a route to market that serve as the
basic units for GTM model analysis, design, and management processes.
A model cannot be considered optimal until the execution of each
functional step within it supports the achievement of the company’s
objectives and increases the value delivered to each customer segment
by better addressing that segment’s needs and preferences.

CPG companies can gain valuable insights into the shortcomings of their
existing GTM models when they analyze them in terms of activities and

10 Strategy&
tasks. The consumer goods company introduced earlier provides a good
example. Originally, the company had assigned almost all of its GTM
activities and the tasks required to execute them to a single person
who acted as salesperson and delivery driver. Over the years, as the
customer base grew, the company split these functions, creating a
dedicated sales force that could spend more time prospecting for new
customers and developing existing accounts. But as its customer base
became even larger and more diverse, its SKUs grew in number, and
the demand for reductions in cost-to-serve rose, strains appeared in
this model too.

When the company identified the tasks required in the DSD model it
was using in its Latin American market, it discovered that the full range
of tasks had expanded beyond the capacity of its sales force and delivery
drivers. Now, for example, there were many tasks associated with
growing merchandising activities that ensured that the company’s
products were positioned and displayed in accordance with brand
guidelines. There were also new tasks associated with a quality
assurance function that ensured that displays and refrigeration
equipment were properly maintained and repaired when necessary.
Further, some of the tasks identified by the GTM managers applied to
some customer segments but not to others. Wholesalers, for instance,
did not require merchandising attention since they typically do not
display products to consumers.

The company’s GTM managers soon realized that there were numerous
mismatches between their expectations of the primary route to market
and its capabilities. For example, the resources of its sales force were
improperly allocated: Low-volume, independent retailers did not
require personal visits from salespeople for orders for a few cases of
product, but high-potential customers who were capable of selling
more volume and a wider range of SKUs needed more one-on-one sales
attention. The designers also discovered that cost-to-serve could be
lowered if sustaining activities were customized according to the size,
type, and potential of the company’s customer segments. For example,
accounts receivable costs and bad debt could be reduced and cash flow
improved by requiring small customers to pay for their orders when
they were delivered.

Strategy& 11
A modular approach
to GTM model design

The ability to analyze and define routes to market at the task level lays
the foundation for an orderly and structured approach to GTM model
design. This approach should be modular in order to provide the
flexibility needed to respond to complexity in customer bases, product
portfolios, and marketplace competition with routes to market that can
economically fulfill customer needs, that are better aligned with
customers’ preferences, and that ensure more efficient and effective
delivery of value offerings for each customer segment.

The mix-and-match nature of a modular approach to designing

GTM models acknowledges that there are different alternatives for
accomplishing any given task in a specific route to market. Further,
it recognizes that each of these alternatives has different implications
for corporate goals, customer satisfaction, and cost-to-serve. The larger
and more global a company becomes, the less likely it is that any single
alternative will be properly suited to serving its entire customer
base. Thus, the ability to construct routes to market using discrete
alternatives supports the creation of differentiated GTM solutions, as
well as enabling consumer products companies to respond quickly and
effectively to changes in corporate strategy and marketplace conditions.

A modular GTM model design process gathers and organizes all of

the major activities and their potential solutions in one place. GTM
designers can then appraise which solutions are best fitted to each
activity in a route to market based on strategic, customer, and cost
considerations. This modular approach can be applied to a single
customer or a complete segment of customers (see Exhibit 3, next page).

When the consumer products company applied this modular approach

to its Latin American market, its redesign effort resulted in five
differentiated GTM models, one for each major customer segment.
One of these new models was designed specifically for small retailers,
a group that had traditionally had a very high cost-to-serve because the
existing route to market required a good deal of hands-on attention for
many low-volume customers. In redesigning this segment’s route to
market, the company streamlined the order generation process and

12 Strategy&
Exhibit 3
The modular approach to GTM model design

Combinations of GTM alternatives… …create GTM models

Customer Pre-sales
builder

Account managing
model
High-volume food
and beverage
Trade retailers
DSD Pre-sales Auto-sales marketer DSD

None None

Low-cost
Customer Electronic
model
builder
Low-volume
mom-and-pop
retailers
None Auto-sales

Third party QA team Customer

acquirer

Customer Tele-sales
builder
Collaborative
indirect model
Remotely located
Trade retailers
Tele-sales None
marketer
None Third party

Customer acquisition
Customer development
Order entry
Distribution
Collections
Merchandising
Quality assurance

Source: Strategy&

Strategy& 13
eliminated the need for field sales calls by creating standard orders that
were assembled for delivery automatically. Payment was collected on
the delivery route, reducing billing costs and eliminating carrying costs.

The resources that the company recaptured in using this new model
for low-volume customers were reinvested in customer segments with
higher growth potential. For example, a newly designed GTM model
for larger accounts included two additional staff positions in the sales
force: one dedicated to helping these customers grow their businesses
and build sales volume, and one focused on making sure the product
was displayed and merchandised according to the company’s trade
marketing guidelines.

14 Strategy&
A GTM platform is a
competitive advantage

When CPG companies adopt a GTM platform and develop the capacity
to use it, they can construct routes to market and redistribute their
sales and service resources in ways that serve customers in a
differentiated and effective fashion, while controlling costs and
complexity. This represents a major competitive advantage in a
sector that is characterized by intense competition.

The benefits that the consumer products company we have been

describing gained from these actions are significant. They include
increased revenues through improved sales force deployment; a
better consumer experience through improved execution and trade
merchandising; an increase in trade customer satisfaction resulting
from differentiated routes to market that are better aligned to customer
preferences; and, no small matter in recessionary economies, increased
efficiencies resulting in a lower cost-to-serve as a percentage of total
sales. The same rewards are within the reach of any CPG company that
embraces a comprehensive platform and structured approach for GTM
analysis and design.

Strategy& 15
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