Brainstorming in the south of France

I’m back from a meeting with one of our sales teams in the south of France. Unfortunatly I didn’t have time to enjoy the beautiful city – even though our hotel was just 20m from the beach.

But of course we didn’t go there for the beach!

In Marketing it is important to participate in meetings with the salesforce - the people that in the end, need to implement all the products, promotions and point-of-sale activities that we think of in our office in Massy.

Presenting our news to the salesforce is, of course, one of the reasons why we participated. We have a couple of neat things arriving on the French market – a new electrical product and a new perfume for example.

I’m sure our salesforce will do their very best to get some good placements in the stores for them. But other than that, the most important thing is to hear what our colleagues think of our new ideas, what we could improve, what works well and what doesn’t.

I think one of the strengths of Reckitt Benckiser is that we work as a team on all levels.

When taking decisions, opinions from all sides count and our goal is to continuously improve and take into account new ideas.

Of course sometimes we have to make a compromise and take a decision, but that’s what management is all about – taking the best decision considering all the information that you can get.

For example, one colleague proposed a very neat little promotion activity for Baranne, the “tiny” but market leading shoe polish brand that I’m managing.

Of course we are doing this all the time for Airwick and our bigger brands, but usually I wouldn’t have the budget to do this kind of activity for Baranne.

Well, now I have to check my budget, take into account all the things that are coming up in the next couple of months and, hopefully, I will be able to find the money to support this activity.