Last week brought an end to one of the most iconic brands in American industry history, The Great American & Pacific Tea Company which owned retail grocery stores under the brand names of A&P, Pathmark, Super Fresh, Waldbaums, and Food Emporium.  The retail food industry is a very tough business and it can be considered a highly commoditized business.  Last week, I published a blog titled “Applying an Advanced Business Acumen Perspective to Commoditized Markets” which shared new frameworks and ideas about how to compete successfully in highly commoditized markets like retail food. Sadly for consumers, the death of A&P is a story that fits into this framework and can provide interesting and useful business strategy lessons and the application of Advantexe’s Commodity Quadrant Tool which we provide to our clients and readers of this blog (Download the Commodity Quadrant Tool)

In today’s turbulent and volatile business world, many sales professionals get only one shot at making a good first impression when initiating the sales process of trying to acquire a new customer.  In a recent survey that Advantexe conducted for a Strategic Business Selling engagement with a group of sales professionals, participants of the survey admitted they only prepare for an initial sales call about 47% of the time.  By “preparation,” I mean basic things like checking social media, reviewing the customer’s website, creating a hypothesis for their business strategy, and having a general understanding of where the customer account is in its competitive business ecosystem.  It also means checking your own customer relationship management system to make sure that the prospect isn’t already a customer.

Over the past few years, many business organizations have evolved their selling approach by moving from a “Consultative Selling” approach to “Challenger Selling” approach.  A Challenger-type sales person is supposed to deeply understand and “challenge” the customer’s business approach by presenting solutions that customers don’t know they need yet.

I have had several interesting opportunities working in industries that have business units selling products and services that become extremely commoditized.  I am defining “extremely commoditized” as a situation where there are four or more competitors owning at least 80% of the market with a current average selling price that has decreased for 8 consecutive quarters. These industries include base chemicals, generic pharmaceuticals, and software-as-a-service (Saas).  In each of the engagements, we have been working with managers to develop business leadership and business acumen skills that will help participants to make better business decisions and lead their teams and companies to success.

Setting and flawlessly executing a business strategy is extremely difficult under the best of circumstances; it’s even harder and perhaps close to impossible if your business is having a crisis. Over the past few years, hundreds of companies have experienced some sort of business-related crisis that has impacted their brand equity, including Chrysler, Toyota, Taco Bell, Jet Blue, Apple, and FIFA.