Articles

Promotion calendars are the number one vehicle used by Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) sales teams to present and review promotional plans internally and with customers. They summarize and communicate the mix, timing, frequency, and price points of promotions. Across customers, they are used to monitor activity and prevent undesired conflicts. They are an essential visualization of business plans for a CPG team- Sales, Brokers, and Sales Leadership.
In the spreadsheet world, account reps typically detail their promotion plan in a customer-specific workbook that is saved to a shared drive. For a consolidated view, someone must coordinate updates across reps, then copy, paste, and otherwise prepare a calendar across customers. Time that could be used for brand-building is instead consumed with administrative work.

If, on the other hand, you want an easier way to produce this invaluable resource, look at Trade Promotion Management (TPM). The pre-built, automated calendars in TPM completely eliminate manual construction and maintenance work. Often, TPM calendars become an important tool in the annual planning process because you are able to view year-over-year plans and present corporate events and marketing activities to your sales team for easy alignment. Calendars in a cloud TPM system are always on. They enable you to pick the exact customers and products you want to see, eliminating the need to manually collate workbooks for multiple customers.

Promotion calendars are an important tool for CPG sale teams to stay aligned. Automated promotion calendars enable that alignment to take place much faster and improve the quality of your promotion planning process.