Sales and Marketing Success

As National Commercial Manager of Visy's $450m Beverage Packaging Division and as General Manager Brian led the negotiations with major food, beverage and petrochemical companies including Goodman Fielder, BP-Castrol, Schweppes, Diagio and Sanitarium.

As an illustration, Brian provided the stewardship to gain approval of a capex to install state-of-the-art plastic molding and assembly equipment to supply Nestle with a unique two piece plastic closure for their Nescafe range. This was underpinned by a supply agreement structured with price increase clauses, to protect supplier margins, and met the needs of Nestle by aligning price adjustments with the major retailer's range review.

Recognising the complexity a multi-brand portfolio Brian led a project to improve the processes of pricing by modelling the segment/customer/product/margin matrix which identified significant margin expansion opportunities.

Often customers seek to commoditise product s reducing competition to price negotiations. To counter this devaluation of good quality products, Brian introduced a product training process or the concept of a Product Panel. A Panel of commercial and technical experts would review the discreet technical features and differentiation points compared to competitor products and convert these features into benefits to enable sales teams to build strategies which could add value.

Brian has also led a national sales team through the development of a sales pipeline to create a continuous flow of revenue generating opportunities. This process led to the a 5% growth in revenue and in one segment a margin expansion of 7%.

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