Commercial Excellence in Retail Programme

We are pleased to announce two NEW Commercial Excellence in Retail Programmes designed and delivered in partnership by The Academy and The Knowledge Bank.

Fast tracking your commercial success

Are you a commercial leader working with the multiple grocers, or an ambitious business aspiring to grow with a supermarket retailer? You know that supplying the top UK retailers is complex and demanding. It relies not only on understanding their strategies, drivers and priorities, but knowing what levers to pull to grow their business – and yours. Stay ahead of the competition and plan your future commercial success with The Academy and The Knowledge Bank.  

About the Programme

An insight-lead, results focused commercial programme that aims to build confidence through the power of data and insight to support businesses build compelling selling propositions. Delivered through a time-efficient, blended format of interactive briefings and tailored commercial insight support to empower sales professionals to have persuasive, data-driven discussions with retail buyers and win or defend business.

Running from November 2024 to February 2025, this national programme is available to two cohorts of businesses.

What’s included?

Commercial Insights in Retail is led by UK market experts as two cohort programmes, each designed to equip participants with the confidence and tools to succeed with the multiple retailers – in the local market or as a national supplier.

• Cohort Programme 1 for businesses who supply or aspire to supply the multiple grocers in local markets.
• Cohort Programme 2 for more advanced businesses who supply or aspire to supply the multiple grocers at a national level.

This programme builds on our Maximise Your Retail Strategy event and each cohort includes:-

a 1-day in person workshop and access to 1:1 tailored insight support from our team of commercial experts, with the option of funded data and analysis to help build your selling proposition.

We will reinforce the learnings and takeouts of the top eight UK retailer strategies, uncover insights on how to develop your selling approach and support you to build compelling product and category propositions through data and insight to help defend, develop and grow your business with the multiple retailers.

You will learn:

Plus...

• You will have access to a commercial specialist from our team of experts, who will be matched to your business needs, based on their field of category expertise
• To help us match you and the specialist, you will receive a 1:1 business consultation to discuss your aims and agree objectives for your commercial insight support. This could be consumer research, EPOS data or desk research.

Why apply?

• Exceptional training - inspiring your commercial leadership and business growth
• Participative learning process - offering you insights into the ways to exercise best selling approaches
• Powerful data-driven, actionable insight - tailored to your immediate business needs (customer, category review or other retail project)
• Supportive commercial specialist - offering expertise in your category from the stand-point of suppliers and buyers

Who should apply?

We are seeking commercial, category and sales professionals who have ambitions to grow their business with the multiple retailers in Scotland or national UK markets and who recognise the need for research and data and the importance of presenting compelling, data-driven insight to buyers in order to stand out and defend, grow or gain new business.

What you should consider before applying:

• Do I have a retail customer, category range review or defined project in mind that this programme could help with?
• Does the timeframe fit?
• Do I have the time to devote to the programme?
• Do I have specific commercial objectives that I think this support could help me achieve?
• Does my business have the resources to invest in research or data to sustain business in the longer term?