Chief Merchandising Officer In a Box The third in the series of direct marketing job descriptions, Chief Merchandising Officer In a Box attempts to set down the responsibilities of a top-notch, multi-channel merchant with a strong background in direct, catalog sales, business-to-business and consumer.’ Over the last decade with the convergence of channels, the term merchant has become a part of the direct marketing lexicon. In this recent, and comparatively infinitesimally short incarnation, the word has made its way over the centuries from the first trodden paths of African tribal traders to the nighttime safety of the caravanserais of the Silk Road, and thence across the Straits of Dardanelles, connecting the Aegean Sea and the Sea of Marmara, conveying merchant traders with their priceless loads of salt and spices to the eager consumers of Europe and down the rope of time to the New World and, now, to today’s raucous online camel market. Who is this ‘merchant’ we increasingly hear so much of these days? How different is this ‘trader’ from the traditional ‘marketer’ we have all known and loved? Is this a position we should be wary of and should we scrutinize whatever it is they do with well-deserved initial suspicion? After all, aren’t these people refugees from . . .aaagh . . . retail? The Differences between Marketers and Merchants Merchants are the Masters of Products and Trading. Marketers are the Masters of Markets and Channels. Like it or not, that is the way it has evolved. Or, to look at it in another way, merchants have remained as masters of products and selling while marketers have had to expand into new, uncharted waters. The marketers have had so much to learn and to accomplish in the past twenty years, concentrating on the online channel, retail, wholesale, affiliate, search, electronic creative, circulation, co-ops, database, analytics, warehousing and mining data, some non-specific, amorphous thing called ‘CRM’ and a host of other technological and market expansions, that they partially abdicated their traditional ownership of product development, management and sales and—not surprising—the product and selling responsibilities were usurped by—you got it—merchants. And so, here we are, and there are now merchants among us. Merchants think differently from marketers. Merchants constantly think about target customers, customer desires, product selection and mix, offers, pricing, competition, sourcing, product forecasting, buy plans, inventory turns, excess inventory, product analytics, life cycles, and a thousand others things almost entirely related to specific customers and specific products. These are focused, specific people. Marketers think about Big Pictures. They are absorbed with the Next Big Thing. The Current Thing is already old and boring (these people have no patience for execution or follow-through . . . hey, that’s what ‘merchants’ do). The only thing that matters is where we’re going, not how we get there. Marketers have large wingspans and rarely perch on the Earth’s surface, preferring as they do the high thermals and a life of soaring and long views. We can’t get along without them because they are the people who forced our ancestors across the deserts and over the mountains, and one of them first wrote the copy that used the brilliant, eponymous name, The Silk Road. Marketers are totally enraptured with lists of millions of names and the big strategies for finding more and better lists and percentages. Merchants are only concerned with one or two people on those lists at a time and the current offer and the current sale, not the Next Big Thing. One of these people is right-brained and one is left-brained; I’ve just never been able to remember which is which. The Differences between Merchandisers Casting aside, for the moment my antecedent brotherhood—the marketers—let’s look at the Corps of Merchants and their unique differences. There are very pronounced differences among merchants. At the foundation of the merchandising discipline, and ascending in a hierarchy, we find the following positions:
1. Product Developer. One can debate whether this is the entry-level merchandising position. Good product developers are rare; great product developers are worth their weight in saffron (worth far more than gold by the ounce at retail). Product developers understand the specific customers who use specific products. They go to bed at night and when they wake up there are eight new products under their pillows. They commune with the Product Fairies. The training ground for product developers, in my experience, comes from an affinity with customers. Some excellent product developers came from the call center. These were people with great customer rapport and understanding, perhaps even empathy. They know what the customer wants. That simple six-word sentence is all you need to interview and qualify prospective product developers. What else is necessary? Varying levels of expertise exist for product developers. Prior to its recent sale to Home Depot, USA BlueBook, a catalog company servicing the municipal fresh and wastewater departments, hired water plant operating engineers with years of experience to develop products and to consult with customers on product applications. These experts knew exactly what the customers wanted because they were the customers. My own early merchandising training was in creating business form products. Thirty years ago, I would sit for hours working with one customer to come up with a new invoice form or a new packing slip or a new inventory tag that answered an unserved and unique need. My only tools were a pencil, paper, a ruler and my ears. I learned to listen to customers, to not only their demands, but also their solutions. I discovered that nine times out of ten they would actually draw the form they wanted to purchase from me, and so—early on—I began to master letting others do my work for me. The Point: Product Developers are first ‘Customer People’ with an empathetic understanding of the customer, the problems of a customer’s specific need, and the ability to create a product solution to meet that customer’s need. They are focused, detailed, meticulous, and interested in specific products rather than ‘worlds of wonder.’ It’s not about education or MBAs or prior training; it’s all about understanding customers and their desires. And here is a small tip that was learned the hard way. If you have great product developers who show no desire to do anything else, please don’t promote them to something they are not good at doing. Pay them a lot more, but let them do what they do best: create effective and, more often than not, evergreen products. There is nothing sadder to watch than a Merchandising VP who is totally out of synch and just wants to get back to creating stuff. Previous | Next |
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