4 tips for building your most compelling Joint Business Plan (JBP)

Are you struggling to build next year’s Joint Business Plan (JBP) for your Account?

Do you feel like you are going round in circles trying to make the numbers add up?

Depending on the start of your customer’s financial year, some of you will be in the middle of building JBPs.  The creation of a JBP can feel like one of the most complicated tasks in an Account Manager’s calendar.  And if your customer’s financial year aligns with the calendar year, you will probably be building the document during the busiest trading period of the year in the run up to Christmas.

Therefore, it is important to have a strategy before you start this mammoth task, to avoid getting lost in the weeds!

In this article I will provide 4 tips for building the best JBP.

1. Understand the key priorities for your customer first.

The first thing that you should do ahead of starting the task, is to understand your customer’s priorities for the following year.

Arguably the best way to do this is by getting them to present this to you, and in my experience the perfect time for this presentation is at your Brand Kick-Off meeting. 

Hopefully at this meeting you will have some of the senior stakeholders from your business and your customer’s business in attendance.  Having these senior attendees is key since you will get an opportunity to really understand your customer’s strategic priorities, as opposed to some of the more tactical KPIs that you might work on with your Buyer.

Make sure that you schedule plenty of time for your customer to present their 2024 strategy, as well as an appropriate amount time to ask them questions and give your feedback.  You need to ensure that there is not a single shred of doubt as to what their key priorities are for the next 12-months, whether that is to grow their category value via premium products or investing more in their Online platform.   

Remember that a JBP is most compelling and motivating for your customer when they feel like they have co-created it with you.

2. Find synergy with your business’ objectives and reward the customer for actions which will have the biggest impact on mutual growth

When you fully understand your customer’s key priorities, you can then compare them to your own business’ objectives and find synergies.

Ask yourself: “Where there are similarities in the two strategies?” And then ask yourself: “How can I incentivize the customer to take the necessary actions to drive mutual growth?”

Perhaps the customer outlined their strategy to grow category value by selling more premium products?  This is where you can assess your product mix.  You may have a non-core premium range, which is profit-enhancing to your business.  Perhaps you could incentivize the customer to list these premium products by enhancing the margin, compared to the core range, or giving your Buyer the opportunity to earn money via Trading Terms?

Or if the customer discussed the significance of growing its Online platform, perhaps you could include a commercial incentive to encourage them to increase your brand’s presence on their Homepage or Category banners?

If you can find the sweet spot between aligning on priorities and crafting attractive incentives, you will have an offer which your customer will find very difficult to refuse.

3. Visualize the building blocks for growth and keep it as simple as possible.

Most Grocery JBP templates I’ve populated throughout my career required commercial input into a spreadsheet, which generated a waterfall chart showcasing the main building blocks for growth.

The top customers provide this JBP template for good reason, since it perfectly illustrates the steps to annual growth.  Even if your customer doesn’t provide this template, I would still recommend creating a waterfall chart as best practice.

From experience, I would also advise making the waterfall chart as simple as possible.  Less is more.  If you can capture the growth in 5 or 6 building blocks (e.g. “Organic Core Growth”, “NPD”, “Increased Online Volume”, etc) then do so, rather than being too specific and complex by having 10+ or more building blocks.  Taking this stripped back approach will make the growth levers more memorable and easier to focus on throughout the year.

Remember that if the customer requires additional detail, you can then elaborate on the specifics of each building block. 

And my last tip would be to include the impact of CANNIBALISATION in your waterfall chart! I’ve previously made the mistake of assuming that every new product launched would be 100% incremental to the plan and instantly lost credibility with the customer.

4. Set up and share weekly tracking tools long before the start of the customer’s financial year.

My last suggestion would be to set up the tools you need to track the JBP performance long before the start of your customer’s financial year. 

Being able to have a living and breathing JBP tracker will not only be useful for you to understand how you are tracking versus the plan, but also valuable for your Buyers who spend a lot of time chasing their Account Managers for performance updates. 

Having shared trackers that you update with their weekly rate-of-sale (ROS) is empowering for your Buyers, since it saves them time in having to ask you for information on those occasions when they have to evaluate their overall Category performance.  They may not openly express it, but deep down they will be thankful that you provided them with these tools!

How building Mental Fitness can help you build the best JBP.

Building the core muscles of Mental Fitness will give you the psychological stamina to tackle what may seem like the gargantuan task of building your JBP.  Improved Mental Fitness will also help you to give this critical task the appropriate level of focus and energy, amidst the busiest trading period in the lead up to Christmas.

As is true of any lasting habit change, this takes at least 6-weeks of intense work.  If you are interested in this game-changing program then take the Positive Intelligence Saboteur Assessment https://www.positiveintelligence.com/saboteurs/ and then book a free 30-minute coaching call with me at https://www.expcoaching.co.uk/ to find out more!